The five numbers
The report is part of the Growth and Growth + Voice plans. It keeps to five numbers on purpose, so it is something you will actually read.
- Visits to your site. How many times people opened it.
- Messages sent through your site. How many times someone filled in a form, like a contact or quote request.
- Times your site showed up in Google Search. Called impressions. It counts every time your site appeared in a search result, whether or not anyone clicked.
- Clicks from Google Search. How many people clicked your site in the results.
- Your top pages. The three pages people opened most, so you can see what they came for.
How to read them together
Each number answers a different question. Impressions tell you whether Google is showing your site to people. Clicks tell you whether the way it appears makes them want to open it. Visits tell you how many people actually arrived. Messages tell you how many of those people got in touch.
A restaurant might see impressions rise around a holiday weekend. A plumber might see more messages in the weeks after a storm. A number going up is nice. A number going down for one month is normal. The pattern over a few months is what matters.
What the report is not
It is not a promise about rankings or sales. Nobody can promise where a site will appear on Google, and the report does not pretend to. It also does not cover social media or your Google profile, which are outside what we do.
It is also not a long document. Many reports for small businesses are fifteen pages of charts that nobody reads. This one is meant to take about a minute.
Why only five numbers
Most website reports fail because they show everything. Fifty charts do not tell a barber what to do on Monday. Five numbers do. They cover the whole path from being shown in Google, to being clicked, to being visited, to getting a message, and that is the path a small business cares about.
What you do with it
Mostly, you keep an eye on it. If the numbers suggest that people find you for one service more than another, that can shape the next page or blog post. If messages are low while visits are high, the site may need a clearer button. The note says so, in plain words, and suggests what to look at next.
A short example of a reading
Say a salon sees its site shown in Google many more times in the month before a holiday, but clicks stay flat. That suggests the way the site appears in search could be clearer, which is something a search tune-up looks at. If instead visits are healthy and messages are low, the site may need a bolder booking button. The report points at the likeliest cause and keeps the advice short.