Near Media now has six months of traffic data assessing how Apple Maps compares as a marketing tool with Google Business Profile. It analyzes common data points like clicks, call clicks and driving directions. The data published earlier this week analyzed local search and discovery.
Turns out about 37% of iPhone owners use Apple Maps for directions. Apple generates about 5% of local site visits and 10% of the calls driven by Google.
“If a business got 100 [Google Business Profile] call clicks and 10 via Apple, Apple would score 10% of GBP actions,” Mike Blumenthal, co-founder at Near Media, wrote in a blog post. “The results were fairly consistent across businesses.”
Blumenthal believes Apple Maps cannot compete with Google for traffic volume, but it has made stride when it comes to second in local search.
Apple Insights estimates 28% of all clicks came from category searches while 54% were from brand searches, according to Near Media. When comparing Apple Maps to Google, the former delivers about 5% of the web visits and roughly 10% of the calls driven by the Google Local Pack.
“Apple Maps actions appear to be growing year over year. (Apple only retains 12 months of data so it will take some time and effort to gather better year over year data.),” Blumenthal wrote.
Near Media also points to a much broader analysis from Map Labs that compares traffic from Apple, Bing, Google, and Yelp—about 100 business locations in the hospitality industry.
Most surprising, as Greg Sterling, co-founder at Near Media, points out, Bing's weakness in local. Map Labs found Bing was in fourth place. Apple and Yelp ranked way behind Google. The company did admit that the data for Bing was only 12 weeks, where the others were six months.