The Importance of a Google Business Profile listing
Just got an email update on a edit I made to a client's competitor Google Business Profile (a.k.a. Map & f.k.a. Google My Business) listing 5 years ago (the edit survives to this day). It is not a notable restaurant on the far edge of a large suburban UK town in a conurbation on a main road.
My client at the time was a luxury hotel with 2 restaurants around half a mile away (my work was paused during Covid and it appears another agency "jumped in my grave" as I've tried to contact them to no avail).
It has a really good average rating and many hundreds of reviews on its Google Business Profile. From what I can see it is not currently visible in 'normal' Google searches with Map listings integrated for the general search "restaurants [restaurant's town name]" (with 720 searches monthly for this phrase from people "in, or interested in the area" of the named town according to Google Keyword Planner). It is ninth when you view the full Google Map results for this search phrase and is not in the top 10 restaurants in that town according to Tripadvisor.
It has a fair amount of local competition (none of it great from my gastronomic adventures in the area) and I had been informed the restaurant in question is not good a while back. I was astounded to see in the email update that the Google Map listing in question has been getting an average of 60K+ impressions a year on Google for the past 5 years since my edit! These may include for travel directions but I don't think it is a "destination restaurant".
It is one of the nearest restaurants to a large exhibition centre with some (huge) international trade shows: these impressions might be for "restaurants near me" etc from exhibition visitors escaping hotels etc.