Google Business Profile leads: how to get more, and how to know which ones came from it

Google Business Profile leads arrive in four ways: a tap on Call, a tap on Website followed by an enquiry form, a request for directions that ends with someone at your counter, and, for some categories, a booking. You get more of them by choosing the right primary category, listing your services, showing photos of real work, asking every customer for a review, and pointing the website link at the page for your main service instead of the home page.

The part most guides skip is what happens next. Google counts taps, not enquiries, and since July 2024 it no longer shows who called. So unless you tag the website link and write “Google profile” on every caller’s lead, you cannot tell how much work the profile brings in, or whether every enquiry it sent was called back. This guide covers both halves.

What a Google Business Profile lead actually is

Google’s Performance report shows views, searches, calls, website clicks, directions and, where they apply, bookings. Each number counts an action on the profile, which is not the same thing as a lead in your list.

Two older routes have gone. Google switched off chat and call history on 31 July 2024, and its help page now says customers can no longer request quotes through the profile. If an old guide tells you to turn on messaging, it is out of date.

Seven things that decide how many enquiries the profile sends

None of these is a trick. They are the parts of the profile a customer reads before deciding whether to tap Call.

1. The most specific primary category

Google’s category guidance is to pick a specific primary category from its list, and it says plainly that the categories you choose affect your local ranking. Add a few more for other things you do, but “do not select a category for every product or service”. An electrician who mostly installs solar should check whether a solar category fits better than the general one.

2. A service list that matches what people search

Service businesses can add services, including custom ones, each with a description and a price. Write them the way customers say them: “Split AC gas refilling”, not “HVAC maintenance solutions”. Keep prices and phone numbers out of the service names; Google rejects custom services that break its rules.

3. Photos of the work, not stock images

Google’s photo tips suggest at least three photos each of the outside, the inside, your team at work and the team itself, as JPG or PNG. For a business that works at the customer’s site, the at-work photos do the selling: a finished CCTV rack, a solar array on a real roof, a technician with your uniform on.

4. Reviews, asked for every time

Google lets you create a review link or QR code from the profile and recommends asking customers to use it and replying to reviews; it also says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. What it strictly prohibits is offering anything in return: a discount, a free service, a gift. The habit that works is dull: send the link on WhatsApp the day the job is finished, to every customer, not only the happy ones.

5. Updates with a button

Posts can be an update, an offer or an event, and an update can carry a button with a link. Google archives posts older than six months unless they have a date range, so a monthly update showing a recent job keeps the profile looking alive. Leave phone numbers out of the text; posts with a number Google cannot link to your business may be rejected.

6. A website link that lands on the right page

Most profiles link to the home page, which then makes the visitor hunt. If 80% of your work is one service, link to that service’s page, with a call button, a WhatsApp button and a short form in the first screen. The next section covers tagging the link.

7. A phone that gets answered

The cheapest lead the profile sends is a phone call, and it is the easiest one to lose. Google’s guidelines ask for a local number under the business’s direct control. Make it a number someone answers during your listed hours, and keep the hours right, including holidays.

How to track leads from Google Maps and your profile

Tracking needs two separate fixes, because enquiries arrive two ways: through your website, and straight to your phone.

Tag the website link with UTM parameters

Without a tag, a visit from your profile is not labelled as one in Google Analytics, so you are left guessing. Add the three parameters Google’s campaign URL guide says to always use:

https://www.yourbusiness.com/ac-repair/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp

Values are case sensitive, so pick one spelling and keep it. Google’s profile guidelines forbid links that redirect people to pages other than your own business’s; they do not mention tracking parameters, and a tagged link to your own page is still your website. Analytics will now show visits and form submissions from the profile as their own line.

That tells you how many form enquiries came from the profile. It does not put the source on each lead. If you want that too, the form has to carry it: ask whoever built the site to add a line such as “via Google profile” to the message the form sends whenever the page was opened from the tagged link. Then send the form straight into your CRM, so the enquiry becomes a lead with that line in its requirement, not an email.

Ask every caller, and write it down

Calls are where tracking breaks. Google no longer lists them, and the Calls figure counts taps. So the only reliable record is the one you make: on every new call, ask “How did you find us?”, and add the caller as a lead with the source and a note saying Google profile or Google Maps. Walk-ins who came by directions get the same treatment.

Compare the two numbers once a month

Here is a made-up example. An AC service business in Nagpur opens its Performance report for September and sees 48 calls. Its lead list has 29 leads marked as coming from the Google profile. That leaves 19 taps to explain:

• Existing customers who searched your name to find the number. Not new leads, and fine.
• Taps that never rang: a pocket tap, a change of mind. Nothing to do.
• Missed calls nobody returned. Check the call log on the business phone against the month.
• Calls answered but never written down. The most expensive line, because nobody followed them up.

You will never get the two numbers to match, and that is not the aim. The aim is to see whether the gap is growing, and which of the last two lines it comes from. A full method for comparing channels in rupees is in how to track lead sources and know which ones pay.

Make sure every Google enquiry is followed up

Someone who finds you on Google Maps sees your competitors on the same screen, and can ring the next one in a few seconds. Treat a missed call from the profile as a lead that is already shopping around. Three rules cover most of it:

1. Return missed calls within the hour during working hours. For why, and how to measure your own speed, see how fast to reply to a new lead.
2. Give every lead a next follow-up date before you put the phone down: the site visit, the quotation, the call back after they speak to the landlord.
3. Keep one list. Profile callers, website forms, IndiaMART buy-leads and WhatsApp messages in one place, so a busy week does not decide which ones get called.

Honest limits

• The profile is not a switch. Google says local results rest mainly on relevance, distance and how well known a business is, and that there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. A complete profile can still sit below a competitor nearer the searcher, or one that has been collecting reviews for years.
• UTM tags count visits, not customers. They tell you the profile sent 60 visitors and 7 forms; whether those became paid jobs is in your lead list.
• Linking the profile to Google Analytics shows calls, website clicks and directions next to your site data, but Google’s help page says only the last six months are available, and the figures cannot be filtered by profile.
• If calls come in and nothing comes of them, the fix is not in the profile. Read why a website gets visitors and no enquiries for the website side, and look hard at the follow-up for the rest.

Where Enkay CRM fits

Lead management in Enkay CRM handles the second half of this guide, not the first. It has no Google Business Profile connection, so it does not read your calls, reviews or Performance figures.

What it does: a profile caller is added by hand in a few seconds, with a phone number as the only required field, the Phone call source, and “Google profile” in the requirement. There are no custom source labels, so that note is how you tell profile callers from other calls. If your website form posts to Enkay’s push URL, form enquiries arrive as leads on their own, tagged Website form, and the message the form sends becomes the requirement. Enkay does not read UTM parameters itself. Every lead gets a next follow-up date, and the Today screen shows overdue ones first, so a profile caller cannot sit forgotten.

If the profile is set up and the website is the weak link, Enkay Technologies also builds business websites with a page per service and a form that posts into your CRM.

Google Business Profile leads are cheap to get and easy to lose. Fill in the profile once, tag the link, ask every caller where they found you, and give every enquiry a date. Then the profile becomes a number you can check, not a feeling.

Frequently asked questions

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