Google says view counts for Business Profile posts are rolling out globally, confirming a feature practitioners spotted in testing last month.
Post-level view reporting returns three and a half years after Google discontinued the old metric. The company’s API deprecation schedule lists post views and post button clicks as ending on Feb. 20, 2023, with no replacement.
The news came in the September Small Business Bulletin, posted to the Business Profile Help Community by Google employee Lisa Landsman. Google calls the feature Google Posts Reporting and describes post view counts as “one of our most requested features yet.”
What’s New
View counts appear on each post card in the Posts section of the Business Profile dashboard. The bulletin describes the number as how many times local customers viewed a post.
Google lists three things the reporting covers.
- Posts published over the past 18 months, on a rolling basis.
- All post types, including updates, offers, and events.
- Views from both Search and Maps, combined into one number.
The bulletin adds that the feature is “currently rolling out globally, not yet available in the API.” As of Sept. 10, the help page for posts and the performance metrics page didn’t mention post view counts. The performance page does list an Offers metric covering views and clicks, but it doesn’t document per-post view counts across updates, offers, and events.
How We Got Here
Business Profile once reported views and clicks for each post. Google retired both metrics in February 2023, along with photo view counts, during Google’s migration to the Business Profile Performance API. The developer docs list no replacement for either.
In August, a screenshot circulated on LinkedIn showing view counts on posts for one account while other users couldn’t see them, which suggested a limited test. The bulletin puts a scope and a rollout status on it.
Why This Matters
Google discontinued its dedicated local post view metric in 2023. The new counts give profile managers a direct visibility measure for individual updates, offers, and events across Search and Maps.
Google says the reporting is rolling out in the Business Profile dashboard and isn’t yet available in the API. The bulletin mentions views but not clicks, which Google discontinued alongside the old post-view metric in 2023.
Looking Ahead
The bulletin doesn’t define a post view, so it’s unclear whether the number counts unique people or every appearance. Profile views in the Performance report count each person once a day, and the posts help page is the place to watch for a matching definition.
Google is also connecting Business Profiles to the Gemini app, which can pull performance data from a connected profile. Whether post views show up there is another open question.
