Everybody is re-branding these days. Facebook decided to go “Meta” the other day and now Google is doing it with their local business tool. It doesn’t seem that long ago when they abandoned Google plus and moved to Google My Business, though I guess it has been several years. For some reason, these companies love to change names in the constantly evolving technology of what they offer. The unfortunate side is it can be very confusing for small businesses who are just trying to use their tools and not earn a doctorate in the details. The little stuff keeps changing. Just from taking a brief tour of the new on-SERP (Search Engine Result Page) editing options I see that Google “Posts” are now “Updates” and aren’t really mentioned as “Posts” anymore. Get ready for change, but as is often the case with SEO and Local Search strategy, remember the core concepts and the names of the knobs and levers don’t matter as much. The ABC’s have been the same for years. The other stuff changes names and functionality every day and hour.
What You Need To Know About Google My Business
The primary thing to know is that it is going away, though I’m sure many will refer to your local business info as GMB or Google My Business for a while before the new name takes hold. Essentially, it is going away completely at some point in 2022. Much of the functionality will still exist, though maybe in different spots, under the new Google Business Profile name. Though the changes may be frustrating, they are designed to make it easier for the user to claim and edit their listing along with other functionality. If you own your listing, you will still own your listing as far as I can tell. You won’t need to reclaim listings, and for now, you can still go to business.google.com and see the back end you are familiar with. Then Google will point to where you can manage everything in the SERP.
What You Need To Know About Google Business Profiles
This is something that I’m sure will be evolving quickly in the coming months. A button that is there today may be in a different spot tomorrow. If anything, keep an eye on your listing quite regularly in the coming weeks. You may find it is a lot easier to edit your business information, posts, hours, and some of the other day to day tactics. It will be interesting to see if some of the tools that help people schedule posts or post for many locations will still work the same. I assume the tools will have time to adjust to make things work. Search Engine Journal did a nice early post with a guide on what we know so far. Keep your eye on things. Remember this is a change to the way you interact with your business listing on Google and not necessarily the ranking factors or what is important to focus on. If anything, hopefully, it becomes easier to do things that matter for rankings like interacting, adding more information, posting, and very importantly, getting more reviews.
Below are a few screenshots showing what happens now if you visit your business at business.google.com. It should also be possible to jump right to step 2 below simply by Googling y0ur business. You are supposed to eventually get there simply by entering “my business” into your Google Search bar, though that didn’t work for me today. I do manage many listings so it may confuse things a bit. If you only manage one, it may pop up for you by doing that. Give yourself a tour. Push the buttons and see where they go. Some names have definitely been changed as I mentioned above, but you will likely find the new place for all of the things that are important.
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