The key to local SEO data is understanding the importance of location. Without accurate and localized data, a campaign may miss crucial insights needed to adjust its strategy. In order to find gaps in Google Analytics 4, practitioners must navigate through various dashboards and utilize new processes for filtering and accessing local data. Certain settings and configurations also need to be enabled to ensure accurate local data collection. The analysis of organic user locations, behaviors, and landing pages accessed from search results is essential for local SEO practitioners. GA4 provides key reports to review organic data reflecting local behaviors, including demographic details, traffic acquisition, user acquisition, landing page library, and explore. However, these reports have their flaws and challenges, and may not provide exact counts due to sampling and anonymization. Troubleshooting and adjustments may be necessary to ensure accurate data analysis. In the demographic details report, practitioners can find information about where users visited from by country, region, or city. This data can be compared with location page traffic or proximity-based rankings in a geo matrix tracking tool. However, employee VPN usage or configuration issues may affect the accuracy of this report. The traffic acquisition and user acquisition reports in GA4 provide insights into the types of marketing channels that drove traffic to the website, such as organic, paid, or social. These dashboards can help assess the success of Google Business Profile (GBP) profiles and track organic traffic to location page paths. It’s important to consider the use of UTM parameters in GBP URLs to assess the success of profiles and differentiate between standard search results and GBP clicks. Overall, understanding the nuances and limitations of these reports in GA4 can help local SEO practitioners make more informed decisions about their strategies.

source: 5 useful GA4 dashboards for local SEO