Many Google My Business Changes: Late Summer 2021

Many Google My Business Changes: Late Summer 2021

Welcome to episode 125 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento. Today, I am here to talk to you about all of the updates that have come in the last few months from Google My Business. 

There are many, so I’m going to go through them and explain them as well as I can. If you have any questions at all, you can always email me at amanda@tdm-marketing.com.

Google has added a new google label to Google My Business listings this is not for every single listing. Google is not consistent however it is on many of the newer listings that can be a good thing or it can also indicate that you know this is a business that has either not been taken care of their listing or they just created a listing this is another thing.

They also deleted the short name feature so now they give you a name and you cannot edit it but before you could edit it. If you have an edited short name from long ago then you are good to go and it’s still going to be official but you cannot change it going forward.

Google My Business now has a way of showing desktop notifications for Google My Business Messengers. So this could be handy for salons, for auto shops, for someone that always has that person manning their front desk. 

This can be important for you because it will allow you to communicate directly with clients on your Google My Business listing, asking questions. 

So you can see what the rating is for each restaurant. Typically restaurants are rated to like four or five but if they’re really bad, they’re going to be lower than that. It’s important to make sure that you’re looking at this as you’re searching for other businesses and things like that on Google Maps. 

There has also been an insights update in Google My Business in 2020 and it just allows you to see things a little bit differently. It also includes directions and a website click breakdown, which is very important.

It allows you to see a little bit more data than they allowed you to see before. The next change is, editing is now available directly from the search. So if you search for your business, you will see that if you’re logged into your account. 

You’re going to see your business come up in a little panel and then you’re going to be able to go ahead and edit right from the search results page. It’s going to say you manage this business and it will have little links that you can edit things or write on the search engine results page. This is pretty handy, especially if you are not familiar with going through the little Google menu to get to Google My Business. 

Google is also now offering a new form to merge reviews from duplicate listings. This happens so often when a business listing was created a long time ago and forgotten or no longer able to access it. When that happens and the owner forgets about it, they will go and they will create a new listing.

This is often a problem because it shows two different businesses at the same place and those reviews are those reviews from the one that’s been there before. So this is a nice way of having them make it easier to merge those listings. 

There is another area that Google My Business is testing and that is the areas served that is a label in the Google search and it’ll just show your major service area. Now, again, this is not on every single business. 

These are just some of them that are important to note as well. Another recent change is that Google has started requiring certain businesses to have to show their address instead of being service-based businesses.

This is an interesting change because if you have, let’s say a bar studio in your house or Pilates or yoga, you may no longer be able to hide your address if that’s the case. So it’s very important to review your listing and make sure that you haven’t been suspended and just make sure that your listing is still up. 

The next change is that Google My Business is starting to require product approval from Google Lens. So when you post a new product, they may state that that is being reviewed and they say that it may take up to 30 minutes and this is something that can be a pain in the butt but it’s also really good for proofing and those types of things. This is just to make sure that people aren’t spamming, which is a very important part. 

Those are most of the updates that have happened with Google My business recently, it’s been a lot and there are undoubtedly more to come in 2022. So stay tuned for those and if you have not optimized your listing, you must do that. If you want to learn more about how you can do that yourself, or have us do it, you can visit us at the-marketing.com. Have a great week!