Category: Google Maps

Google is changing the local pack in the web search results to remove some of the addresses of those business listings. This is only for some businesses, I believe, and for the local pack. When you click through, you do get the address.

Google is now showing actual stars in the reviews section of the local knowledge panel reviews area. Tom Waddington showed a screen shot of this on Twitter and I can replicate it for some businesses.

Google has added one line to its Google My Business guidelines around co-working spaces. In short, if your business is out of a co-working space it must have signage, accept customers and be staffed to be eligible to have a Google My Business listing w…

Amy Toman spotted a new feature in Google Local and Google My Business. The feature seems to allow you to send additional feedback to Google when a suggested edit you make to a Google business listing is not accepted (i.e. not applied) for some reason….

Normally when you do a search for hotels in a specific location, Google will show you a hotel search box with pricing pins in a blue background color. Google is testing variations of the colors for those pins both in red and white background colors, a…

There are a number of reports in the Local Search Forum that businesses are seeing their logos disappear from their Google local listings in search. I currently see mine so maybe it was a temporary glitch and it is now fixed.

Google My Business seems to be adding to the Insights section new metrics that businesses can use for analytical purposes. The new metrics is called platform and device breakdown that show you the devices people used to find your business in Google Sea…

Late last week, Google has updated the workflow to flag reviews within Google My Business. The new flow gives you a bit more detail and probably makes it easier for Google to route the reviews in the right priority to the right team for review.
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Google is now showing old, older than a week, Google Posts in the local panel on Google Search. Brodie Clark first spotted this but most people are able to replicate it. Here is his screen shot showing Google Posts from August 25, 2020, which was almos…

Google My Business has updated the photo views Insights report to let you filter the images based on if the owner uploaded the photo or a customer uploaded the photo. There is a new drop down to filter by (a) all photos, (b) owner photos and (c) custom…

Mike Blumenthal posted about two changes to review summaries within the Google local listings. Review summaries are “three abbreviated sentences that attempt to capture a snapshot of your business,” Mike said. What is new is that Google is now testing…

Google has been teasing us for some time about new performance metrics to replace or add-on to the Google My Business insights. Now I am seeing a new section in the Google My Business dashboard that says “Your metrics will move to a new-look report. S…

Back in October 2020 businesses could add health and safety information to their Google My Business profile. Shortly later Google began testing displaying them in the local panel for those businesses. Now the desktop interface has changed a bit that …

We have seen restaurants have to deal with food ordering services being automatically added to their Google Maps and Google Local business listings. Now it seems professional service businesses, like law firms, need to worry about this happening as we…

It looks like Google My Business insights, the area you go to see how much traffic, calls, messages, etc you get from Google Maps and Local, is missing data. The analytics data is missing from December 27th and 28th. Joy Hawkins posted a sample charg…

Amy Toman spotted yet another local panel user interface change in the Google search results. This one shows a custom/dynamic tab or menu in the local panel. So in this example, Google is showing a tab for “boarding.”

Colan Nielsen reported that Google is now testing showing service “justifications,” which according to him Google defines as the additional labels in the local pack result. Before we saw web site mentions here, as well as other items, but now Google i…

Back in 2018, Google added the ability to allow Google Maps users to follow businesses – hence Google My Business followers. But is there any value to it? Google said back then that the value is that you can “post offers to your followers to keep them…

Justin Sanger posted on Twitter that he is now noticing for those customers of his who are in the Google Guaranteed beta, that Google is offering discounts. The example he showed revealed a $101 discount for paying for the year, so instead of $600, the…

Google launched a free and easy to use video maker tool within Google My Business. The videos come out okay but it wouldn’t be something I share on my home page of my web site. But that being said, it is something maybe some small businesses would sh…