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2019 Google Analytics for Local Businesses Study

Posted by Colleen Frye

Google Analytics, Anywhere, Anytime.

Google Analytics (GA) is one of the most useful tools out there to understand your business’s digital performance, no matter your website’s size. GA allows users to track their website visitors, measuring traffic across multiple online channels over time. For local businesses though, it can be especially difficult to know which metrics to watch.

Research found that 92% of consumers visit local businesses’ websites when deciding which business to use, so it’s never been more important for local businesses to be monitoring how their website is performing.

However, SEO professionals for local businesses know it can be hard to know what’s ‘normal’ in a given industry, and what you should be striving for. Our partners over at BrightLocal wanted to provide readers with data to help them benchmark their own site’s performance, as well as providing data for folks like us to help prove the importance of tracking users from website visitor to customer.

To do this, BL reviewed anonymous Google Analytics data from more than 11,000 local businesses to track trends over time. Here are their findings:

  • Local businesses attract 414 monthly users and 506 sessions on their website on average
  • The average local business’s website receives 2.17 pages per session, while mobile-only visitors visit an average of just 1.88 pages
  • 13% of local businesses receive fewer than 100 users to their sites each month. 55% receive fewer than 500
  • 29% of local businesses receive fewer than 250 monthly sessions
  • 50% of website traffic comes from organic search, with 37% coming from direct sources
  • The average local business receives no email, paid, or display sessions each month
  • Local businesses receive an average of 1,099 pageviews per month
  • Car dealerships receive significantly more pageviews than other industries. Cleaning businesses, tradesmen, and landscapers receive the lowest number of pageviews
  • The average session on a local business’s website is 96 seconds
  • The average bounce rate for local businesses is 60.23%
  • Bounce rate for mobile is higher at 64.00%

For the full study, click here.