What do you need before you start measuring?
You need three things in place before any number is worth collecting.
First, claim and verify your Google Business Profile if you have not already. Without a verified profile, the Performance dashboard shows nothing.
Second, connect Google Search Console to your website and confirm ownership. The connection is free and takes about ten minutes.
Third, decide which pages you are measuring. A thin city page is a page that exists only to rank for a city name and has no real content about your sites, hookups, or amenities. Those pages are not the target here. The pages worth measuring are ones that answer a real guest question: your full-hookup RV sites page, your tent sites page, your amenities page, your check-in and arrival page.
How do you collect the three measures?
- Open Google Search Console, go to the Performance report, click Pages, and filter to the specific URL you are measuring, for example /rv-sites/ or /tent-sites/. Record impressions, clicks, and CTR for that page. According to Google Search Console Help, CTR is clicks divided by impressions, where an impression is recorded each time the link appears in Google Search results.
- Repeat step 2 for each page you are tracking. Each page gets its own row in your spreadsheet.
- At the end of each month, add a new row. Compare the current month to the same month last year. Search Console retains 16 months of data, according to Google Analytics Help, so you have enough history for a full year-over-year comparison after your first year.
- If you want direction-request data broken down by where guests are coming from, the Google Business Profile APIs LocationDrivingDirectionMetrics object captures driving-direction requests by region of origin. This requires API access and is optional for most owner-operators.
What does the measurement worksheet look like?
Keep one tab per page. Each tab has these columns:
- Date range (month and year)
- GBP Views (from Performance dashboard, per Google Business Profile Help)
- GBP Website clicks (from Performance dashboard)
- GBP Directions requests (from Performance dashboard)
- Search Console impressions for this URL (from Performance report, per Google Search Console Help)
- Search Console clicks for this URL
- Search Console CTR for this URL (clicks divided by impressions)
- Notes (anything that changed: new photos added, description updated, seasonal hookup availability changed)
That is the full worksheet. Eight columns, one row per month.
What are the denominators for each measure?
Views counts unique visitors, so the denominator is the time period, not the number of searches. According to Google Business Profile Help, repeat views by the same person in a session are not double-counted.
CTR uses impressions as the denominator. The denominator changes every month as your ranking changes, so a rising CTR on a falling impression count can mean your ranking dropped but your listing got more compelling.
Directions requests have no natural denominator in the dashboard. Use them as a raw count and watch the trend.
Hypothetical example: measuring an RV hookup sites page
Hypothetical example. Impressions fell slightly, meaning the page may have dropped a position or two, but more guests who saw it tapped through. That tells you the page title and description improved but the ranking needs work. More guests are asking for directions after finding the profile. The two signals together suggest the page is earning trust but losing ground in the results, so the next action is to review the page content and add more specific detail about hookup amperage and site length.
What are the common mistakes and edge cases?
The biggest mistake is comparing different date ranges.
Search Console data becomes available in Google Analytics 4 approximately 48 hours after it is collected, according to Google Analytics Help. Do not pull data on the last day of the month and expect it to be complete.
The Bookings metric in Google Business Profile Performance, defined as the number of bookings completed from the profile, only appears when bookings are managed through a connected booking provider, per Google Business Profile Help. If your reservation system is not connected, that column will always be empty and is not worth tracking.
If you have multiple locations, each Business Profile is separate. Do not mix Views from two profiles into one row.
Thin city pages, pages with no real content about your sites or amenities, tend to show high impressions and near-zero clicks. That is a content problem, not a measurement problem. The fix is to add real information: site types, hookup options, check-in hours, arrival instructions. Measurement only tells you the page is failing; it does not fix it.
What should you do next?
- Verify your Google Business Profile if you have not already.
- Connect Google Search Console to your website and confirm ownership.
- List every page on your site that answers a guest question about sites, hookups, amenities, or check-in.
- Create one spreadsheet tab per page with the eight columns listed above.
- Set a recurring reminder to update the spreadsheet on the same day each month.
- After three months, look at CTR trends by page. Pages with rising CTR and flat or falling impressions need ranking work. Pages with rising impressions and flat CTR need better titles and descriptions.