Category: Google Maps

No wonder Google kept turning on the Google Assistant call feature in your Google My Business account – Google just announced that they are rolling out the ability for the Google Assistant to book tables at restaurants in 43 US States.

Google has added a line to the business description guidelines within the Google My Business guidelines basically making it clear that they do not allow the description to contain irrelevant content.

The other week, I had a customer ask me if there is a way to stop Google from asking their customers or visitors to confirm their visits in Google Maps. As far as I know, there is no way to do that from the Google My Business venue end.

Kara from Google announced in the Google My Business Help forums that they’ve updated how reviews work for hotels within the desktop search results. “We’ve updated how Reviews look for hotels on Desktop Google Maps. Now, Desktop Google Maps displays re…

The other week we reported that Google by default has opted in all Google My Business listings to receive calls via the Google Assistant with their Duplex technology. But get this, a local SEO said they went in, removed the opt in (manually opted out) …

Anyone can edit a business listings details on Google Maps and local. So if you have a competitor and you want to close them down, or shut their business hours, or change their web site address or worse, you can do that. The business owner may notice…

Google announced in the Google My Business Help forums that owners of businesses within Google My Business can now reply to reviews directly using Google Maps on desktop. Prior you could do it in Google My Business, in the Google My Business app and in…

Sergey Alakov spotted Google testing or launching, I don’t see it yet, a button in the local panel for “get in line.” It is a waitlist feature that seems to be powered by DineTime for restaurants to enable people to put themselves on a wait list to be…

Google has a setting in Google My Business to allow or disallow hone calls from Google Assistant to your business. It launched as a beta last October and became a setting around then as well in the Google My Business dashboard. Now it seems that all…

Dave DiGregorio posted screen shots of content from a local business’s Google Posts content showing up in the local listings, including the local knowledge panel and local pack listings. This gives more exposure to the Google Posts content and possibl…

Google announced that hotels can now add their check-in and check-out times to their Google Local, Google Maps and Google Hotel listings. Brad Brewer shared a screen shot of one listing that already has theirs listed.

Kara from Google announced a small update in the Google My Business Help forums saying “Now, bulk users can download and upload their locations to and from spreadsheets.” “This feature enables bulk users to easily manage and organize their multiple loc…

Yesterday, I and many developers received an email from Google Developers that had the subject line “[Action Required] Google+ APIs and OAuth requests are being shutdown on March 7, 2019.” The issue is not specific with Google+ but some of those APIs …

Joy Hawkins posted in the Local Search Forums that a bug with Google My Business is causing photos that were recently uploaded via Google My Business by the owner not to be able to be seen in Google Maps by searchers. There is no ETA for a fix, but she…

If you do a search for [top soil] where I am and in some other locations, Google will show you a local pack but the local pack will be filtered to only show results with 4.0+ ratings or higher. If I do another search, like [barber shop] I do not get …

We saw this coming and now Google officially released a new sign up process for service area businesses, businesses that don’t operate out of a specific location(s). Google now lets them specify the locations they service, instead of being stuck witho…

Google has reportedly resolved the issue where anyone can change the open date of a business listing in the local Google results and ultimately hurt that business from ranking in the Google local results. Jason Brown via Nate Somsen noticed Google fix…

In November, Google began supporting the option to specify when the business opens in the future. So if you are a new business and you want people to find you in Google local before you open, you can set a future open date for your business. But some …

Kara from the Google My Business team confirmed Google is working on a fix for the delays in getting review data from the Google My Business API, specifically webhooks. Kara said “Our teams are working on the issue but they don’t have an estimate for w…

I am not sure what this is about but one local SEO is being asked to verify their business by clicking verify now or reconfirm location. I am not sure what the difference is and neither are any of the local SEOs in the Local Search Forums.