Category: Google Maps

Google may have a bug, it is a confirmed bug according to some local SEOs, where a bunch of businesses are seeing a notice in Google Search that “your business is not visible to customers” in Google Search or Google Maps.

Google now lets you report some reviews left on Local Service Ads. You can report the normal Google Business Profile reviews, but not the verified reviews but at least it is a start.

Google may show similar businesses or restaurants in the local business listing of a competing business or restaurant. This “similar to” section may show up based on your previous search or visit history.

Google, during some of the verification workflow with your Google Business Profile may ask for your BBB, Better Business Bureau, listing page. Google is asking to provide a link to your company information the Better Business Bureau.

Google now lets some reviewers leave reviews specifically recommending dishes from that restaurant. Customers can manually add the foods and dishes they recommend at that restaurant.

Google is now showing products that businesses add through the Google Business Profile manager directly in Google Shopping search results. I was not sure if this is new, but it seems most local SEOs think it is, so I am sharing it here.

Google has made a couple of updates to the Google Maps User Contributed Content Policy around prohibited and restricted content. Specifically, Google updated the definition of personal information under the Civil discourse section and fake engagement u…

Google is testing a few interfaces for the Google Posts and updates in the local interfaces. One is to overlay the Google updates in the images for the business listing and the other is to show a “more posts” button in the Google Posts overlay in Goog…

The Google Maps app for Android has seem to add a new tab to manage your business profile(s). The tab shows a store icon with the word “Business” below it. Clicking it, lets you manage your Google Business Profile listing directly in the app.

Google Business Profiles lets you access and edit your business profile from web search (like it or not) and recently, Google has been testing showing a “see photos” button in addition to the normal “add photos” button.

Joy Hawkins and friends re-did a study they did years ago to discover that now the services you add to your Google Business Profiles now have an impact on your local rankings – at least way more than it did in 2019.

Last June, Google began testing a “profile strength” widget or status icon that shows you if you need to do more with your Google Business Profile. Well, that just went live on Friday and seemed to be fully rolled out. But many local SEOs are not hap…

Just a PSA, Google is fully deprecating the legacy Google My Business API on February 20, 2023 – this coming Monday. This is not new, most of those using the old API had most of its features deprecated now and we reported about this last year. But now…

For the past few weeks, there have been reports via the Local Search Forum that Google has been removing emojis and special characters from business names within Google Business Profiles. This means if you try to add an emoji for your name to stand ou…

Google has confirmed that its latest efforts to filter out local reviews against its policies and guidelines went too far. Google, over the next few weeks, is working to restore the policy-abiding reviews that were removed by its automated systems as f…

Google is now opening up its car or auto inventory feature within Google Business Profiles to all motor vehicle dealerships. Google began testing car listings in 2021 and then expanded the cars for sale feature in 2022 and now it is open to all dealers…

Now, Google is showing double justifications for some local results. Google’s local search results has a feature to highlight and/or summarize some of the local reviews in the map pack and local search results snippet. These highlights or summarizatio…

Google is testing the “order online” button from the bottom of the search result snippet to the top of that snippet. I see it on the bottom, but some can see it towards the top of the snippet, above the sitelinks but under the description area.

Google has posted a new help document for posting restrictions around user-generated content in Google Maps. This is specific to reviews, photos, and videos users may update to Google Maps. This may also include content such as ratings or Q&A topics.

Google Posts insights is no longer working, it has been discontinued according to the Google Business Profiles API documentation for the deprecation schedule.