Google My Business is a FREE and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organisations to manage their online presence across Google, including search and maps. By verifying and editing your business information, you can help customers find you and tell them the story of your business.

Mid-November 2021 Google announced changes to Google My Business in a blog post:

“In 2022, the company plans to retire the Google My Business app entirely to encourage operators to take full advantage of the upgraded Search and Maps functions.” (editing their listing directly within Search or Maps) They are also renaming Google My Business to Google Business Profile and the existing GMB app/web platform will transition to primarily support larger businesses with multiple locations (to be called Business Profile Manager).

What you need to know:

  1. In the immediate future, nothing is changing for businesses. While there is more functionality available to manage their listing directly through Search or Maps via a browser or app, many of these features have been available for a year or more.
  2. The Google My Business platform/app is still active for all businesses until sometime in ‘22. The hope is that these changes will make it easier for businesses to manage their profiles. We will be keeping a close eye on how this develops.
  3. For a detailed guide to what’s new and changing, we recommend this article by Search Engine Journal

Case Study

See our case study featuring local business 'The Virtue' using Google My Business to get more website traffic and potential customers.

In this example you can see here that the business is unclaimed, is missing business hours and the imagery doesn't sell the business at all.

New Listing

The new listing has imagery which represents the company, a better street view, correct information with a sales description and they have even listed products for free using Google Posts (which you will see in the Google My Business dashboard).

Google Ads

Additionally, The Virtue is also using Google Ads so that their business now appears if you search for any of the keywords they have chosen (eg. homeware). Google Ads is not free, but it can be a useful tool to drive traffic to your business. 

Get Started

Get started for free today at google.com/business or click 'Own this Business?' if your business appears in a google search already. After you have signed up with Google My Business, you will also get the option to create ads which is super easy and intuitive. 

If you need extra help going through the steps, there is a really helpful guide created by Google. 
 
If you have any questions or need more information on these tools, please email info@venture.org.nz.