A great addition to Google My Business is a feature that shows the number of times a business is phoned from a Google My Business (GMB) listing.

Owen Kane was the first to spot the addition.

Google is getting the data by tracking clicks made on the phone number, so businesses that tend to be searched for more frequently from a smart phone, such as a restaurant for example, would get more data as it is convenient to click-to-phone a number on mobile.  But for desktop, unless they are using something like Skype, the calls wouldn’t be tracked.

You must have had at least one call via Google My Business in the last 12 weeks in order to see the data in the GMB dashboard.

And for the conspiracy theorists, no Google isn’t tracking phone calls via phone carriers.  They are simply tracking the clicks on the phone number in the Google My Business listing, similarly to how it tracks clicks on AdWords ads and organic search results.

But for all kinds of businesses, it is a very good metric for people to have, especially when they are wondering where their phone calls are coming from.  And it can help businesses who track incoming phone calls to get a rough idea of the percentages of calls they get from mobile devices, which can be very valuable if they cross-check it with mobile versus desktop traffic.

Update: Joe Osborne, a Google spokesperson, reached out to me with an additional statement. “We’re constantly testing out new features for Google My Business. This one hasn’t officially launched yet, but we’ll share new feature updates when they become more permanently available in the dashboard.”