Google not-so-subtly launched Google My Business a few weeks ago, effectively replacing Google Places with a newer, more effective, all-in-one consolidated dashboard for businesses to make edits to their Google presence.
Naturally, with a perhaps-unexpected change such as this, there will be questions. The important one here is: What happened?
What is this change?
Don’t worry: it’s a new dashboard, or control center, that’s all. It consolidates where you make edits for business/maps listings and Google+ Local. It isn’t an algorithmic upheaval, it’s just making it easier for businesses to control what already exists.
What does it mean for businesses?
As I mentioned, it’s not a fundamental change, it’s just a more convenient way to make updates to listings.
It’s something we’ve all needed for a long time, actually. The previous setup was multiple dashboards and it was very confusing for everybody. The new dashboards makes everything really, really, really easy to understand and use.
Now you can manage your business’s entire Google presence from one well-designed hub.
What exactly can you do with Google MyBusiness?
You can do these awesome things:
- Update your business information on Search, Maps and Google+ Local from one place to make it easy to provide your customers with necessary details.
- Add photos of your business and, if you have one, a virtual tour of your business’ interior space.
- Connect directly with your customers via Google+ by sharing news, links, events, status updates, etc. from this dashboard.
- View your Google Insights for your business – this shows your visibility, engagement and audience data.
- Find your reviews from across the Web, and manage your Google reviews.
- Get a snapshot of your Google Analytics data, and launch your full Analytics dashboard with one click.
- Launch your Google AdWords Express portal.
- Start a Google Hangout.
Anything else coming soon?
- Top search queries data.
- Google My Business iOS app and Android app are already here, and other mobile OS apps are likely on the way.
Get excited. This is a good thing. Visit Google My Business to check it out for yourself!
Author:
Rahul Alim
Custom Creatives was established to serve as your full-service one-stop Digital Marketing Company, offering graphic design, web design and web development agency, catering to businesses of all sizes. Custom Creatives has designed and deployed over 100,000 banner ads, as well as thousands of websites and landing pages and print collateral for small businesses and large international corporations. Providing exceptional quality services and products with a high return on investment is at the heart of everything we do.
