For years, most business owners have heard of the importance of getting active on Google My Business. Lately, you might have noticed a name pop up called Google Business Profile. You might be wondering, “what’s the difference?” The truth is, nothing! Google My Business is rebranding and changing its name to Google Business Profile. This is nothing new for Google My Business as they have changed their name quite a few times. The Google My Business app has gone by the names of Google Local, Google Places, and Google Local + over the years. So everyone’s wondering, what’s the reason for the name change now?
Google said the reason for the new name change is to “keep things simple,” and sometime in 2022, Google plans to retire the Google My Business app completely. Google decided they wanted to bring more of the business profile management aspects out of the Google My Business App and directly into Google Search and Google Maps. The bottom line, Google wants you to manage your single business listings and information in Google Search and Google Maps instead of the Google My Business app.
New Features
With the release of the name change, Google also mentioned some new features that will be available with Google Business Profile. These new features are supposed to enhance the GBP (Google Business Profile) interface to make it easier to engage with your customers and update your GBP.
Easily claim and verify your business profile directly on Google Search or Google Maps
Call History will be launching
Messaging can be done directly from Google Search
Message read receipts can be controlled in Google Search and Google Maps
The Benefits of Google Business Profile
Everyone knows the importance of a business’s ranking on Google. SEO plays a huge part in the organic search results that come up when doing a Google search. Whether you are paying for a Google Ad to come up in a search result or your business pops up directly from an organic search, you can maintain what your customers see. This is all done with the Google Business Profile. Below are some features you can manage on GBP.
Maintain accurate information about your business online: When people search for your business you want to have the most accurate information available. Whether your business got a new number or you moved buildings, you need to update your GBP to match. Google Business Profile can help you easily manage all of this quickly. With GBP you can even put landmarks or place markers to help customers accurately find your business.
Interact with customers: Google is convenient and quick which is why most consumers love using it. Almost every device a consumer has already had Google on it, making Google the most popular search engine that holds 92.18 percent of the worldwide search engine market share. With Google being the most popular search engine, it’s beneficial to be able to use GBP to interact with your customers. GBP allows you to post photos of your business, products, and services for all your customers to see. It also allows you to collect and respond to reviews making it easy to keep interacting with your customers. You can also directly message customers through GBP.
Attract new customers: As we said earlier, Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine, which means your new customers are likely to be coming from a Google search. GBP will allow you to improve how you appear online so you can attract new customers. You can also direct customers to your website to enhance traffic. GBP also allows you to use location-based ads to reach an even larger and more relevant audience
Essentially, Google Business Profile is a one-stop shop to maintain all the aspects of your business that pops up on a Google Search. It’s important to stay active on your GBP to let customers know that you are there and ready to help. Setting up and maintaining a Google Business Profile can be a lot to take in and manage. Reach out to 30|90 Marketing today to see what we can do for your Google Business Profile.