These days, more people are searching for businesses online than anywhere else. One important step to take to ensure your local business can be easily found is to verify your Google Places listing.

Verifying and taking control of your Google listing enables you to add relevant, accurate information, edit your listing as changes occur with your business, and respond to reviews, as well as add photos, videos, and special promotions.

Best of all, Google Places gathers important statistics to help you learn how your business listing performs. When you log in to your Google Places account, you’ll see the Dashboard, which has several categories of activity, with the default date range being the past 30 days (you can change the date range at the top right to suit your needs). These insights help you to make your listing more relevant to potential customers. The following statistics are shown:

Impressions 
indicate the number of times users saw your business listing as a local search result on Google, Google Maps, and Google Maps Mobile (on select mobile devices).

Actions report how many times users showed interest by interacting with your listing, such as clicking for more information on Maps, to get driving directions, or to go to your website.

Top Search Queries are the top Google search queries (on Google, Google Maps, and Google Maps Mobile) for which your business listing appeared, along with the number of times users saw your business listing in the search results for those queries.

If your business receives enough requests for driving directions, you’ll be provided with Where Driving Directions Requests Come From, a list of the top locations where your customers are coming from.

Please keep in mind that statistics may not be in real time. Statistics are compiled over the past 30 days and may take 48 hours to populate in your Places dashboard, so we can’t guarantee the complete accuracy of the provided statistics.

Creating a great listing takes just a few minutes—and it’s free. Google doesn’t accept payment to include particular listings or sites in their search results, making for a cleaner, easier experience for searchers. Places helps you proactively reach customers and build a relationship with them before they even walk through your door. They’ll find the information they need to know about your business, and you’ll discover insights about your potential clients to assist you in making important Internet marketing and business decisions.