What’s this about?
I love this new feature from Google!
At last you can edit your Google My Business listing directly in search.
You can’t edit everything, and you need to be logged in to the right account.
This is a really good way to reduce friction for keeping Google listings up-to-date and correct.
Read more in this post from TWIS SEO News & Updates w/e 08 Sept 2017.
#SEO #SEONews #GoogleMyBusiness #GoogleLocal #LocalSEO
New: Edit Google My Business Listings In Search
Summary:
- If you own a business and have a Google My Business listing, you can now edit certain details directly in the search results.
- This is triggered when you search for your business and / or your business listing appears.
- The functionality appears on desktop, or on mobile.
- Things you can do include modifying business hours, or other business information, add photos, videos, posts, modify other important listing elements.
New Feature: Google Update GMB Directly From Search. Click for PDF.
Actions to take:
- Log into Google using the same account as manages your Google My Business listing.
- Search for your business.
- You should get a panel surfacing which allows you to edit your business details.
- Google may still check the accuracy verify the information before showing the modifications to other users.
- You should make sure you have an accurate and up-to-date Google My Business listing regularly, especially if changes are crowd-sourced..
- Click here to contact me to discuss howe to optimise your Google My Business listing.
Discussion:
I’ve long known that if you want people to edit information to keep it up to date, you have to make it ridiculously easy for them to do so. If they face any barriers there will be a steep drop-off much like a conversion rate graphed against funnel steps.
This is a good thing from Google. It ensures it is easy for you to keep your Google My Business listing up to date and ensures Google’s listings are up to date as well.
There are a huge number of issues with Google local listings. Google has scraped them from a number of sources which has led to tremendous inaccuracies and errors. At least if Google manages to keep the verified listings accurate, we’re in with a shot of slightly more accurate results.
More info:
The State of SEO Mid-2017 Released
TL;DR
- There’s now very little excuse for not keeping your Google My Business listings up to date.
- Visit Google, search your business and BAM! You can update directly in search.
- You have to be logged into Google as an owner / manager of the listing to do this.
- Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
- Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
- Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.
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.
