Uberall has been using the Insights API from Google to share performance data on Uberall CoreX. Google deprecated this API on February 20, 2023, and continued to deliver performance data with the new Business Profile Performance API. 

Uberall is moving to the new API to continue to deliver valuable insights on your business and these new metrics coming from the Business Profile Performance API are available in CoreX starting on June 28, 2023. 

Key Updates as of June 28, 2023

In tandem with the availability of the new metrics, the following features will be sunset as of August 2023: 

1. Sunsetting charts in CoreX: The graphs/charts that stopped receiving new data as of February 20 (phase 1) will be sunset. 

• Customers are encouraged to export valuable historical data.

• Data can still be exported after sunsetting but the charts and tabs no longer appear in CoreX. 

2. Historical data backfill: Historical Google impressions data will be altered to align with Google’s updated Impressions definition.

   • This will cause impressions data recorded prior to February 20th to align in definition with data provided thereafter. 

   • Concurrent with the chart sunsetting, we will also backfill the most recent 18 months of customer’s data. 

   • This will cause their most recent 18 months of historical Impressions data to change. 

   • To keep record of legacy data, customers are encouraged to export/download data through the Dashboard Excel option prior to August

Customers can request additional detail through their CSM or PSM.

What is the new Business Profile Performance API? 

The Business Profile Performance API allows Uberall to fetch performance reports about your business profiles on Google. 

In comparison to the old Insights API, the new Business Profile Performance API provides valuable insights on metrics that weren’t tracked before, such as 

• Search keywords: See the keywords that led people to your listings

• Bookings: See the number of users who selected the Bookings option 

• Food orders: View the number of users who selected the Food orders option (for restaurants)

• Menu clicks: number of clicks to your menu

• Conversations: See the number of users who utilized the conversation/chat option 

• Impressions by device: Track the number of business map and search impressions/views differentiated between desktop and mobile devices used on 

Uberall has added new metrics to the reporting sections within Uberall CoreX to make them available to businesses. The new metrics are now available within CoreX, within Advanced Analytics and many within the Dashboard.

What metrics does the new Business Profile Performance API not support? 

The new Business Profile Performance API provide the same metrics as the old Insights API did, except for the following metrics: 

• Direct, indirect, and chain (branded) queries

• Local post metrics

• Local photos metrics 

Uberall is no longer able to deliver those metrics on CoreX as of February 20, 2023, on. This hasaffected the Dashboard and Analytics sections that are partially using this data. Uberall will continue to provide historical data on those metrics within the existing graphs and tables. Customers are encouraged to export historical data that is of value to them.

How can I continue to get insights into the metrics that are now deprecated? 

While there is no one-to-one solution to access the metrics that have been deprecated, there are still ways you can approximate those insights. 

For volume and types of queries: 

With the Google Business Profile Performance API, Google is moving to provide data that is more tangible and actionable. Businesses will be able to see the most commonly used keywords and phrases they get found with. The data is more specific and businesses can segment it by types of searched phrases (such as branded, non-branded, address info, products, etc.). 

Historically, the queries that Google reported on with the Insights API were broad metrics and best used to directionally understand how and when your business was displayed to searchers. 

Additionally, if you are leveraging an analytics tool such as Google Analytics, you can add tracking parameters to your local URLs in your Google Business Profiles. This way you can capture the search and traffic volumes being driven by them. One of our favorite resources for adding tracking parameters to your listings can be found here. 

For Google Post performance metrics: 

Google will no longer be providing views or clicks data on Google posts. Businesses can continue to add tracking parameters to the CTA on the post. While this won't report on total views, you'll be able to see engagement from each post on Google to help inform your content strategy. 

For photos metrics: 

Google will no longer provide insights for photos within GBP. As far as we know, they will continue to rank and display the most popular photos at the top of your profiles. You can always review which photos are displayed first to get an idea of the photos customers are most influenced by. We also recommend adding alt tags to your images to help describe these to search engines and accessibility tools. 

What do I as a partner, reseller, or API customer need to know? 

The deprecation of the Insights API also affects the services of partners and partner resellers. We recommend they inform their customers about the changes and the value that comes from them. Uberall Partner Success Managers will be able to provide partners and partner resellers with guidance on how to communicate the change to their customers. 

As of June 28, 2023 partners and partner resellers are able to provide new and more valuable insights to their customers with metrics around keywords, bookings, orders, conversations, and impressions by device. The respective graphs have been added to the Dashboard including backdated data. 

For the time being, the graphs on query types, photos, and posts will still be visible with historical data and, due to them being sunsetted, no new data from February 20, 2023, on. 

For those using the Uberall API: 

The existing API endpoints remain available to partners and customers, and even though changes are currently not required, they can change the data they pull and present. Uberall Success Managers will communicate the updates on the API documentation to their partners so they can inform their respective developers about the changes. 

The API endpoints for the new metrics will be documented and made available so users can actively write to those endpoints. The API documentation is here and will be updated when the new endpoints are published on Uberall CoreX. 

I am seeing performance drops already, is that related to the deprecation of the Insights API? 

As Google is working on the deprecation of the Insights API, they have shared that they expect occasional errors to occur. This should be resolved on February 20, with the transition to the new Performance API. If you notice that your reporting is not updating on a specific day, it is likely that this is the cause. It is likely that the issue will be resolved the following day and results will populate as expected. 

Have the reported impressions volumes in my reporting dropped with the new Google Business Profile Performance API?

Google has changed how they define impressions. Now, multiple views by a single user in a single day are counted as a single view, regardless of the device. Google has done this to ensure the impressions measure better reflects the volume of unique activity. As a user, you may see lower volumes of impressions but the activity to your online presence has not changed. 

We believe that this is a positive change and our in-house expert Krystal Taing, Director Pre-Sales Solutions at Uberall, explains why. Read more here.