What Is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a free tool that allows you to promote your Business Profile and business website on Google Search and Maps. With your Google My Business account, you can see and connect with your customers, post updates to your Business Profile and see how customers are interacting with your business on Google.

The following A to Z list gives you an idea about the Google My Business (GMB) aspects.

• Address

You need a business address. This needs to be added and Google may send you a verification code by post on this address.

• Business

You need to specify the type of  business you engage in.

• Customers

All the details on the My Business Page are basically to offer details to your customers. The customers can use this same platform to interact with you.

• Description

You need to give a detailed description of your business.

• Events

In the posts section you can create an event and post it.

• Full Access via Google My Business Apps

You can access your GMB account via mobile apps too.

• Google Account

You need to have a Google Account in order to create this page.

• Highlights

You can add the highlights or the USPs of your business on GMB.

• Insights

Insights give you detailed analytics about the GMB presence of your business.

• Join ‘My Business’ Support Page

The GMB support is very active and you can get answers to your queries easily.

• Keep your customers updated by sharing what’s new via Photos & Posts
• Locations

You can add as many locations you want. You can add different businesses and you can also add multiple addresses for branch offices for one business.

• Messages

Customers viewing your listing can message you directly.  You can respond to them and connect with them. All this is free.

• New Locations can be added easily
• Ownership

You own the listing and can make changes as per your preferences.

• Products & Photos & Posts

You can post product details, photos and also textual posts.

• Queries to know the audience profile

You can ask queries to Google on the support forum or also to customer via posts directly to customers.

• Reviews & Ratings

Customers can post reviews about your business by logging in to their Google account. These reviews are considered reliable and genuine by Google which can boost your search presence further. Your customers now get notified when you reply to their review.

• Services

You can add the services from the list which Google has already created or you can also add services which are not mentioned in the list.

• Try to connect with people posting reviews

You can try to engage and interact with the people posting reviews, ratings or comments.

• Users

You can add other users to manage the GMB account. You can give them ownership rights or make them a manager.

• Verify

The GMB listing has to be verified via email or by postal card. This depends on which geographic location you are and what Google has specified for that location.

• Website

You can specify the URL of your website or Google also gives you an option of creating one on this platform.

• Customer eXperience

A GMB listing enhances the customer experience. This has the Google maps integrated in the listing which is of great help to the customer. Y & Z Actually could not think of anything starting with Y or Z but to sum it up the above reasons are enough to understand why (Y) a business needs a GMB page and presence. The overall return will surely give a Zen like peace for the business owner if the page has all the correct details and shows in the search results for the targeted search queries.

Author : Bharati Ahuja

There are many businesses which majorly cater to the local market and would like to focus on targeting the local traffic on the search engines. For such businesses even on organic search the search queries with a local intent are the priority for their search presence.

Google also takes local search very seriously and since a long time has been improving the quality of local search results in terms of display, listing management and also trying to measure the public opinion in terms of reviews for these listings.

The recent development being discussed is the Pigeon Algorithm (A name given by Search Engine Land after Google discussed about an upcoming algorithm for local search with Danny Sullivan)

The update has been pushed out to U.S. English based search results and the update impacts both the organic local listings within Google Map Search and Google Web Search.

SEL shared that Google has also informed Danny Sullivan that the new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more. Furthermore, Google has not commented on the percent of queries impacted by this algorithm update, nor if certain web spam algorithms were deployed in this update.