Category: Google Maps

Google Maps seems to be rolling out or testing a new feature to dock locations and businesses to the bottom of the map page. You may see a “dock to bottom” button in blue that lets you quickly reopen a place your docked later. When you click it, it pla…

Ben Fisher notified me that now when you add a new business to Google Business Profiles (formerly Google My Business), Google now by default asks you as part of the verification workflow if you want to do the video verification.

A few weeks ago, Google announced a new feature named busy area – well, that feature now seems to be rolling out. Several folks started to notice this roll out over the past few days. When you are looking at the Google Maps app, Google will show you i…

In July we saw a number of hotels and hospitality business listings say they are seeing the ability to use Google Posts but Google we were told it might be a bug and not a feature. Well, it was a feature Google was testing, because now hotels can use G…

After many months of testing, Google has confirmed it is moving the local pack results to the top and the map on the right of those local results on desktop search. Google said the search company “expects this to be broadly available over the coming w…

Google is now showing up to two ads in the local search results – the local pack. Joy Hawkins spotted it the other day for a search on [lawn care near me] and shared a screenshot where Google’s local pack results showed two ads above the organic local …

As expected, Google is now letting health providers and facilities to go into their Google Business Profile and select the insurances they accept. This option should be under the info tab, then a section named “Accepted Health Insurance” should show up…

Google now lets searchers filter the local search listings for healthcare providers; facilities, doctors, etc by the types of insurances accepted and if they speak your language. So make sure, if you run search marketing for a healthcare organization …

Google has updated the Google Business Profiles Get Reviews help document to explicitly say that having a mix of positive and negative reviews are more trustworthy, than I guess just all positive reviews. Joy Hawkins spotted this and posted on Twitter…

If you go to Google Search on desktop and type in some local businesses, then click on the first photo in the local knowledge panel – Google will load a black or blank photo. It is some sort of weird bug that I’ve seen happen since this past Saturday n…

Google had added a bunch of Google Maps features today including more Pickup with Google specifically at Krogers, restaurant price ranges, indoor map navigation and how busy venues are in a specific neighborhood.

Google has renamed Google My Business to Google Business Profile on November 4th. Starting on November 9th, I saw Google begin to swap out the Google My Business logo with the Google Business Profile Manager logo at google.com/business.

Google is doing some interesting things in local search, not just with renaming Google My Business but with new user interface features and Google Ads offline sale sales integrations.

Google has changed the name of its local business management product once again. I think that might be sixth time, or maybe more, Google has changed the name of this product. It is now known as Google Business Profile, no longer will it be called Googl…

Google has added a read receipts setting to the Google My Business messaging platform. Now you can decide to show your customers who are messaging you via Google Maps and Search if you read their message or not through read receipts.

Google My Business seems to have added a new business attribute named “crowd.” In this, you can mark you business as being LGBTQ+ friendly and a transgender safespace. We covered that Google showed the LGBTQ+ friendly on some businesses back in 2020 b…

Google initially launched the “women-led” label in the local search results in 2018 with a women icon. Google seems to be testing replacing that icon with a purple heart. Saad AK and Colan Nielsen spotted this change and posted screen shots of it on …

Previously Google My Business had labeled the business attributes for women owned businesses as “women-led” and veteran owned businesses and “veteran-led.” Google now put them all in sync by labeling them as as “owned.” So now we have them as Black-ow…

Google My Business seems to have added to messaging features to the mobile app. The first is the ability to edit your welcome message and the second is that the app can show you your response time to messages with your customers.

Ben Fisher spotted Google showing not just one local based screened ad but two screened ads in the local listings. And Andy Simpson spotted Google showing a scrollable reviews carousel in the local pack (that last one is not 100% new).