Category: Google Maps

Google announced it has filed a lawsuit against “scammers who sought to defraud hundreds of small businesses by impersonating Google through telemarketing calls.” You know, the calls from “Google” asking you to claim your business or update your busine…

Google is testing placing the map of the business you searched for in the search results area under the snippet(s) for that listing. Google is also testing a slightly updated local panel on the right side.

The new Google Business Profile interface in Google Search to update your local listing can show the previous location your business was listed at before you tried to move that location. I believe the old interface would show you a map pin of your cur…

Google may now show you the time it takes to review a requested edit in Google Business Profiles. So if you edit, let’s say, your business category, Google may show you that this type of edit takes about 10 minutes to be reviewed by someone at Google.

Joy Hawkins team did another small local ranking study in Google and found that the longer reviews, the wordier reviews, tend to rank towards the top of the reviews and also stay there for longer.

Google lets you dive into some of the reviews on a business listing, so if you say show me the reviews of the bar in a hotel, Google will let you do that. Now, when you do that, Google will add a bar that shows you the positive versus unfavorable ment…

When you create a Google Business Profile and now go into creating service areas, Google may now offer you a list of suggested service areas in your region. Just be careful because these suggested service areas are based on your current location, not t…

Google is testing a new thin sidebar navigation on the left side of the maps interface. The sidebar has the Google Maps pin icon, then the explore tab, then trips, saved places, contribute and a more icon.

I am sure many of you have received one or two (or more) requests from Google Business Profiles saying the owner is requested access to maintain your business. I just delete them but I am hearing from Local SEOs that this is becoming more and more of a…

Google is testing a new user interface and design for the photos and street view imagery in a local panel knowledge panel within Google Maps. This is being spotted by a lot of SEOs within the community.

With the World Cup just around the corner, Google is asking certain businesses, like bars, restaurants and other venues if they will be showing the world cup at their location. If they add the “showing the world cup” attribute to their business profil…

Google has added to the Google Business Profiles Google Posts or Updates section the ability to use a cropping tool when you upload photos to your updates. So now you can upload photos and crop them later in the Google Updates section.

Another small study done by Joy Hawkins says that the recency of reviews does impact the rankings of those local business listings in Google Search and Google Maps. Like the previous studies, this was not really statistically significant but it is nice…

Google Business Profiles and business listings reviews are going missing, dropping out completely, again, but this time it seems to be related to automated suggested edits occurring on some business profiles.

Last week I reported on how Google Local reviews can display how many reviews a specific reviewer left in a specific city. Well, Google is also doing this by category, how many reviews a specific reviewer left for the business category type.

Google has recently, estimates are in the past few weeks, added auto-play video thumbnails in the local finder on mobile. Allie Margeson spotted this and posted a video of it in action on Twitter, which I will embed below.

Joy Hawkins and her team published another local ranking study, this one says that hitting ten reviews on your local listing will result in a ranking boost in the Google local results. But getting more than ten reviews does not help you rank better in …

Google’s local listings show for some listings the number of reviews left by a specific reviewer in a particular location. So if a specific person left 15 reviews and those reviews are for businesses within a particular city, Google may show that.

Google is now redirecting some (or all) of those trying to edit their business profiles in the Google Business Profile manager to the Google Search interface. You can still manage to get in there but on first click, you are taken to Google Search to m…

Google is not going to be migrating the Google Business Profile photo analytics section, known as “Insights” from the Business Profile manager to the new performance dashboard in search. Joy Hawkins, a Google top contributor, and local SEO, confirmed t…