What is the Google Business Profile Performance API, and what can I measure with it?

What is the Google Business Profile Performance API?

The Google Business Profile Performance API lets merchants retrieve performance data for a Google Business Profile. Google documents daily reporting methods and a monthly search-keyword method. The API is a reporting surface for a location, so its documented methods return measurements rather than changing the profile.

Google documents the service endpoint as businessprofileperformance.googleapis.com and recommends its client libraries. Applications that use their own libraries can use Google's discovery document. Google also says that if you have quota 0 after enabling the API, you must request Google Business Profile API access. The Google Business Profile remains the profile record whose performance the API reports.

Who is the Performance API for?

The Performance API is for developers who represent large, tech-savvy businesses or third parties and need Business Profile data in an application. Google says effective use requires technical experience and coding knowledge. An owner who needs a one-off reading can use the Business Profile performance report instead.

Google's “How to use the Business Profile APIs” guidance describes the API audience as developers who build applications to manage Business Profile data. The API therefore fits a reporting workflow that already has an application, authentication, and a place to store or compare returned values. A business owner does not need the API just to inspect one profile's current report.

What daily metrics can the Performance API retrieve?

The daily metric set covers where a profile appeared, how people acted on it, and selected profile features. Impressions are separated into Google Maps and Google Search on desktop and mobile. Other daily metrics include messages, directions, call-button clicks, website clicks, Reserve with Google bookings, and menu clicks. Google marks the food-orders metric deprecated.

Google's DailyMetric reference supplies these enum meanings. The interface can show other applicable metrics, such as products, offers, or hotel booking clicks, but Google says that not every metric appears for every business.

Which Performance API method should I use for daily data?

Use getDailyMetricsTimeSeries for one selected daily metric at one location. Use fetchMultiDailyMetricsTimeSeries when one location needs several selected daily metrics in the same request. Both methods require a date range and return values organized by date.

Google's method reference says both request bodies are empty and both methods require the business.manage OAuth scope. The single-metric method currently supports dailySubEntityType only with NONE. Each documented method is scoped to one locationId, so a multi-location report needs a process that handles locations separately.

What does the API show about search keywords?

The monthly search-keyword endpoint returns the lower-cased terms people used to find a business in Google Search or Google Maps and their monthly impression values. The requested start and end months are inclusive. A result can be an exact aggregate of unique users across those months or a threshold showing that the actual value is lower than the threshold.

The endpoint is locations.searchkeywords.impressions.monthly.list. Google documents pageSize with a default and maximum of 100, and pageToken for requesting the next page. A threshold is not an exact impression count, so a report should preserve that distinction instead of turning the threshold into a precise number. Google's Business Profile performance guide also says search queries appear when a profile appears for a search and cannot be directly managed by the business.

How is the API different from the Business Profile performance report?

The API is a programmatic request surface. The Business Profile performance report is an owner-facing interface. The interface requires a verified profile and the associated Google Account to be signed in, while the API uses documented methods, a location ID, and authorization. Both surfaces report profile performance, but they serve different jobs.

To read the report in Google Search, open the Business Profile, select Performance, choose a time period, and select Apply. In the Google Maps app, open Business, select See more beside Performance, choose a time period, and select Apply. The Google Business Profile performance metrics guide explains what Views, Searches, and the action metrics mean.

Business Profile Manager can also export performance data. Google documents this path: select one or more profiles, choose Actions, choose Insights, select the timeframe, and choose Download Report. Multiple selected profiles can be downloaded in one spreadsheet for location comparison. Only metrics that apply to the business appear in the interface.

Does the Performance API show my local ranking?

No. The documented Performance API methods return profile activity, daily impressions, and monthly search-keyword impressions. They do not return a placement position for a local search. Treat an impression or an action as a performance measurement, not as a local-rank measurement.

Google's API reference lists daily metric time series and monthly search-keyword impressions, not a local-search placement field. Google's Business Profile performance guide says a search query appears when the profile appears for that search and cannot be directly managed. That makes the API useful for understanding discovery and actions, while the question “where does my profile appear?” needs a separate local search check.