Tag: Google My Business

It is a tough time for everyone, especially for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). These businesses are the ones facing the hardest-hit of the COVID19 pandemic. However, it is not all dark and gloomy out there. Google My Business has come up in the rescue of the SMBs.

According to Google reports, the search related to “how to help small e-commerce businesses” spiked drastically from March. In response to such a significant increase in search results related to this, Google introduced the support links in early May.

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This is one of the multiple new features that Google rolled out in an effort to help the local business get through the COVID19 crisis. Let us have a look at the Google My Business features.

What are the features offered by Google My Business?

The global expansion of support links – Initially the support links were available for the English speaking markets including the USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Now, the support links have been expanded to 18 more countries including Spain, Japan, and Italy.

These links allow the e-commerce business owners to add donations and links of gift cards to the business profiles through Google partnerships using PayPal and GoFundMe. For the gift cards, Google is already working with Clover, Toast, Square, and Vagaro.

According to Google, a business name search will expose the gift card links or donations on the Business Profile. In a short time, people will be able to use Maps and Search to find nearby businesses looking for support.

The question arises whether this will result in meaningful support or not. According to SVP of Google Maps, Jen Fitzpatrick, the search query volume is anecdotal evidence indicating high demand.

Online classes and virtual appointments – The company also discussed the spike in online classes and virtual appointments. There has been a shift from in-person classes and offline services.

Under such circumstances, Google is going to increase online service opportunities with new business attributes including “online appointments” and “online estimates”. In the coming weeks, it will make the attributes more visible in search maps.

The company is also expanding the Reserve with Google program. The program includes a growing roster of the third party booking software provider. For online services, it is adding Booksy, WellnessLiving, Regis, and Zooty.

Merchants who are working with one of these partners will be able to offer online bookings directly on Google and share the details with customers. The customers can then pay and join the meeting using the preferred video platform.

With businesses starting to reopen, some of them will also have secondary hours. Here is an example of a restaurant that operates as a drive-through after the main restaurant is closed. The similar thing works for special grocery store hours, or pharmacies operating within a larger supermarket or drugstore.

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The COVID19 Posts – Google also emphasized on the success of the COVID19 posts. According to Google, there were more than a million posts related to COVID19 since March. These posts included millions of clicks to merchants’ websites every week.

Along with that, there have been more than 200 million edits on the e-commerce business profiles since February. Most of these changes are done considering the special hours and the needs of temporary closures.

Within the restaurant category, more than 3 million restaurants have edited and added the dining including “takeout” since March. Google also added more features including “no contact delivery” and “curbside pickup”. The company is also planning more food-delivery services globally.

Enhanced control over food delivery – Food delivery is a controversial topic during this global pandemic. There are some food delivery organizations that have been accused of unethical means in delivering food including charging excessive fees from struggling restaurants or hijacking listing.

Google My Business is going to offer restaurants over which delivery services are going to be associated with their profiles. The restaurants will also be able to identify a preferred food delivery provider.

Now the question that comes up here is whether Google is checking if there is an actual business relationship between the delivery service and restaurant. To that, Google says, if the restaurant finds any unauthorized vendor on the profile, the owner can get in touch with Google My Business support.

Google will intervene and get the third party removed. It is important to note that Yelp offers identical features, even the ones that Google doesn’t. Anyone who is working a local business or multi-location brands will know the gravity of Google My Business.

With the new features available from Google My Business, it will work as a gateway to both offline, online, and e-commerce services. If your business is affected due to COVID19 pandemic, it is important to update the GMB profile with accurate information from your customers that include the following:

• Adjusted hours of operation (for instance if you are closing early or operating at different times)
• Any kind of delays in business
• Additional services for the community
• In case your business is temporarily closed

These updates will be shown on the business profile on Google Searches and Maps. Even if you mark your business as Temporarily Closed, it will not affect the local search ranking. It will be treated similarly to open businesses. The businesses that offer pickup and delivery services, need to mark the business as “temporarily closed” or else those businesses will not be shown on Google.

Is your business listed on Google My Business? Share your thoughts with Skyram technologies here.

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The majority of business owners nowadays have only one question on their minds, “how do I get my business on top of Google?” After all, the higher the ranking of a site, the easier it becomes for the customers to find it. Here is where Google My Business (GMB) comes in.

Before we get into the details of how Google Listing can help your business, let us start with what it is.

What is Google My Business?

This is a free service for the business owners that help in managing the online presence across the search engine. This includes Google search, Local Search, Google Maps, and Mobile Search. This service can help you in editing and verifying your business online without working for a search engine optimization strategy.

It is a way to make things easier for your target audience. They can get all the information they need about your business, including the address, opening hours, contact information, and other details without searching through your website pages.

Why do you need Google Business listing support?

1. It will make your business much more visible and accessible to the search engines
2. It will bring more traffic to the website
3. It will offer a better shopping experience to the online shoppers

To be specific, there are three simple reasons.

Once you enter your business details on GMB, Google understands your business and the type of services you offer, your business location, and also the operating hours. With the information it gathers, Google presents your website details on multiple searches.

If you search for an organization, you will see a lot of details displayed on the right-hand side of the Google search results page for that company. A few business websites include reviews, while some don’t. Some websites have their work-hours posted.

Consider the customer perspective in e-commerce businesses. If you were a customer which business would you choose for your requirements? Obviously, you choose the one with more reviews and more information like business hours, addresses, website links, and references.

This is why it is important to offer relevant information to potential customers. Customers are going to compare different businesses on Google My Business and choose the one that meets their requirements. The more information you provide, the higher the transparency and it increases your chances of being chosen.

What are the specific benefits of Google Business listing?

There are a few particular benefits to it. They are as follows:

Gain instant trust: The moment you provide all the information about your business, it helps your target audience to gain instant trust. Consumers see that your business is being endorsed by Google. If Google trusts your business by displaying the results, then it brings the feeling that they can trust you too.

Getting more website traffic: If your e-commerce business is listed in Google, it gives customers easy access to your website. More importantly, it offers all the information before a user has got click on to your website. Thus, it draws more customer attention and in turn, more traffic.

More traffic increases sales: Google uses the business listing and real-time data for showing specific search results. For instance, a search query like, “hair salons near me” will show the most popular salons in that location. Those who are using similar search queries are highly like to take a service.

Now, this is a generic search term that will display a lot of hair salons in the area. So how does, your website comes up on top? Here is how.

Customer engagement: Along with offering all the relevant information in Google listing, it is important to ask for reviews for every service you provide to your customers. The tool offers a posting feature where you will be able to post announcements, digital marketing promotions, and events for your audience.

Keep your target audience engaged and update them with all your features and promotional activities. Always reply to the reviews. It is of utmost importance and signifies great customer engagement.

Along with that, for each post, create a proper call to action. It makes customer engagement easier. If it is applicable to a particular search or digital marketing promotion, then the contents from a post can even display on the search result.

Create and optimize your Google Business Listing profile and enhance the online visibility of your business, especially for local search.

What are the latest updates on GMB?

With the global threat of COVID19, almost every nation is following the “stay at home” orders and business organizations are continuing “work from home”. Now, whether your business is “closed temporarily” or offering services online “as usual”, your customers need to know.

Google is offering the option to create a unique type of post specifically for the COVID19 announcements. The announcement options include the following:

• The new operating hours (if any)
• Temporary closures (if applicable)
• Announcements for high demand products that are in-stock, out-of-stock, or low-stock
• Safety measures are taken up by a business
• Changes in services (delivery times, slots, pickups and more)

When you opt for the COVID19 update posts, they come up at the top of the e-commerce business profile within the local search results. Thus, you can still publish other posts, but the COVID19 posts will remain pinned at the top of the page so that the customers can see it.

How to create COVID19 posts on Google Listing?

It is pretty easy to create a COVID19 announcement post on the Google Business Listing page. Here are the steps:

• Sign in to Google My Business Account.
• There is a section named “Menu”. Click on it and then click on “Posts”.
• At the top of the page, there is a section named “COVID-19 Update”.

You can include information like hours of operation, the changes in your business like delivery times, product stock information, and availability of slots; update them on how your products are managed on safety and hygiene and request for support.

Once you have provided all the information, click on “preview” to check the post before it goes live. Then click on “publish” to post it on Google. The time period of this post is the same as other posts, which is 14 days.

If the information stays relevant after 14 days, you have to republish the same post after 14 days. It might change depending on the on-going COVID19 pandemic. For now, you can assume that the post will disappear after 14 days.

The COVID19 announcements are available for all organizations starting from a healthcare organization to a simple local restaurant. Every business organization can use a COVID19 post if it requires.

Have you used a Google My Business Listing announcement? Let us know your thoughts. For all sorts of digital marketing and online business optimization solutions, get in touch with Skyram Technologies here.

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