Most cafe and restaurant owners have a feeling about whether Google brings them customers. Fewer have the numbers. That matters, because the feeling is usually based on a busy Saturday or a quiet Tuesday, and neither tells you whether the work on your listing is paying off.
Google already counts the calls, direction requests and website visits that come from your listing. It takes about ten minutes a month to write them down and read them properly. Here is where to find them, what they really measure, and how to add a little more tracking on top.
Where the numbers live
Every Google Business Profile has a Performance section. To open it, sign in to the Google account that manages your listing, search your business name on Google, and choose Performance in the panel that appears. You can also get there from the Google Maps app on your phone.
Performance shows several figures for the date range you choose:
- Profile views and where they came from (Google Search or Google Maps, on a phone or a computer).
- Searches: the words people typed before your listing appeared.
- Calls: taps on the call button.
- Directions: requests for a route to your address.
- Website clicks, plus menu, booking or order clicks if those are set up on your listing.
The newest few days are usually missing, so check after the first week of each month and look at the month just finished.
What calls and directions really count
It helps to be clear about what these two numbers are, because owners often read too much into them.
Calls are taps on the call button on your listing. A tap that rings out, a call to ask whether you take bookings, and a wrong number all count. Someone who copies your number from your website does not. So the figure is a measure of how often your Google listing made someone reach for the phone, not how many bookings it produced.
Direction requests are people asking Google Maps for a route to you from your listing. Not every one turns into a visit. Plenty of regulars who already know the way never ask for directions at all. Even so, for a cafe or a restaurant this is the most useful figure Google gives you, because it is the nearest thing to people walking in from search.
Neither number is exact. Both are consistent, though, which is what you need: the same thing counted the same way each month, so you can see the trend.
Compare with the same month last year
This is the step most people skip, and it changes the picture more than anything else. Restaurant demand moves with the seasons, school holidays, the weather and the local footy or festival calendar. A drop from one month to the next is often just the season.
Here is a real example. For Desi Adda in Surfers Paradise, an Indian restaurant we work with, calls from the Google listing went from 86 in June to 53 in July and 49 in August 2026. Read month to month, that looks like a slide. Against the same months a year earlier, calls were up 16% in June, 13% in July and 36% in August. Direction requests in August were up 63% on the year before, and profile views were up 99%. Same listing, same months, opposite story. We explain what we changed in how a Gold Coast restaurant doubled its Google profile views.
Google shows the year-on-year change next to each figure once your listing has a year of history. Write it down along with the raw number.
A ten-minute monthly routine
Keep a simple spreadsheet with one row per month and these columns:
- Profile views
- Calls
- Direction requests
- Website clicks
- Menu, booking or order clicks, if shown
- The change against the same month last year for each
- A notes column
The notes column is the useful one. Write down anything that happened that month: new photos, a menu change, a run of reviews, a week of roadworks outside, a long weekend, a change of hours. When a number jumps or falls, the notes usually explain it.
If you run more than one venue, keep a separate row for each. A total across venues hides the one that is slipping. Our guide to local SEO for restaurants with more than one location covers why.
Not sure what your Google numbers are telling you?
Send us your cafe or restaurant's name and suburb. We'll look at your listing and your Maps position and send you the first three things we'd change. Free.
Get a free cafe checkTrack website visits from your listing
Google counts website clicks, but it can't tell you what people did next. Did they look at the menu, book a table, place an order? For that you need your website analytics to recognise visits from the listing.
The simple way is to add tracking tags to the website link on your Google listing. Instead of linking to your plain homepage, link to something like:
https://yourcafe.com.au/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp
In Google Analytics, visits from your listing then show up separately from other Google searches, and you can see whether they reach your booking or ordering page. Do the same for the menu and booking links if your listing has them. It takes five minutes and costs nothing.
Count calls more precisely with a tracking number
If phone bookings matter a lot to you, a call tracking number gives you more than Google's tap count. It is a separate number that forwards to your normal line, so the service can tell you how many calls came through it, how long they lasted and whether they were answered.
Google allows this. Its guidance is to set the tracking number as the primary phone number on your listing and keep your main business number as an additional phone number. Keep your main number everywhere else (your website, Facebook, delivery apps) so your details stay consistent across the web. Most call tracking services charge a monthly fee per number, so it is worth it mainly for venues that take a lot of bookings by phone.
Ask people
The cheapest tracking of all is a question. Add "How did you find us?" to your booking form, or ask at the counter for a week each month and keep a tally. You won't get perfect data, but it shows up things Google can't see, like the customer who found you on Maps, walked past, and came back a week later.
What to do with the numbers
Once you have three or four months written down, patterns start to show. A few common ones:
- Views up, calls and directions flat. People see you but don't choose you. Look at your photos, your star rating and your most recent reviews against the places ranked around you.
- Directions strong, website clicks low. Fine for a walk-in cafe. For a restaurant that relies on bookings, check that the website link works on a phone and lands somewhere useful.
- Everything down on last year. Check whether your ranking has dropped for your main searches, and whether your hours, categories or address changed. A suspended or edited listing can quietly lose ground.
From there the fixes are the usual ones: reviews, photos, categories, a website that backs up the listing. Our checklist on getting your cafe into the Google Maps top 3 puts them in order of impact.
FAQs
Where do I see how many calls my Google listing gets?
Open your Business Profile (search your business name on Google while signed in to the account that manages it, or open Google Maps), then choose Performance. The Calls figure shows how many times people tapped the call button on your listing in the date range you pick.
Does the Calls number count answered calls?
No. It counts taps on the call button on your Google listing. Missed calls, calls that rang out and hang-ups are all included, and people who dial your number from your website or a menu card are not. Treat it as a measure of intent, not of bookings.
Do direction requests mean people actually visited?
Not exactly. A direction request is someone asking Google Maps for a route to you from your listing. Some of them won't come. But it is the closest number Google gives you to footfall from search, and its trend over time is useful.
Can I use a call tracking number on my Google Business Profile?
Yes. Google's own guidance is to put the tracking number as the primary phone number and your main business number as an additional phone number. Keep your main number on your website and other listings so your details stay consistent.
Should I compare this month with last month?
Use it as a quick check, but judge progress against the same month last year. Restaurant demand moves with school holidays, weather and events, so month to month changes often have nothing to do with your listing.