Understanding how the public is finding your locations is important when evaluating your local listings. LocalClarity allows its users to download their Google Search Keywords directly from the platform. This article breaks down what Google Keywords are, what they can tell you, and how to download the Keywords in LocalClarity.

In Google Maps, Google tracks the specific search terms used to find businesses, these are called Keywords For example, if you're a burger restaurant, some of your most used Keywords could be 'burgers near me', 'hamburgers', 'french fries', 'tater tots', etc. These are all examples of non-branded keywords. Keywords can be broken out into two categories, Branded and Non-Branded. 

Unlike the previous examples, Branded Keywords are not items you may sell, but they are keywords directly related to your business entity. Using the burger restaurant example again, let's name it 'Burgerz & More!', some branded examples would be: 'Burgers and More', 'Burgerz and More', 'Burgers & More,' 'Burgers n More,' etc. Notice that while none of the examples correctly match the brand-name syntax, they are all referring directly to the brand. For brands with shorter or one-word names, you'll see fewer variations, but will still get misspellings. 

While Branded Keywords are nice because people are seeking you out, they are less valuable to attain than Non-Branded Keywords.

As previously mentioned, Non-Branded Keywords are terms people use when they are looking for a specific item or service, but not a specific brand. Someone wants a burger, but isn't set on the restaurant itself. That is why ranking higher for these keywords is more important, because you are more likely to gain new customers and you're preventing them from going to a competitor. How to rank higher for search terms is a different article entirely, but, for example, a Service Area Business should list out all of their offered Services (which can be done in LocalClarity), to help you rank higher for those search terms. 

Deciphering your Local Keyword data can require some strategy and analysis. Strategy could be certain Keywords you're looking to improve upon in the local space. If you recently changed your French Fry recipe and want to see if that change leads to a bump in search traffic, you could get the aggregated count of the term 'French Fry' (which would include variations such as 'french fries', 'fries', etc.) from before the recipe change and compare that to the numbers after the change. As always, other variables need to be considered such as seasonality, ad campaigns, competitor changes, and more. Keyword data goes back 18 months, which should paint a nice picture of the changes in your keyword volume for the keyword in question.

Analyzing raw keyword data can be a bit overwhelming at first glance. Oftentimes there are hundreds or thousands of terms with a search count of 15. This is due to Google privacy policies, which lists Keywords with counts between 1-15 as 15. Unless a Keyword sees a dramatic increase from the '15' count over time, it may be best to not focus much on those lower volume Keywords. Instead, finding specific Keywords or groupings of Keywords and analyzing volume trends month to month can have broader implications for your business as a whole. Creating pivot tables in Excel, or creating graphs based on certain keyword counts are two simple ways to better visualize the data. For more comprehensive reporting, reach out to support@localclarity.com and let us know what you're wanting to see in your report.

To download your data in LocalClarity, head to Settings, go to Data Downloads and locate Search Keyword Download.

Before Downloading you must first select the date range. Note that Google rolls this date up on a monthly basis going back 18 months. So if you want to keep a more complete history, you can download the data each month and have a running file. Also, you'll typically have to wait until the third or fourth of the current month before Google makes the previous month's data available. Next, select the Google Account you're looking to extract the data from. You can only select one Account at a time. Finally, select the Location(s) you want to download the data for. You can select all, or select specific location(s) to extract the data for. Now you're ready to download the data.

Due to the large file size of the downloads, the data will be emailed to you in a matter of minutes. You can then download the .CSV file. The data itself is broken out in raw numbers. As the data is rolled up on a monthly basis, there is no exact date associated, but the month and the year of the data. It's sorted by Keyword Count-Descending Values for each location by each month. If you downloaded a file with multiple locations and months, it may be best to filter the file by a single location.