TOP-3 Reports in Google Ads for Local Business

This article will cover useful reports for local businesses that you can easily create in the Google Ads Report Editor. This editor offers additional analytical capabilities, allowing you to use more data than the standard performance reports in the Google Ads account. You can use either ready-made templates provided by Google or create your own reports. These reports can be saved, shared, updated, and added to dashboards directly in the ad account. They will facilitate tracking your ad performance and help identify opportunities for growing your business.

There are several ways to access the Google Ads Report Editor, depending on the interface of your ad account:

Option 1. In the updated version, go to the “Insights and Reports” menu on the left. There you will find the Report Editor.

Option 2. In the more familiar interface, the Report Editor can be found in the top menu under the “Reports” tab.

Here, you have access to many templates that you can start working with immediately or further customize.

We have compiled our top Google Ads reports that we recommend using to evaluate campaign performance.

1. Google Ads reports using locations

In a highly competitive environment, local businesses must understand which specific locations bring the most success. Location constraints should be viewed not as an obstacle but as an advantage. Optimizing ad campaigns based on the user’s location data in Google Ads can significantly improve your business’s efficiency, reduce the cost per lead, and increase the number of conversions. Let’s consider how location data analysis can help with this.

Reports based on distance

One of the key tools for analyzing performance by this parameter is the standard reports in Google Ads, called “Distance,” which is found under the “Locations” subcategory. It allows you to determine how the distance from a potential client to your business affects ad performance. Such a report provides information on the following key metrics: impressions, clicks, CTR, cost per click, conversions, conversion cost, conversion rate, and overall expenses. This information is especially useful for businesses with physical points of sale, services, or offices.

Reports based on location

A more suitable option for businesses targeting specific cities or regions without physical targeting points would be a report that provides detailed information by location types – cities, districts, postal codes, etc. An important aspect here is the ability to choose the level of detail, allowing for a deeper analysis of ad campaign performance in each specific location. The basis can be the “Campaign” report (or “Campaign Performance” in another interface), or you can start from scratch and create a “Custom” report.

The key is to use the additional column “Target Location” to get information by cities (or choose other necessary detail levels). Here, you can also view the success of your ads in the Google auction by selected locations.

Using reports when analyzing Google ad campaign performance will allow you to:

• Optimize expenses. Through detailed analysis, you can identify where the cost per click is the lowest and where the conversion rate is the highest, allowing for optimal budget distribution.
• Plan future strategy. Location performance analysis can help determine where to open a new branch or increase marketing activities.
• Gain a competitive edge. Understanding where your ads perform better than competitors’ allows you to focus your efforts and resources on these areas.

2. Google Ads reports using auction insights

In the context of local business, the “high competition” concept is an inherent part of market reality. Local services are indeed in demand, but it also means increased offers from competitors. In such a case, especially in search engines like Google, increased competition leads to higher cost per click, directly impacting ad campaign performance. Local businesses should not just occupy a prominent place in search results but also optimize ad expenses. You can learn more about how the Livepage team works to promote local businesses here.

How do you achieve this balance between visibility and cost? First of all, dive into analytics. The simplest way is to use a special report from Google Ads, specifically analyzing auction insights by keywords.

The standard auction insights report, available in the ad account, can show the overall situation by account or individual campaigns. To delve deeper and go down to the keyword level, it’s better to use the Google Ads Report Editor. The necessary report is called “Search – Keyword” and is found under the “Auction Insights” section.

So, what do we have here? The image shows an example of such a report by keywords. The available metrics include:

• Search impression share: The share of received impressions in the search results out of the total possible;
• Search overlap rate: The frequency with which your ads and competitor ads appear together;
• Position above rate: How often competitor ads rank higher in the auction than yours;
• Top of page rate: The frequency of ad appearances (yours or competitor’s, depending on what you are analyzing) at the top of the search results;
• Absolute top impression share: The percentage of your (or competitor) ads showing in the first position of the search results;
• Outranking share: The frequency with which your ad wins a higher position in the auction compared to a competitor’s ad.

Analyzing these data can provide an in-depth understanding of the competitive environment for business-critical keywords. You can determine:

• Frequency of overlap with competitors;
• Keywords where you outperform competitors;
• Real frequency of competitor ad appearances, helping to refute assumptions about their omnipresence.

Using such a report to evaluate your ad performance, you get a tool for more precise and intelligent budget allocation and other efforts. As a result, you can optimize your ad visibility and reduce expenses.

3. Google Ads reports using calls

Last but not least is a report based on calls. Does your local business have a phone line? How do clients find it more convenient to order your services? Perhaps for planned repairs or services, it’s more practical to leave a detailed request on the site explaining all needs. But if it’s an unexpected malfunction that requires urgent repair (e.g., a pipe burst at home or a blocked garage door), there might not be time for a detailed search and request form. In this case, the ideal option for your business is to allow clients to call you directly. To ensure your phone number is correctly displayed in ads, use call extensions. Using such extensions and many others can significantly enhance your campaign’s effectiveness, as detailed in the article here.

If your local business already has one or more phone numbers, understanding the effectiveness of each is crucial for building a successful marketing strategy. You might know which number received more requests but wonder how to get more detailed information, like which campaign brought in this client, how much this lead cost, and others. This is where another special report, namely “Call details” from Google Ads, can help. It’s worth noting that not all countries currently support this option, but the list is quite extensive, so check for your country. If you’re among the lucky ones, you can find this report among the standard templates in the “Assets (legacy)” section.

How can this report be useful to you? With its help, you can see the following information:

• A campaign that brought in a particular call to a specific phone number. This allows you to understand campaign effectiveness from a call perspective. For example, your campaign might not bring direct conversions, making it seem ineffective. But by creating such a report, you might see that this campaign generates the most calls, and it’s worth continuing to work with it.
• Access to call recordings (note that recordings are automatically deleted after a certain period). This feature allows you to assess the lead quality and analyze the manager’s script usage, identify problem areas, and improve the service process at this stage.
• Call duration, caller number, and call date to help you identify spam calls. For example, calls with short durations, numbers beyond your region, and atypical call times can serve as markers of suspicious calls.

Proper use of phone lines and detailed analysis of incoming calls can significantly enhance the effectiveness of local business ad campaigns, allowing not only cost optimization but also better client interaction. Such a report will help obtain the necessary up-to-date information.

Conclusion

Using Google Ads reports to analyze local business ad campaign performance is quite a helping hand. The Google Ads Report Editor opens up opportunities for measuring the success of ad campaigns and further optimization through extended data and customized reports.

That is, 3 reports will be most useful for local businesses: location analysis, auction insights statistics, and call reports. Each of them will help improve your local business promotion strategies. Analyzing the data in these reports will allow you to gain competitive advantages and tailor ads to the specific needs and behaviors of your target audience. This means that it is important to integrate analytical data into the overall marketing strategy to ensure sustainable growth and development of a local business in a competitive environment. The Livepage team is ready to assist you in this process. Leave a request now and become one of our successful clients.