Why it matters on an HVAC site
The one that matters most locally is the website link on the Google Business Profile. Untagged, its traffic lands in organic alongside everything else, and the profile is usually a substantial share of the total.
Getting it wrong in the other direction is worse. Tagging the profile link as a campaign can pull it out of organic entirely and make organic look as though it collapsed.
How to check it yourself
- Check whether the profile website link carries parameters, and what they are.
- Compare profile-driven sessions against Google Business Profile insights, which counts website clicks independently.
- Confirm the tagging did not break the URL, since a badly formed parameter can produce a redirect or a 404 from the profile.
Worked through in numbers
A contractor’s profile link is untagged. GA4 reports 4,100 organic sessions in a quarter; the profile reports 1,730 website clicks in the same period.
So roughly 42% of what was being reported as organic search performance was the profile, and the site work was being credited with it.
Tagging the profile link separated the two. Organic fell to 2,370 in the next comparable quarter, which was not a decline; it was the first quarter the number meant what it said.
Where this sits in the rankings
Scored under Tracking and attribution. Tags on a link that say where a visit came from, including the one on your own profile.