Does Search Console data include GMB traffic? Branded CTR is 37.8%- Good or Bad?

[Davit1985]

Hey all,

Per Search Console our branded keyword CTR is 37.8%.  But when that keyword is searched our GMB listing shows up on top of the #1 result. For the same 90 day period GMB shows another 35% visits to our GMB (based on the number of impressions and visits to our GMB page) listing when the same keyword is searched.

My question is this. Does Search console data include clicks that came from our GMB listing or not? My thinking is like this: If GMB traffic is not calculated in search console then it means that 72.8% of people looking for our brand will end up on our site on way or another 9organic #1 result plus GMB listing visits)

We are also doing PPC for this very keyword that has gets almost 20% of the remaining traffic.  So after adding all up we are loosing about 8% of our branded traffic to people who are doing adwords. When you search our brand you normally see 2, 3 competitor's adwords ads.

Does anyone know how this works exactly? And if you don't mind sharing your branded keyword CTR's,  so I can compare to ours please. I would love to compare to a site that actually has a GMB listing ranking for the same keyword

Thanks in advance,

Davit

[LynnPatchett]

I had another thought

If you have linked your Google Ads with the Search Console then you could check the paid and organic report (in ads -> reports -> predefined -> basic -> paid & organic) - I think this "should" actually give you the numbers you want. This assumes that the search console data is measuring GMB clicks correctly with UTM tracking AND that data is being imported as is into Google Ads)

I am going to check it now since we have accounts where the search console is linked with ads, and accounts that use UTM tracking in their GMB listing - but none that have BOTH. If you find that it works and you can verify the above really does appear to give a clear indication of total Ads + Organic + GMB clicks then please do confirm

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Davit!

It gets a bit complicated quite quickly but for what it is worth check out this post:
https://searchengineland.com/3-reasons-why-google-my-business-search-queries-dont-match-search-console-306294

I can confirm that you can see GMB links (and clicks etc) from within Search Console if you have enabled UTM tracking on your GMB link as described in the article. So yes, it looks like Search Console includes GMB data (at least to some degree).

The difference between the 'impressions' recorded  in Search Console and the 'users' recorded  in GMB probably means that you are never going to have a satisfactory answer to your absolute branded click through rate. For what it is worth we usually see similar number to yours in terms of click throughs from branded queries in search console, but I think so much depends a lot on industry, brand awareness, competitor ads etc that maybe it is not worth sweating over.

Hope it helps!