What’s this about?
This is an extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 04 August 2017.
Read this guide to Checking Your GMB Pages for Mystery Updates, as well as detailed tips on how to spot and rectify these pesky incorrect and unwanted alterations.
Contact me to discuss surfacing and managing your locations in Google search.
#SEO #GoogleMyBusiness #GoogleLocal #LocalSEO
Are You Checking Your GMB Pages for Mystery Updates?
Summary:
- This is a great post from the people at Local SEO Guide – well worth a read.
- There are issues with Google My Business updating parts of your GMB pages without notifying you.
- This may include random pics, incorrect or irrelevant information, and auto-generated rubbish, based on your listings, auto-generated listngs and other sources of information.
- Whatever you do, keep a weather eye on your GMB listings.
Actions to take:
- Regularly check your GMB console for suggested updates. Diarise it so it become a routine.
- Regularly check your listings, using available tools where possible, but also with physical, manual checking as well. Again diarise this do it becomes routine.
- Make sure that you are on top of other auto-generated listings which may or may not surface for your local searches.
- Although a bit like whack-a-mole, keep attemtpting to correct the Google databases, and claim listings where possible.
- Contact me to discuss surfacing and managing your locations in Google search.
Discussion:
Google My Business / Google Places / Google Local are just what you’d expect a free crowd-sourced, or algorithmically generated solution to be: right, about 60-70% of the time, but so far wrong in the remaining 30% to seriously call into question the correctness of the 60-70%.
This is a source of frustration for business owners, and for users. Considering it is so critical for Google (local + mobile = the dominant form of navigational search), you would have thought they might have worked it out by now. Clearly not, however.
Google My Business is unfortunately becoming as discredited as part of Wikipedia used to be. Taking information and then changing it randomly, and capriciously, erodes trust in your service, for consumers and information providers.
Having said that, I am scratching my head about how Google My Business could improve, when it realistically knows it probably only has 10% if the business information it would like to have indexed.
More info:
The State of SEO Mid-2017 Released
TL;DR
- There are many reasons why GMB listings “auto-update”.
- Some are useful, some are random and unwanted.
- Check your listings regularly for oddities and rectify ASAP.
- Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
- Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.
