Google My Business Update: 8 New Features To Empower Local SEO

One of the best features that Google has come up with in the past many years is the option of local business listings through Google My Business. Tweaking certain aspects over the years, the search engine has been adding more power to GMB listings, and through it, empowering the local businesses.

In a long line of updates, Google has been constantly pushing GMB to its optimal limits, and with every new update, GMB continues to become a favourite of business owners. As a business owner who is taking services from the best digital marketing agency, there are a number of features that have been rolled out in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that you should know about. Not only are these features great to help you rank up quick, but they are specifically designed to help you serve your target audience better.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the most amazing new features introduced to Google My Business in the recent past.

New Google My Business Features

●       Messaging

Messaging just arrived in the desktop UI, a welcome feature for all business owners. The messaging feature has been available for mobile users for a long time but with desktop introduction, GMB is ready to cater to a larger customer base. You can reply to all your individual correspondents on a ‘chat screen’ like UI. It is an opt-in service, but you will have to make sure that you respond to all messages within 24 hours because if you don’t, Google may revoke your rights to use messaging. Why? Because the entire purpose of GMB is to improve customer experience online, and making a customer wait for 24 hours may not be exactly that.

●       Online Services Attributes

The pandemic helped people find their zone in the online and virtual space. In a world where a number of services began to move from an in-person environment to online, Google saw the opportunity to improve GMB. The online services attributes were the result of this. Through your GMB, you can now add any of these 4 attributes to your listing:

○       Online Care

○       Online Appointment

○       Online Estimates

○       Online Classes

It is a valuable addition to your business as visitors can directly know if you are offering the services they need or not. It may be an online class or an online doctor’s consultation, if you offer it, make sure you make use of these attributes.

●       Health and Safety Attributes

Speaking of attributes, the COVID 19 pandemic brought with itself a world of uncertainty of what is going on in the outdoors. To help people find safe businesses and to help businesses let visitors know that they are taking care of all importatn guidelines. You can now add attributes like these to your listing to help visitors know about safety and health protocols:

○       Appointment required

○       Mask required

○       Staff wear masks

○       Staff get temperature checks

○       Temperature check required

Because you may be following stricter guidelines than your competitors, advertising these facts on the GMB will gain you a competitive edge with health-conscious users.

●       Pandemic Specific Attributes

Aside from all the new words that rose up in popularity the last year, there are a number of other terms that also picked up. And Google made sure to incorporate these terms in their new GMB update. As a result, you can also attribute pandemic specific attributes to your GMB listing to let your visitors know more about your services:

○       Curbside pickup

○       No-contact delivery

○       Dine-in

●       New GMB Insights

Google also took the chance to make GMB insights better. The new performance reports will now be able to tell you how many people reached out to you after they visited your profile. With time, you will also be able to see how many times your listing appeared in search results and in Google Maps searches, and will be available for up to 6 months.

●       Video Upload Size

GMB posts have been a great and quick way to engage with audiences who were looking for your services. However, in the new update, Google reduced the maximum size for video uploads to the GMB posts. From 100MB, the size has now been decreased to 75 MB. This will help business owners portray their business posts in a shorter but crisper format.

●       Call Logging

While the feature is still in the test mode. Within a few months, the new update will allow you to look at all the recent calls that were made via the search result. Whenever a user will press the call button, Google will log the action, so you can track all your missed and unanswered calls for later references. The feature will be available on mobile devices only.

Google My Business is a very well implemented tool for all local businesses that want to capitalise on the increasing trend for trust on local products and services. With this new update, Google has now put more power into the hands of the local business owners. And now that you have learnt about these features, it is time that you begin to implement them in your strategy. Ask the best seo company in India to help you set up your GMB listing and bring in more leads organically. 

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