Category: Google Maps

Google announced they are expanding the “For You tab” in the Google search app to iOS devices and over 130 countries. Specifically adding For You to over 40 countries on iOS and 130+ new countries on Android. I am not sure why iOS has fewer than Andr…

Google has renamed the communication manager to site manager in Google My Business. With that site managers can create posts to promote events, share news, and more, update business hours, address, and phone number and manage information about amenitie…

Google is testing a new design for how they display images in a Google local or Google My Business listing in search. The new design shows a carousel of image categories at the top letting searchers filter by inside, by owner, videos, inside and other…

It looks like Google is testing a like button, thumbs up button, on some Google Posts within search and maps. Brodie Clark shared a screen shot of this in action on Twitter. You can see the thumbs up icon at the bottom right corner of the post.
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Google seems to have launched a new feature in the local pack named “sold here.” It shows, based on your query, if that product is sold in the store, directly in the local pack. This roll out was spotted by Sergey Alakov but was seen also in early Nov…

Google has released version 4.3 of the Google My Business API. Version 4.2 was released in August and this new release brings new functionality including the ability to read and respond to customer Q&A, read reviews in bulk, Identify unclaimed locations and more.

Last month, Google introduced a new group of analytics data in Google My Business Insights called “branded” searches. Google defined them as “Customers who find your listing searching for a brand related to your business.” Joy Hawkins met with Google…

Joy Hawkins noticed that Google recently updated the steps in Google My Business for service area businesses to sign up. Joy said they changed the process for some of the clients she manages.

A week or so ago, Google told us that they released an update to Google My Business Insights that would result in us getting improvements in terms of how soon we see fresh data from the analytics tools. Well, Google misspoke and now we are told we won…

Google has begun rolling out a new design for their hotel results local pack in web search. So if you search Google for hotels near X, Google will show you a new look for hotel results in that area, one that looks more like the hotel search results por…

Kara from Google posted in the Google My Business Help forums that Google “made improvements to ensure that your Insights data is more up-to-date.” So the Google My Business Insights reports can “now see Insights data up to yesterday.”

Google My Business made a small but useful change to the Google My Business dashboard where you edit your business listing. Now Google will show and let you edit your primary and additional (secondary) categories instead of lumping them into one big ca…

Google announced a revamp of the Google My Business app to help businesses create and manage their local listings in Google Maps. The new features in the app include a review management section, insight analytics, profile management, Google Posts mana…

Google has added a link in some of the local knowledge panels, including the hotel ones, that say “see other locations.” So when you are viewing a specific location, it lets you click a link to see other locations from the same or similar brand.
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Google My Business said on Twitter that while they are reviewing the feedback around expanding the data in the Insights tab, there are no current plans to give more than a quarter worth of data in that analytics section. It doesn’t mean it won’t happe…

Google has a feature to discover more places for some local intent queries. According to RankRanger, the feature exploded in terms of how often it is shown, starting on October 24th. In the US, it increased by almost 130%, from about 3.5% of queries …

A couple weeks ago, Google announced a new feature in Google Maps and Local to follow a specific location or venue. The feature now seems to be rolled out and you can see it by searching for your favorite place to eat, shop or whatever. When you clic…

A couple months ago we reported Google was testing future open dates within Google Maps listings and Google My Business. Well, this weekend, Google officially announced it in the Google My Business Help forums. Allyson Wright, Community Manager, Googl…

Last week we reported Google was dropped addresses for some local service businesses. Well, Google posted over the weekend in the Google My Business help forums that they went ahead and separated out the addresses and service areas for these local ser…