This guide is for owners and marketers who want to know what visitors from their Google Business Profile do on the website: which page they land on, whether they book, and how that compares with other channels. Without tags, most of those visits show in Google Analytics 4 as google / organic, mixed in with ordinary search clicks. Add UTM parameters to the links on your profile and GA4 reports them separately.
Which profile links you can tag
Tag every link you control on the profile. Each of these fields takes a full web address, including a query string:
- Website: in Edit profile, under Business information, then Contact. It is the Website button on your profile.
- Menu link: in the same Contact section, for food and drink businesses.
- Booking, reservation and ordering links: on Google Search, select Booking or Food ordering on your profile; in the Google Maps app, open Edit profile and choose the link type. Google offers these to some categories only.
- Links added by a booking or ordering provider: Google says these cannot be edited, only removed, so you cannot tag them. Read those visits in the provider's own reports.
Build the tagged links
Google says to always use utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, and that values are case sensitive, so pick one spelling and keep it. For a profile, use:
- utm_source=google: the visit comes from Google.
- utm_medium=organic: keeps the visits in GA4's Organic Search channel, where they belong.
- utm_campaign=gbp: the value that separates profile visits from other Google search visits.
- utm_content: which button was clicked, such as website, menu or order.
Website: https://www.example.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp&utm_content=website Menu link: https://www.example.com/menu?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp&utm_content=menu Order link: https://www.example.com/order?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp&utm_content=order
Put the tagged links on your profile
- Open your Business Profile and select Edit profile.
- Go to Business information, then Contact. Paste the tagged link into Website, and into Menu link if you have one.
- For booking or ordering links, open that link type, edit the link and paste the tagged version.
- Save. Google reviews edits before they go live.
Once the edit is live, select each button on your public profile and check that the address in the browser carries the tags. GA4 only separates visits from that day on; past visits stay untagged.
Find the visits in GA4
- In Google Analytics, open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition.
- Change the table's first column to Session source / medium. Profile visits sit in the google / organic row.
- Select the plus next to that column and add Session campaign. The rows with gbp are your profile visits.
- Pick a full month and compare sessions, engaged sessions and key events with your other rows.
To see which button sent each visit and what those visitors did, build a free-form exploration:
- Open Explore and start a Free form exploration.
- Add the dimensions Session campaign, Session manual ad content and Landing page + query string, and the metrics Sessions and Key events.
- Add a filter where Session campaign exactly matches gbp.
- Put Session manual ad content in the rows to split website, menu and order clicks.
Why GA4 will not match the Performance report
The Performance report in your Business Profile counts actions on Google. GA4 counts sessions on your website. The two never match exactly:
- Google counts a website click even if the page never loads, or the visitor leaves before your analytics tag runs.
- Visitors who decline analytics cookies or block trackers are missing from GA4.
- Performance reports website clicks, bookings and menu clicks as separate metrics. GA4 shows every tagged visit in one channel until you split it by utm_content.
- Performance also counts calls, direction requests and messages, which never reach your website.
- GA4 shows what happened after the click: pages viewed, engagement and key events such as bookings. Performance does not.
In March, Performance showed 310 website clicks. GA4 showed 262 sessions with campaign gbp, 190 of them engaged, and 41 booking key events. The gap of 48 is expected. The useful number is the 41 bookings, which Performance cannot show.
Use Performance for how many people acted on your profile and GA4 for what website visitors did next. Compare each one's trend over time, not the totals across the two.
Common problems
- Will tagged links hurt my ranking?
- Google's business link rules cover where a link leads and how it is written, not tracking parameters. A tagged link that opens your own page still points to your own page.
- My profile visits still show without a campaign. Why?
- The tagged link is not live yet, or the visit came through a link without tags, such as a provider's booking button. Check the address on your public profile.
- Should I use utm_medium=gbp instead of organic?
- GA4 puts visits with the source google in Organic Search either way, so a custom medium adds little. Keep organic and separate profile visits with the campaign value.
- Can I track calls from my profile in GA4?
- No. A call from the profile never opens your website. Use the calls count in the Performance report.
Edit your links in Reach
Reach's profile page edits your website and links and publishes them to Google when you press Save to Google, so you can paste the tagged links there. Its Insights page shows Google's own counts of website clicks, calls and direction requests.