How does Google Maps/G+ traffic show up in Analytics?

[JohnGroves]

Hi Moz Community,

I've been trying to figure out how traffic from Google Maps (and G+) shows up in Google Analytics and am struggling to find a good answer online. If someone finds a business through Google Maps and then clicks on the website in the Maps listing, does that show up as a referral from Google Maps? Our site shows virtually zero traffic from Google Maps even though we have a number of listing.

Two related questions:

1. if someone clicks through to a G+ page from a Maps result and then visits our website from the G+ page, does that show up in Analytics as a referral from G+?

2. Is traffic from Google Maps or G+ ALSO counted as organic traffic? (Would it be possible to accidentally double-count a visit as both organic and a referral from Maps/G+?

Thanks everybody!

[JohnGroves]

Thanks Miriam! Are you able to see this working still? When I try it with our Analytics account it shows essentially zero traffic to our site from Google Maps, which seems extremely unlikely given the number of GMB locations we have, paired with the fact that the "insights" tab  in those GMB accounts shows traffic going to our site. I noticed Ed's post has "maps.google.com" and google maps is now at "google.com/maps", but when I try to change it that doesn't seem to work either.

Just seems so odd Google makes it so hard to determine how much traffic is coming from one of their own products

Thanks again!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi John,

Also see the classic post from Ed Reese: http://localu.org/blog/how-to-segment-local-search-analytics/

[UmarKhan]

Hello,

Yes, it does show up. I remember a very good post on this topic on Moz few years ago and I am quite sure it still works now:
https://moz.com/blog/tracking-traffic-from-google-places-in-google-analytics

Do check out this one for Google+:
http://www.jeffalytics.com/google-plus-analytics/measuring-website-activity-google-plus/

Hope this helps!

Umar