There are many possible factors. We’re going to dive into all the GBP features that may affect conversion rates for Google Business Profiles. Each is something you’ll want to consider when you run a Google Business Profile Audit.

Let’s go!

Review Factors

It’s a no-brainer that GBP reviews impact conversion rates.

Number of Reviews

If you looked at a listing that only had one review and its rating was five stars, would you trust it?

Or would you want to see more reviews to know if the overall review rating was accurate?

That’s why the number of reviews can affect conversion rates.

Make sure to collect as many reviews as possible so that users know they can trust your overall rating.

Overall Review Rating

As we just mentioned, your overall rating is extremely important.

Trustworthy, positive reviews definitely convert!

Also, having negative reviews isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as there are not tons of them.

According to a study by Uberall, “There are business ratings sweet spots. Locations that improve their Google My Business star ratings from 3.5 to 3.7 can see significant increases in conversions.”

“On the whole, conversion rates peaked when businesses attained 4.9 stars, but it is when businesses improved from 3.5 stars in a given year to 3.7 stars the following year that conversion growth increased by almost 120%, the highest percentage growth jump from any star rating.”

Replying to Reviews

Replying to positive reviews may increase conversion rates.

But so can replying to negative reviews. That’s because users can see how you tactfully handle unhappy customers and it gives you an opportunity to show them your character.

The Uberall study I mentioned above had this to say about replying to reviews:

“Further, enterprise locations that reply to at least 32% of reviews achieved 80% higher conversion rates compared SMBs and direct competitors that replied to 10% of reviews.”

And another 2018 study showed that replying to both positive and negative reviews resulted in better rankings.

“And, perhaps surprisingly, we also found that when managers respond to positive reviews, it has the same benefits as when they respond to negative reviews.”

Here are a few other super-important stats from BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey:

• More consumers are reading online reviews than ever before. In 2021, 77% ‘always’ or ‘regularly’ read them when browsing for local businesses (up from 60% in 2020).
• 89% of consumers are ‘highly’ or ‘fairly’ likely to use a business that responds to all of its online reviews.
• 57% say they would be ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ likely to use a business that doesn’t respond to reviews at all.

So, get that keyboard clackin’!

Recency of Reviews

What if your listing hasn’t had any reviews left in months? Will users think you are out of business? Or that you don’t have any customers?

This is a red flag for users and hurts conversion rates.

Product or Service Keywords in Reviews

What about having the product or service mentioned in your reviews? I can tell you from personal experience that it does help users convert.

Allow me to tell a personal story:

One day I was looking for a good eyebrow waxing technician near me. I decided to look on Google Maps, and found several day spas and studios that offer waxing along with many other services.

In a GBP listing, you can search the reviews for keywords. I chose to search for “brows” to see what names popped up in association with that term. I then read the reviews and found a name that kept popping up and scheduled an appointment with that particular technician.

This is a real-life example of how keywords in reviews can help conversions.

Listing Completeness

Obviously, the more complete the GBP listing is, the more information users have to make their decision of whether to contact or buy from you or not.

Making sure to fill out all possible fields in your GBP may help users convert.

Business Name

This is an interesting one. I definitely believe the business name assists with conversions, but how?

Product / Service or Location Keywords in Google Business Profile Business Title

If you were looking for a flooring store in your area on Google Maps, would you click on “KBF” or “The Kitchen, Bathroom & Flooring Store”?

One name basically says nothing, while the other name explains what they have.

This is an example of how the business name can affect conversion rates.

Make sure to use the full business name, especially if it contains keywords.

Some businesses already have a keyword-friendly business name. They should be aware that including the full business name in a GBP listing is a good idea, instead of using the abbreviated name.

To be clear, I’m not recommending keyword stuffing in your Google Business Profile name.

Hours

If users don’t know for sure that you’re open, will they think you’re closed? Will they come by your business location? Will they call? Possibly not.

See how one of the listings below says “Open now” and the other one doesn’t? 

Google calls this out clearly for users to see.

By adding business opening hours, users can know for sure that you are open and that they can come by or contact you.

You can get the “Open now” feature on your listings just by adding your business hours.

Phone Number

If a phone call is counted as a conversion for your business, it should be a no-brainer that not having a phone number listed in your GBP will reduce conversions. How can they complete a phone call conversion with no phone number?

Website Link

Most businesses consider any action taken on their website to be a conversion. Examples include filling out a contact form, making a phone call, or making a purchase online.

If you don’t have a website link listed in your GBP listing, you will reduce the number of conversions here as well. Oftentimes, drastically.

Product/Service or Location Keyword on Google Business Profile Landing Page

When users land on your website from your GBP, does the page they land on match the query they typed into Google?

For example, if a user searched for “accident lawyer in tampa” but landed on the homepage of a multi-location business, the user would now have to take the time to find the Tampa location page or a Tampa accident lawyer service page to get the information they are looking for. Many times, the user will drop off at this point and abandon your website.

Make sure to link to the best page on your site for users. Also, make sure to optimize this page for what they may be looking for.

Products

If you sell physical products, you can list all the products you sell in your GBP listing. Most likely, these don’t help with rankings but users can see your store inventory (essentially) if you add products to your Google Business Profile. If it shows what they are looking for, this can help attract them and they may end up making a purchase.

Google mentions: “Customers will see a more curated showcase of a store’s products on the Business Profile Products tab on mobile, or the Product Overview module on the computer.”

“When customers search your Business Profile on Google Search with their computer, mobile device, or Google Maps app, they can find:

• On the Maps mobile app: A products carousel.
• On Search only: A products carousel and “Products” tab.”

Services

If you sell services (instead of, or in addition to, physical products), you can list all the services you offer in your GBP listing. Most likely, these don’t help with rankings but users can see all your services that are available if you add services to your Google Business Profile. If it shows what they are looking for, this can help attract them and they may end up contacting you.

Google mentions: “In Business Profile, you may get an option to add the services you offer, along with their descriptions and prices. If your business has multiple categories, group services together into sections under the appropriate category to keep your services organized.

When local customers search on Google for a service you offer, that service may be highlighted on your profile. Customers on mobile devices can also find all your services under “Services.””

Photos

Having photos on your GBP listing is a great idea. It’s worth taking the time to take photos of your business (inside and out), your team, your menu, etc. Users will want to see this information when deciding to do business with you or not.

Here’s an example below of what they could see when searching for an HVAC company.

How often do you look at photos of the inside of a restaurant or photos of their food before visiting them? Here’s an example below for a restaurant.

You can see how much GBP photos can help conversion rates.

Posts

Google Business Profile Posts are a great way to increase conversions! These are essentially mini-posts of content on your GBP listing. You can choose to just share an update, show an offer, etc.

They allow you to choose a call-to-action on each post which encourages users to convert. The images in the posts can also play a role.

When you have local deals or offers to post, these are especially effective at converting.

Justifications

If you’re wondering what these are, justifications are little snippets that Google shows in the local pack. They use these to help “justify” why the business is showing up there for that search.

There are several types of justifications. The type you see highlighted in the local pack changes depending on what you searched for.

In the example above, if you were looking for a specific brand of tire, these would be super helpful. Justifications can obviously help with conversion rates.

If you’d like to see all the types of justifications that are available and how you can get them, read our GBP Justification Guide here.

Attributes

Attributes are a way for businesses to show special information/features to users. GBP attributes include all sorts of different things that you may not expect. For example, “veteran-owned”, “mask required”, “curbside pickup”, or  “Wi-Fi”.

If you happen to list an attribute that your users are looking for, then you may be on your way to having more customers.

For example, if I’m a coffee shop, and I have free wifi, I’d definitely want to make sure that it was easily viewable on my GBP listing.

In the example below, I can see that one Starbucks location has a drive-through while the other one does not. So if I just wanted to drive through, this would be useful to me when making my choice.

Business Summaries

These are defined by Google as: “3 types of short business summaries you might see on Google Maps: business descriptions, editorial summaries, and customer review snippets.” Essentially Google is saying there are 3 occasions someone may see a summary of your business displayed in their tools. These are as follows:

• Business Description: You can edit your business description and that is easy to do.
• Editorial Summary: The editorial summaries “give you a snapshot of a popular business our writers compile editorial summaries”. You can’t edit these but you can influence them.
• Customer Review Snippets: Customer review snippets are when “Data from these reviews may be used to highlight certain aspects of your business through Place Topics or review snippets”. You can’t edit these either, but you can influence them.
  • Place Topics: “Potential customers can find the main themes of your business through Place Topics. These main themes are based on the reviews of your business.”
  • Review Snippets: “Review snippets show keywords most mentioned in quotes from Google reviewers. These snippets are selected by an algorithm.”

To recap, having keywords that match what the users are looking for in these areas can get users to take action.

Booking Feature

Online booking transactions count as a conversion for many businesses. If the GBP Bookings Feature is not set up, you are missing out on tons of conversions!

Some businesses that would benefit from this feature are hair salons, spas, massage therapists, chiropractors, etc.

Messaging Feature

Sending an email, filling out a contact form or having a chat should all count as a conversion for most businesses. So if you don’t have the GBP Messaging Feature turned on, you most likely are missing out on more conversions.

Be sure to turn this feature on if you count leads as a conversion. Or if you like to engage with your customers often.

Caution: Only turn on this feature if you will be available to reply quickly. Otherwise, you’ll end up disappointing potential customers.

Conclusion

It may sound hard but it’s worth it to take all these steps listed above. You’ve already worked so hard to get your GBP listing to rank. Now it’s time to convert these folks!

Before its launch in 2018, local business owners could only input basic information such as company name, address, phone number, hours, and types of payments accepted.

Now, it’s an important part of a business’s Google Business Profile (GBP). It’s a place where the business can communicate to potential customers. They can tell them in their own words what they do and, if they desire, things like their history, values, and beliefs. 

What is a Google Business Profile description?

It may sound obvious, but a Google Business Profile description is a short outline of your business. It’s limited to 750 characters and can be used to quickly spell out who you are and what you do.

It can be used to help inform potential customers of what to expect from you or your business, offering them valuable information about either the physical location or your brand.

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Google Business Profile Description Guidelines

Before you put pen to paper (or your fingers on the keyboard), make sure you read over the Google Business Profile Description Guidelines. These set out what you can and can’t include in this part of your listing. For instance, you shouldn’t add details of promotions, but can refer to the history of your business.

You must adhere to these rules because Google will review your Google Business Profile description and could suspend your account if you’re found to be in violation of its policies.

Google says the following about business descriptions:

Use the business description field to provide useful information on services and products offered, as well as the mission and history of your business.

You should be upfront and honest about the information provided, focusing on content that’s relevant and useful to your customers to understand your business. Content that’s irrelevant to your business or has no clear association with it isn’t allowed.

In addition to our overall guidelines on prohibited and restricted content, make sure that your business description does not:

• Display low-quality, irrelevant, or distracting content. For example, misspellings, gimmicky character use, gibberish, etc.
• Focus on special promotions, prices, and offer sales. Examples of content not allowed include, “Everything on sale, -50%” and “Best bagels in town for $5!”
• Display links. No links of any type are allowed.

How long should a Google Business Profile description be?

You will need to adhere to the Google Business Profile description character limit when crafting your description. This is currently 750 characters. 

Google outlines this in the Google Business Profile Help Center: 

Enter a brief description of your business.

Things to include:

• What you offer
• What sets you apart
• Your history
• Anything else that’s helpful for customers to know

Things to avoid:

• Do not include URLs or HTML code.
• Do not exceed 750 characters in the description field.

Focus primarily on details about your business instead of details about promotions, prices, or sales. Read more about guidelines for business representation.

Example: “We’re an independent ice cream shop located steps from the center of town. We’re proud to be the favorite for locals to meet friends for a cone or call for a fresh pizza, delivered straight to their home. We serve 35 flavors of homemade, hand-churned ice creams and sorbets year-round. The pizza oven turns out New York-style pies every day from midday until close. Come see us today!”

How do I write a Google Business Profile description?

Before you sit down to write your Google Business Profile description, keep in mind that you may need to draft several versions. This will provide you with a backup option should your description be rejected due to a guideline violation. 

If you’re lacking inspiration, the ‘about’ page on your site can be a good starting point. A lot of time and effort likely went into creating this page and distilling your brand’s credibility, achievements, and product or service offering. Because of this, it’s often a helpful starting point when drafting a Google Business Profile description for the first time. 

How to Add a Google Business Profile Description to Your Listing

Adding a Google Business Profile description is very easy to do.

In the NMX select ‘edit profile’ and you’ll find ‘Description’ in the ‘About’ section.

A truncated version of your description will be displayed in the Local Knowledge Panel on desktop or mobile. People will then have to click to see the full description, so be thoughtful with what you’re saying. Your most important information should be placed towards the start of the description. This truncation applies on both desktop and mobile, so remember… each character counts! 

Just like you carefully craft your meta title and description tags for your website, you need to take the same amount of care when writing your GBP business description.

Once you have your Google Business Profile description inserted, click “Apply”. You’ll then need to wait for Google to review and approve your description. 

If it isn’t approved, double-check to make sure you followed Google Business Profile guidelines. 

Utilizing Google Business Profile Description

To get inspiration for your own description, try checking out how your competitors have approached the task. To do this, perform a Google search for a rival business and then review their descriptions, noting down what works well and what stands out.

Knowing how to write a strong Google Business Profile description can seriously elevate your local search presence. It’s the search equivalent of your elevator pitch, outlining your credentials and spelling out why a consumer should choose your business. 

What are you waiting for? Go check your Google Business profile description!

Selecting the right primary and secondary Google Business Profile categories can give your local search rankings a boost. But, with many categories to choose from and new categories continually being added while old ones are removed, this process isn’t as straightforward as it may first appear.

Google Business Profile signals form a major part of Google’s local search algorithm and if we break that down even further, it becomes clear that a listing’s category choice is of primary importance. The category field tells Google a lot about your business and what it does, which can help it to surface your business information for relevant local searches. 

What are Google Business Profile categories?

GBP business categories tell Google and search users what type of business you are, for example:

• dentist
• department store
• patent attorney
• finance broker
• fish spa
• pet sitter
• funeral director
• auto wrecker
• barbershop
• real estate agency

Your primary category is considered to be the single most important local ranking factor for a business in the local pack. Getting it right is essential. Your primary category is visible in the local pack, as you can see below.

While your GBP’s description gives you a chance to describe this in your own words, your category is your chance to assign your business to an official niche.

What’s the difference between primary and secondary categories?

Your primary category will be the main category that Google associates with your business, so choose it very carefully. It’s the one that best highlights the main offering of your business.

A secondary category is the additional services that you offer. It can get a little more complex than that, though, so there’s more on this later. Remember, you also have the opportunity to list your services on your GBP.

How many categories can you have on Google Business Profile?

Of course, not every business will fit neatly into one category. There may be other categories that also describe the products or services you offer. For example, if you’re a greengrocer but also have a small deli or coffee bar within your premises, you would want those additional business niches reflected on your Google Business Profile profile. 

GBP allows for one primary category and up to nine secondary categories to be selected. You shouldn’t aim to fill in all nine secondary categories—choose only the ones that are most appropriate to your business. 

How do I add categories to my Google Business Profile?

Adding categories is very simple. Make sure that you are logged into the Google account that you use to manage your business.  Go to the NMX and click ‘edit profile’.

In the ‘About’ section, immediately underneath your business name, you’ll see a section labeled ‘Business category’. As you type, Google will bring up available categories for selection. Click on the one(s) that best describe your business.

How many categories are there in GBP?

There are around 4000 GBP business categories, though these change all the time. Google doesn’t provide a full list, but you can find a breakdown here.

What if my category isn’t available on GBP?

Despite the large number of possible categories, there is a chance that your exact category isn’t in there. While this is annoying, there’s a good chance that there will be a broader category that you’d still fit into.

For instance, maybe you run a chain of speakeasy bars. While this category isn’t available, you could opt for the broader ‘bar’ category or even ‘cocktail bar’.

What to Consider When Choosing a Google Business Profile Category

Making sure that the primary category you’re using for your business is the best possible choice based on your business’s products, services, and/or goals can make a big difference as you try to improve visibility for terms related to that category.

Many say this is obvious—just pick what you are, right? Unfortunately, in some cases, it’s more complicated than that. Single-location businesses with a narrow focus (i.e. a divorce attorney) can just pick “divorce attorney”.

But (and there is a but), what if that single-location divorce attorney has multiple lawyers in a single location, and each attorney has their own Google Business Profile listing?

Having practice and practitioner listings is permitted under the Google Business Profile Terms of Service, but only for certain verticals. This poses a more complicated problem. How do you choose a primary and secondary category without poaching or creating competition between your own employees (lawyers) and your business (practice)?

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This is further complicated when that single-location business doesn’t have a narrow focus (for example, HVAC, plumbing, water conditioning, and backflow testing).

Picking the Primary Category When You Cover Multiple Categories

So, how do you pick the primary Google Business Profile category for a business that could cover multiple categories?

There are several different options for choosing the best GBP category.

Single-location Business with a Narrow Focus

(…like the divorce attorney above)

This is pretty simple. The primary GBP category should be “divorce attorney”. 

You can use the other options as secondary categories, but the primary category should be the most specific category that matches the statement, “This person is (a/an) ___________.”

Single-location Business with a Broad Focus

(…like HVAC, plumbing, water conditioner installer)

When it isn’t so clear-cut, prioritizing the type of business you want to attract is a good rule of thumb. Ask yourself, what is most important moving forward? 

If you’re an HVAC company that would rather do heating installation than air con repair, make ‘heating contractor’ your primary category. Then, make HVAC contractor one of your secondary categories.

Practice/Practitioner or Agent/Agency Listings

(…like choosing real estate office vs real estate agent, or dental clinic vs dentist)

In certain cases where the employee of the business has its own designation and customer base, both the business and the “employee” of that business can have a Google Business Profile listing.

This is referred to as “practice/practitioner” or “agency/agent” relationships.

What this looks like for categories:

• The firm’s listing can be categorized as “law firm” or it can be categorized as “divorce attorney.”
• The attorneys within the firm can be “lawyers”, “family law attorneys” or “divorce attorneys.”

Having the practice and the practitioner show up for a single category in a local query, in a small market, can be a bonus.

Depending upon the competitiveness of your market and the proximity of your competition, having both the practice and the practitioner use the same category can also muddy the waters. Test this using different Google Business Profile categories for your listings versus using the same categories for everyone’s listing.

If you wanted to cover more Google Business Profile categories, the “firm” could be “divorce attorney” and the individual practitioner(s) could also be “lawyers”. You could also pick the most prominent listing (the one that ranks well already with more reviews) and give a practitioner the “divorce attorney” category if the firm has a weaker profile than the attorney.

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Multi-location Businesses in the Above Scenarios

Most of the time, a business’s multiple brick-and-mortar locations don’t have to worry about competing listings. However, there are cases where these locations may be geographically close to each other, and those listings could be competing if they have the same category.

Examples include a dentist’s office with a few locations within the same city or an adjacent office/suite that houses hygienists or orthodontists.

Technically, they could be eligible for their own GBP listing, but you need to be sure the category they choose aligns with what they do in that location.

How do you pick a category for those locations?

Again, the more specific you can get, the better, but you might benefit from spreading out primary Google Business Profile categories as well. It’s worth testing different options until you find the right combination of search visibility and more qualified traffic.

How to Choose Secondary Google Business Profile Categories

While the primary category is the most important choice, secondary categories are still important to ranking and relevance. Don’t just pick a primary and leave the rest blank.

Instead, add in those “rejected” opportunities for the primary category designation as secondary categories. 

If you choose “Divorce Attorney” for your primary, for example, choose “Family Law Attorney”, “Lawyer”, and “Law Office” as secondary Google Business Profile categories.

Dealing with Seasonality

When seasons change, sometimes so does the focus of a business. An HVAC contractor might do most of their work on AC units in the summer and on furnaces in the winter. 

Changing your primary category to suit the seasonality of your business is a good habit to get into. If someone is searching for a furnace repair person, you don’t want them to see “a/c repair” as your category in the 3-pack, Local Pack, or Maps listing because you haven’t updated your category selection. 

Failing to select a new category also lowers your relevance for many local searches the other half of the year when your business focus changes. 

How to Master Your GBP Category Selection

Test, test, and test again.

Choosing the correct GBP business categories can be a process of trial and error, especially where there is complexity in terms of multiple locations or practice and practitioner listings to juggle.

If that’s the case for your local business, don’t underestimate the importance of testing. Try different category selections to find the option that works best for you.

You’re a dog owner and your good boy needs treatos. You check the pet store’s Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) listing, which says it’s open. You drive across town for treats, but find that the pet store is CLOSED.

Now imagine you’re the pet store owner. You just made a dog sad. What’s more, you made a pet owner angry. They just wrote you a one-star review on Google, and you might have even just lost their ongoing custom.

Something as seemingly simple as store opening times can have less-than-simple consequences for both customers and business owners—so it’s imperative to keep your opening hours updated and correct!

What are ‘opening hours’?

Opening hours are defined by Google as:

“Your regular customer-facing hours of operation. These are times when a customer or potential customer can visit your location in person.” 

– Google Business Profile Help

While there can be minor variations depending on business type, generally opening hours are when a customer can make real contact with someone from the business.

So, for a bakery, that would be the moment they open their doors and start answering the phone to the moment they flip the sign to “closed”. 

On the other hand, for a service-area business like a plumber, the opening hours would be the times you would expect someone to answer the phone.

Google recommends that certain business types shouldn’t provide opening hours information—such as those with varied hours or that operate by appointment only.

Read more here about Google’s guidelines for indoor lodging, schools and universities, cinemas, transportation, event venues, and natural features.

Where do opening times show?

Your Google business hours will show in your GBP listing on the search engine results page (SERP):

Your Google business hours at the time of search will affect whether your business is marked open or closed (see 1 in the image above). There’s also a dedicated section for your regular opening hours (see 2 in the image above).

Users can click on ‘more hours’ (if the business has multiple types of hours set), or the small arrow (if the business only has regular hours set) to see the full details of week-long opening hours for a business:

In the Google Local Finder and Google Maps, businesses can show as open or closed, and the hours of operation for that day will also show.

Opening times in the Local Finder:

When you’ve updated your business hours, or if you have ‘confirmed’ your business hours, Google will often flag this in the Business Profile.

I imagine this sends a ‘trust signal’ to customers and potential customers that the business is engaged in making sure that the details are correct:

How to Change Business Hours on Google

How you add and update your business hours will mostly depend on how you are managing your business profile in general.

Via the in-SERP editing experience

If you are a small business with a single location or a couple of locations, you’ll likely use the in-SERP editing experience.

As you likely already know, to do this you simply search for your business name in Google Search and then click ‘Edit profile’. You can also go to business.google.com to get to this point.

Next, click on the row titled ‘hours’ to see Monday to Sunday. Here you can add your regular opening hours accordingly.

If you operate on a ‘split hours’ basis—for example, if your business closes for lunch and/or dinner and then reopens—then you can add multiple entries for each day. In this case, click on the little plus sign next to the day(s) in question and add your second or third set of hours.

Via bulk upload

If you’re managing a group of locations, you can update your business hours via bulk upload (more details here).

Note that it’s not possible to add ‘more hours’ via bulk upload or via third-party tools.

Via third-party tools

If you’re using a third-party tool that syncs with the Google Business Profile API, you should be able to update your hours on the platform.

Special Hours/Holiday Hours

Special hours allow businesses to mark specific dates—such as public holidays or special events—with an opening schedule that is different from the regular opening hours.

You can only add special opening hours once you’ve set your regular hours. Also, you should only use the special hours function to close your business for up to six consecutive days.

If you need to close your business for seven days or more in a row, you’ll need to mark your business as temporarily closed.

Where do Google business special hours show?

Your special hours will populate your opening hours according to the dates you’ve set. These will show directly in the Local Pack, Local Finder, Google Maps, and Business Profile.

In the example below, ‘special hours’ is used to mark a specific day the following week when the business was due to be closed:

When the week that includes the date in question is reached, the business is shown as ‘closed’ on the relevant date:

Adding and Updating Your Google Business ‘Special Hours’/’Holiday Hours’

To edit your special hours/holiday hours, begin by searching for your business name in Google Search and then clicking ‘Edit profile’. This can also be done by going to business.google.com.

Click on the ‘hours’ tab and then go ahead and find your ‘holiday opening hours’:

To change these hours, click on this section. You can then edit your existing dates or click ‘add a date’ at the bottom. You then simply select the dates from the calendar, and add the open and close times for those dates.

Google has a list of holidays by region and will often prompt businesses via notifications to check and update their holiday hours.

More Hours

‘More hours’ gives a business a chance to add a subset of hours for specific services.

Google states that:

“Generally, you should set ‘more hours’ as a subset of your primary hours”, but I’ve seen businesses adding additional hours for things such as ‘online operating hours’ outside of their regular opening hours.”

–Google Business Profile Help

These are the options for ‘more hours’:

• Access
• Breakfast
• Brunch
• Delivery
• Dinner
• Drive-through
• Happy hour
• Hours for the elderly
• Kitchen
• Lunch
• Online operating hours
• Pick up
• Takeaway

Adding and Updating ‘More Hours’

To add ‘more hours’, navigate to the ‘hours’ section in the direct edit interface. Select the type of hours that you want to add by clicking the relevant button:

You’ll then be able to add the hours relevant to that service. You can add as many ‘more hours’ types as are relevant to your business.

Where do ‘more hours’ show?

Once you’ve gone ahead and added ‘more hours’, a prompt to view them will show next to your regular hours:

Like ‘special hours’, ‘more hours’ won’t show unless you have set regular opening hours.

How do I temporarily close my business?

If you’re going to be closed for more than six days, then you’ll need to mark your business as ‘temporarily closed’. 

Via the In SERP editing experience

Simply search your business name, click ‘Edit profile’, select ‘Hours’, and then choose ‘temporarily closed’:

Via bulk edit

If you are managing multiple businesses, you can mark some or all of them temporarily closed by navigating to the location group at business.google.com, selecting those businesses that you’d like to change, and then applying ‘temporarily closed’ via the ‘actions’ menu.

What does ‘temporarily closed’ look like?

The Business Profile of a business that’s temporarily closed looks like this:

In the Map Pack, it looks like this:

What if my business is ‘appointment only’?

If your business premise is open by appointment only, Google doesn’t have a specific option for this.

In these guidelines, Google suggests that appointment-only businesses shouldn’t provide hours on their GBP.

You can mark this within the direct edit interface via the ‘Business information’ section:

When you do this, opening hours will stop showing on your GBP listing.

Help—someone keeps changing my business hours!

Like many elements of a Google Business Profile, opening hours are subject to third-party edits:

If your business hours are changing—and if it’s not you making the changes—it’s possible that a Google user is making edits to your business hours.

It’s also possible that Google is pulling data from a third-party website—so check your business listings in places like Yelp and Facebook to see if incorrect opening times are being scraped from those sources.

If Google accepts any third-party edits, then—if you’ve signed up for notifications—you’ll get an email from Google saying that your opening times have changed based on those edits:

If you need to go in and update your hours, you can do so via the direct edit experience. Google will warn you that it can take several to check and publish your edits, so make sure you make any changes ASAP!

The ‘Open Now Near Me’ Opportunity

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that having incorrect opening times advertised online is bad news. This can easily affect a business’s chances of attracting, converting, and keeping customers.

But it makes sense to wonder: is there a business argument to be made for making your opening hours as long as possible? 

Search volume for phrases that include ‘open now near me’ has grown steadily since 2013:

In our age of serious smartphone usage, we’re pretty used to instant gratification and impulse purchases. ‘Open now near me’ searches are on the rise for a variety of user needs:

After all, global search interest in ‘open near me now’ remains consistent:

Are opening hours a ranking factor?

In fact, at the end of 2023, Local SEOs reported that they were seeing a rankings boost for businesses that were open at the time of the search being made.  

Google confirmed that “openness” is a local ranking factor, and many businesses were tempted (or more than tempted, they went ahead) to set their hours as open 24/7.

All that being said, we do not advise changing your business’s opening hours to anything other than what is true and accurate. 

Marking your business open when you’re not is not likely to endear you to your customers and potential customers (as per our doggo example above). The Google algorithm will likely settle down in terms of the effect of ‘openness’ to better reflect its true importance to a consumer according to search terms, verticals, geographies, and world events.

Study: Business Opening Hours and Local Rankings

Using Local Search Grid to conduct a measured study and analyze the relationship between "openness" and local rankings for 50 business locations.

Read more

The ‘hours’ filter (on desktop) and the ‘open now’ button (on mobile) both reflect the ‘open now’ search trend:

Here, Google gives users the ability to filter search results according to opening times, and this is another reason why a business must make sure the listed business hours are correct.

In Summary

So there we have it. If you weren’t already aware of the importance of keeping your hours correct and up-to-date, then you are now.

As you can see, hours are pretty easily updated via the in-SERP editing experience, via bulk upload, or via a third-party tool. Keep your hours showing correctly, keep in mind the ‘near me now’ propensity of searchers, and go forth and prosper.

Photos also help engage the people that see your Google Business Profile—and Google tracks every interaction that people have with your listing. The more interactions, the more important Google feels your business is. Below you can see just how many times people have seen an attorney’s photos over just a one-month time period. Her GBP photos were viewed 236 times!

Now, if there’s one thing that’s better than photos, it’s video. In fact, video is so engaging that you don’t even need sound. Studies show that as much as 85% of Facebook video is viewed with the sound off. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Just the movement of a video is enough to stop a person as they’re scrolling on a page.

The problem: most business owners think that videos have to be big productions and therefore too much for them to tackle. Relax. Making a video doesn’t have to be difficult. Here’s why: you can now create a 30-second video that will grab people’s attention on one of the most popular places people go to search for and find information: Google!

Yes. Recently Google announced that they added video capabilities to Google Business Profile! In addition to adding photos to your Google Business Profile, you can now add videos that show off cool things about your company. Have you taken advantage of adding a video about your business? If not, it’s time to get started…

How to Upload Google Business Profile Videos

Google Business Profile allows videos up to 30 seconds long, and these videos can be added by customers and by owners. As a manager of a Google Business Profile account, you should first login to your GBP account.

In the dashboard you will see all the locations you currently manage:

Click on the business location you’d like to add your video to. You will either see the ‘Add Videos’ image on the Overview tab…

…or you can also click on the blue + sign to add a video:

Once you click on the ‘Add Video’ button you will be given the option to drag the video you want to upload or select the video from your computer—making it super simple.

Google says that once you upload your video it can take up to 24 hours for it to display, but our videos have loaded in minutes—which is fantastic! (In this video example the attorney gave some tips on how to handle a dissolution of marriage—very useful if you’re going through a divorce and are trying to understand what the divorce “lingo” means.)

However, for you marketers out there—there’s a catch. You need to make sure your videos are taken at the place of business, are of people that work at your business or directly pertain to your business. (Google Business Profile videos is no place for cheesy stock photos, stock videos or marketing bling videos.)

In fact, Google can remove them if the primary subject of the content is not related to the business location. (And people are tired of seeing stock photos anyway. Google Business Profile is a way to show off the people, personality, culture, products and services of your business (not the sanitary version of a stock photo business.) So that means no stock photos or stock videos!

If you decide you don’t like the video you added, it’s simple to delete by clicking on the trash can icon and then hitting ‘Delete’.

Once you upload the videos to your Google Business Profile account, they will appear in the overview tab on the Google Business Profile Dashboard. Owners who uploaded videos can be seen in the ‘by owner’ tab. When customers upload videos they will appear in the ‘customer’ tab. All videos will be displayed in the ‘video’ tab.

Once uploaded to Google Business Profile, your videos will display where your local photos do. As a bonus: if you have two or more videos, you can get a video subtab that will show up on mobile devices.

What Size, Duration and Resolution Should Google Business Profile Videos Be?

Google has given us general guidelines for the GBP videos. Keep in mind that if your business isn’t verified yet, your videos won’t show up as live until you verify your GBP listing.

If your business is verified, you’re ready to upload videos! After you’ve decided what video you want to upload to your Google Business Profile, make sure the video follows these guidelines when it comes to the video size, length and resolution:

• Google Business Profile Video Max Duration: 30 seconds
• Google Business Profile Video Max File size: 75 MB (reduced from 100 MB as of October 2020)
• Google Business Profile Video Min Resolution: 720p

(Note: We were able to upload a video that was 1 minute 30 seconds long, but that may have been a fluke.)

What Kind of Google Business Profile Videos Should You Create?

Many people get hung up on the type of videos to create—when really, that’s the easiest part!

Here are some GBP video ideas (and remember—you only have to make 30-second videos*, so keep them short and to the point):

• Show how one of your products is packaged and shipped out
• Highlight and show off an employee
• Give a tour of your office
• Create a company “mascot” (like a bobble head) and every day you can have a “find the mascot” search throughout your building
• Have your customers “sit in” on a company meeting so they see how decisions are being made
• Having a company picnic? Bring the camera along and share the fun
• Feature how a product is made
• Interview employees about what they like best about working for your company
• Invite your customers to upload videos to your GBP listing

*Google has stated that the videos should be 30 seconds in length, but we were successfully able to load a very informative one minute thirty second video to a client’s Google Business Profile Account. But remember video marketing best practices—don’t make your videos so long that you lose your key audience.

The best strategy for the videos is to sit down with your team and brainstorm about the types of videos you can create and upload—and then… just do it!

What About Inappropriate Videos Customers Might Upload?

Many business owners are concerned that customers/clients can change information and add videos and pictures to their Google Business Profiles. (And sometimes they should be concerned—all it takes is one inappropriate video and the damage is done.)

If you’re a business owner or manager of a Google Business Profile Page, you can flag inappropriate videos through your dashboard. If the inappropriate video is not removed by Google, jump onto the Google Business Profile Forum and see if you can politely ask for a Google Business Profile Top Contributor’s help.

To see the guidelines for submitting user-generated content, you can see Google Maps User Contributed Content criteria.

More to Come

Google has been making a lot of great updates to Google Business Profile over the last few months. According to Google, native mobile support and notifications of new customer videos are coming soon. And you can bet there are even more cool things coming ahead!

Internet users are inherently visual creatures, with approximately 50% of the surface of the human brain devoted to processing visual information. Images and visuals are much more powerful and easier to understand than just text, as well as being easier to recall. You can find all the data behind this here.

Given the human propensity to form impressions and take in information via a visual format, images are tremendously influential and key to your business looking good online. 

As businesses and individuals, we’re all very used to curating the images on our website and on our social media channels in view of what we think they say about us both professionally and personally.

But what of our Google Business Profiles (formerly known as Google My Business)? If you’re guilty of thinking of your profile purely in terms of reviews and local search position, you may have overlooked the need to keep a tight rein on your GBP photos. 

Ask yourself, for example, how do your existing and potential customers use photos to form an opinion of your business? And does this help them decide to engage with your services, or choose one of your competitors? 

Google is pretty clear on its stance on the importance of images in GBP, telling us that:

“Businesses with photos are more likely to receive requests for driving directions to their location, as well as clicks through to their websites, than businesses that don’t have photos.”

Google is increasingly visual in terms of how it uses AI to ‘understand’ the content of images (read our guide to visual search to learn more). 

In order to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by having great images, you’ll need to understand what opportunities to add images to GBP exist, who they can be added by, how they can be added, and what types of images work best.

Let’s begin!

Google’s Guidelines For Images

It’s always good to go straight to the horse’s mouth so we can understand Google’s terms of service for the photos that appear in GBP.

This is currently the ‘hub URL’ for photos in Google Business Profiles:

https://support.google.com/business/topic/6130059

I’d recommend reading through all of the articles in this section—but some of the most important guidelines for photos are as follows:

• Screenshots, stock photos, GIFs, other manually created imagery, or imagery taken by other parties should not be uploaded. 
• To be relevant, photos or videos must be taken by users at the location in question. 
• If the primary subject of the content is irrelevant to the location, it may be removed.
• Stylistic adjustments (such as applied filters) are acceptable, provided that these stylistic changes are minimal and aren’t appended elements such as borders, text, collaged images, etc.
• Content that makes it difficult for others to understand the environment that you’re sharing may be rejected. Examples are excessively dark or blurry images, significantly rotated compositions, and images that use filters to dramatically alter the representation of the place.
• Images must be of a sufficient resolution. The exact requirements may vary by photo type and point of upload.
• For 360° photos, superimposed content must be limited to either the zenith or nadir (top or bottom 25% of the equirectangular image), but can’t be present in both.
• For traditional digital photos and videos, superimposed content can’t take up more than 10% of the image or video, and must be limited to a single edge.
• Superimposed text or graphics must be relevant.
• Distracting superimposed text or graphics aren’t permitted.

Keep all of these in mind—these are the guidelines you can use if you need to get user images removed, and of course, these are the guidelines you as a business owner will need to adhere to when uploading your own images.

User-generated Images

Users can also upload their images to your business profile (*gulp*)! Again, Google is very clear on the guidelines for UGC, which include the following:

• contributions must be based on real experiences and information. 
• deliberately fake content, copied or stolen photos, off-topic reviews, defamatory language, personal attacks, and unnecessary or incorrect content are all in violation of our policy.

Google has a pretty huge list of prohibited and restricted content, so have a good read to make sure that the images you add adhere to these policies and that the images that users have added do the same.

Google added a number of posting restrictions in January 2023. When it finds a user has consistently breached its guidelines it may limit or suspend UGC for that Google Business Profile. You can find full information about its UGC restrictions here.

Businesses need to be aware that they are not in total control of their images on GBP—sometimes even a user photo can be used to populate a cover photo if the business has not actively managed and monitored their profile:

Why would I want a user to add images?

Let’s start with Google. Google wants users to add images, and Google wants business owners to encourage users to add images. How do we know this? We know this because Google prompts us to do so with emails, and with notifications on our phones.

Example of an email from Google to alert a business that new photos have been added by users

Google’s Local Guide program incentivizes the upload of photos to Google Maps

I’d imagine that Google encourages photo uploads to keep people engaged with their product(s) and to provide a richer experience for people using Google’s platforms such as search and maps.

As businesses, we’re used to thinking and acting in terms of keeping both Google and our customers and potential customers happy. 

So, in this case, encouraging users to add photos of our location, at our location could be construed as a clear engagement signal by Google. Plus, it’ll mean that we have more photos for customers and potential customers to browse, hopefully driving them towards using our location or service over an alternative. What’s not to like? (Spoiler alert—plenty, but we’ll get to that later).

How to Encourage Users to Add Photos at Your Location

Of course, some types of locations are going to be easier than others, and encouraging user uploaded photos isn’t going to be viable for each and every niche / vertical.

Here are a few ideas for getting photos:

Make Opportunities

Whenever you can, build photo opportunities into the servicescape:

Provide a Photo-worthy Experience

I’ve made a couple of high-cost purchases where an element of ‘showpersonship’ (if that’s a word) was built into the experience. For example, when I picked up a new car, the ‘unveiling’ was photographed and a video made of it, and the footage and images were emailed to me along with the other details from the garage:

Help Customers Get the *Best* Photos

Yes, selfies are a thing and people are used to taking them—but imagine you’re working in a bar or restaurant and you see a family group or a celebration and one of them has to duck out of the photos because *someone* has to take the photo? Why not offer to help, and help them get that perfect shot. 

If you’re offering a service where having images of that experience is an important part of the offering—because it might be a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience (think white water rafting, surfing lessons, a wedding)—you might also think about having a dedicated photographer that can take photos of your customers.

Simply *Ask*

The most straightforward tactics are so often overlooked. Simply by asking customers, either through posters or flyers at your location, digitally via email, or by actually having a face-to-face interaction (shock horror), you’ll be off to a good start with encouraging those photo uploads.

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How to Remove User-generated Images

Happy and engaged customers uploading photos is great, but user-generated content can also suck:

And aside from being poor quality, it could also be very inappropriate:

When a photo is added by a user using the ‘photo update’ feature in Google Maps this can appear directly in your business profile

If a user-added image in some way contravenes Google’s terms of service for user images you can flag it like this:

Click “Report a problem”

And then be clear about why you’re reporting the image:

Once you have submitted your report Google should get that removed. If they don’t, you’ll need to contact GBP support.

You can monitor user-uploaded images in your GBP dashboard, choose ‘photos’ then select the ‘by customer’ tab and order by date:

Where do photos appear?

Business uploaded photos and user photos can appear in many places (across devices) including:

• Your business profile in the SERP (logo, profile photo, product photos, post photos, user updates)
• In the map pack
• In Google Maps (desktop and app)

What photos does a business need to add?

Google has a great guide to the types of business-specific photos that can and should be added to a business profile. These include:

• Exterior photos
• Interior photos
• Product photos
• Photos at work
• Food and drink photos
• Common areas
• Rooms
• Team Photos

In the guide, Google recommends uploading at least 3 of each type, plus gives tips on how and why each type is recommended. If you haven’t already read this Google guide go read it now!

Businesses can also add 360-degree photos and videos – videos must follow Google’s video guidelines and 360-degree photos need to adhere to these guidelines.

Selecting your Google Business Profile images can be difficult as you want to showcase your brand in the best possible light—which can mean straying too far across the ‘corporate’ line for a local business. You want to have a great selection of professional images, of course, but steer clear of anything that seems too professional and overly polished as it can actually be off-putting and make your brand seem somehow less trustworthy.

Instead, focus on professional yet approachable, realistic but not staged images. A smiley team photo, for example, is a nice alternative to a LinkedIn-style shirt and tie portrait picture. With a little practice and experimentation with good lighting and props, you should be able to produce decent quality images in-house without too much expensive equipment required.

Google’s aim with images is to give local search users a real feel for the business and its products and services so please avoid the use of stock photos!

What is the best Google Business Profile image size?

You’ve likely had to dedicate quite a lot of time, effort, and perhaps even cash to get to this stage. You’ve undoubtedly had to hunt through your archives to find enough images to satisfy Google’s category recommendations. 

You may well have come up short and realized that you don’t have images of certain members of staff, particular products, or the interior and exterior of your office. If that’s the case, you might have been forced to purchase a decent camera, lights, and tripod, or outsource the job. If you’ve gone for option two, a professional photographer rarely comes cheap. 

The last thing you want now is for all of that energy to be wasted by uploading images that are incorrectly sized. Get this bit wrong and your pictures may appear distorted, could be too big or too small, too grainy due to a low resolution, or enormous because the resolution is too high. You could also find that you spend an unnecessary amount of time uploading, editing, deleting, and re-uploading images to try and get them to look right if you begin with the wrong resolution or image size. 

So, what size do Google Business Profile photos need to be?

Google Business Profile Image Dimensions

The Recommended Ratio

The ratio is the relation of height to width. Google recommends a 1:1 ratio where the width and height of the image are equal. Photos display differently across devices and platforms—so you’ll need to actively monitor how your images look. Choose an image that has a center focus and will ‘make sense’ whether it’s shown as a square or as a rectangle.

The Recommended Image Size

Ideally, your Google Business Profile photos should be 720 px tall by 720 px wide. This size allows for the optimal display of the image on all device types. Use these dimensions as the standard for all images you upload and you’ll also maintain consistency across your photo albums. This gives your Google Business Profile a polished, professional appearance. 

The Minimum Image Size

Google’s minimum size limit for images is 250 px tall by 250 px wide. 

Format Selection (File Type)

Google Business Profile accepts both JPEG and PNG file types. Your images should be saved as one of these two formats before you upload. Your photo editor will very likely provide you with this option when saving your file. You may find that your business logo has been supplied to you in a PNG format, whereas JPEG will likely cover everything else. 

Google Products

I usually add images for products at 1200px by 900 px. It’s worth noting that images for Google Products need to comply with Google’s Shopping Ads policy—if you have an issue getting products approved in GBP it might be because your product images don’t comply:

How do I, as a business, upload images?

Images can be added via the NMX SERP interface.

Photos that you add to your Google Business Profile will need to be processed and approved by Google. While this is happening, only you will be able to see your the image you uploaded, and it will have a status of “pending”.

If you have a number of locations and you have bulk verified those listings you can upload images via bulk upload – you can find the full step-by-step instructions here.

Influencing Which Images Show in Results

When you upload images to your Google Business Profile, they will be labeled with ‘from the owner’ to distinguish them from images uploaded by customers. This does not mean, however, that your own images will automatically get preferential treatment and be displayed most prominently in your Google Business Profile.

Given the importance of imagery for brand building, you’ll naturally want to wield tight control over which images are most visible to local search users. Google doesn’t specifically give you control over this aspect of your profile, and makes it clear that it won’t necessarily be your cover photo that appears in your business listing in the SERP or the results in the map pack:

You’ll need to specify the image you’d like Google to use as your cover photo, and then you need to monitor how your profile photo appears across devices, platforms, and locations. In some instances, Google uses image search to populate the profile photo—read more about that here.

If Google is using GBP photos to populate your cover photo in the business profile, and you still can’t get Google to show the image you’ve selected, then Sterling Sky offers these handy tips:

• Pick an image that looks good in both landscape and a square layout
• Pick an image that has most of the image in the top half (not the bottom half)
• The image should be a close-up and not have a ton of background detail
• An exterior image is generally preferable to the algorithm
• Use the dimensions 1332 x 750 for the cover photo
• Use this trick from Ben Fisher to get Google to display the correct photo

When your business appears in the local finder, Google will ideally be looking for an image in your GBP that they can use alongside your listing, justifying its inclusion in those search results. For this reason, it’s a great idea to make sure you have images that Google could use alongside searches for your most popular products and services. For example:

Note here that in photos 1 and 2 Google is having a little trouble distinguishing between a sloth, a meerkat, and a lemur!

In the business profile when viewed on a mobile, you’ll see a scrolling pack of images like this:

These photos are algorithmically chosen by Google—the featured images could be uploaded by the business or by the user. According to aircam.ai:

How often should I add or remove photos?

Schedule Regular Uploads

As you get into a routine of sourcing images to populate your Google Business Profile, you’ll find that you naturally start to notice opportunities during the course of a typical day. A restaurateur might get into the habit of taking a picture of the daily special, for example, an interior designer might share an image before and after a room makeover, or a car dealer might upload photos of a happy customer driving away.

Make sure that you have images that reflect how your business looks through the seasons, and make sure you keep your images updated to reflect any changes to your services, how you deliver your products and services, new team members, and any other relevant changes.

Go All Marie Kondo on Your Image Portfolio

Don’t be shy about removing images as and when they become outdated. For example, if you make over your guest rooms and the older photos no longer reflect the look and feel, or if you change up your product and service provision. Or, if you originally offered surfing lessons and no longer do so, you might like to remove those from your images, since they won’t be reflecting your current business offering.

Other Helpful Tips

Should I geotag my photos?

TL;DR – No

No, it’s not required. If you are desperate to geotag the images you *could* go ahead, but not until you have done absolutely EVERYTHING else you can do on your GBP with regard to optimizing for ranking and conversions. This is an interesting take on geotagging by Tim Kahlert.

Are there any tools that can help me?

We’re not all awesome photographers, and even though smartphones make it totally possible to take a very reasonable photo or video it might be that we—as business owners and marketers—need to turn to apps and tools to help us.

Apps like LocalPics enable you to send new photos to your Google Business Profile account from a mobile device. LocalPics is designed to meet the specific needs of Google Business Profile users. With no log-in required and a text reminder service, LocalPics makes it quick and easy to push new images straight to your profile. This not only cuts down on the time needed to keep an influx of fresh images flowing to your account, it can also help to tick the ‘authentic’ and ‘genuine’ boxes that Google insists on.

Aircam.ai is new to the market and manages the process of capturing photos for multi-location businesses. It uses Google’s Cloud Vision API to understand what Google will *see* in the images that their photographer captures for the business, allowing business owners to choose the right shots for their potential customers AND Google. 

Canva is a great tool that you can use to resize your photos and change up the design. There are both free and paid versions to choose between.

The ‘Try the API’ function in Google’s Cloud Vision API allows you to upload one of your images to take a look at how Google classifies your image according to its millions of predefined categories.

Plus, Google regularly changes the way Google Business Profile Posts (shortened to Google Posts) are populated, who they’re available for, how and where they display across devices and platforms, and even their functionality. So, we’ve gone ahead and written this guide to be your ‘one-stop shop’ for making the most of Google Business Profile Posts. After all, Posts is a prime opportunity for gaining eyeballs, clicks, and customers!

So whether you’re a multi-location business, a chain, or a single-location store, we’re here to spill the beans on GBP Posts.

What are Google Posts?

Google Posts are updates, mostly created and controlled by the business, that generally contain an image/video, text, and link. They can be used to promote offers, events, and general ‘news/update’ items.

What does Google tell us about Google Posts?

Google provides some solid resources on Google Business Profile Posts. As always, be sure to read these first.

“You can connect with existing and potential customers through your Business Profile on Google Search and Maps through posts. You can create and share announcements, offers, new or popular items in stock, or event details directly with your customers.”

– Google, Google Business Profile Help Center

I’m always surprised how many people skip over information that’s coming directly from the horse’s mouth. Personally, I do like to bookmark these resources to refer back to. Sometimes, when you notice changes to Google’s literature, it can give you a clue as to where Google is going with the feature, so keep your eyes peeled!

Which business types are Google Posts available to?

Much like Google Products, GBP Posts are not available to all businesses. One of the most high-profile industries that lamented the inability to add Google Business Profile Posts was the hotel and lodgings industry. In late 2021, Google made ‘What’s New’ and ‘Events’ posts available to listings in the lodging type categories, but ‘Special Offer’ posts remained unavailable.

Google used to restrict organizations with multiple locations from creating Google Posts en masse. This changed in light of the pandemic and the ongoing requirement for chains to make quick and easy updates regarding both health and safety measures, and opening times.

Google has since decided to allow chains the ability to create Google Posts via the API on an ongoing basis. A multi-location business could set up its own access to the API. Or, it could use a third-party tool, like BrightLocal’s Google Business Profile Post Scheduler, to schedule its Posts via the API.

Google Business Profile Post Types

There are currently three Post types you can choose from, which can be found in the ‘Add Update’ tab in the NMX. They are Update Posts, Offer Posts, and Event Posts.

Update Post

This Post type can include images, some copy, and a CTA.

You might be tempted to re-purpose blog content as an update post—especially as GBP posts were touted as ‘micro-blogs’ when they first emerged.

However, the audience for update posts is very different from an audience that might keep up to date with blog posts. Viewers of these posts will usually be ‘top of funnel’ in terms of their purchase journey.

Use update posts to differentiate your business from the other businesses that your potential customer might be considering. Awards, unique selling propositions, and anything else that might encourage a potential to consider you over the competition should be used here.

Offer Post

My favourite Post type! Whenever I’m working with a new client, I’ll work through the types of offers they can post. They might already have an established schedule for offers (for example ‘May half-price sale’) or it might be that they hadn’t thought about offers before.

Keep an open mind about what constitutes an ‘Offer’; it doesn’t have to be a discount. It could be something that you give away for free, such as a download, a white-paper, or a brief consult. If you have an ‘evergreen’ offer (something you offer year-round), make it into an Offer Post with a long valid period.

Many businesses fail to package their ‘value added’ elements into an offer, and these are great opportunities to populate an evergreen Offer Post. For example:

• You’re a therapist and each new potential patient gets a 15-minute consultation for free;
• You’re a dentist and each Invisalign patient gets a free annual scale and polish; or
• You’re a realtor and you’re offering a free guide on how to improve your credit ratings.

Offers have to include a start date and an end date (with an option to also add timings). The maximum you can run your offer for is 12 months from the offer start date.

The ‘Add more details’ fields are optional, but I’d always suggest adding a link to the relevant offer content on your website in the ‘Link to redeem offer’ field. That way you can gauge the success of the Offer Post in terms of driving visits to the website and any subsequent conversions.

Offer Posts that are valid (within the start and end date range) will show on a mobile device in search and in the Google Maps app in a special ‘Offers’ section in the business profile.

If you have multiple Offer Posts that are valid on a mobile device, Google will show them all, so for greater impact I’d recommend sticking with one or two that are valid at the same time.

Event Post

An Event Post can include a photo, the event title, start date and end date (with optional start/end times), optional ‘Add more details’ text, and an ‘Add a button’ CTA for a link.

On a desktop, Event Posts will show in the business profile while they’re in their valid date range, but after that they’ll no longer show in the ‘carousel’ (but they will show if you select ‘See all’).

On a mobile device, they’ll no longer show on the ‘Overview’ tab, but they’ll still show in the ‘Updates’ tab.

Google has a history of pulling in spammy/third-party/unrelated events into business profile (see this thread on the GBP support community for some eye-watering examples). So making sure that you have your own events on your website, on a unique page for each one, marked up with event schema, is one of the best ways of solving this issue.

Local SEO for Events: What You Need to Know

Read more

Where do Google Business Profile Posts appear?

Up until September 2018, Google Posts enjoyed a great level of visibility, appearing high up in the business profile. Since then, though, Google Posts have been moved to the bottom.

Sadly, as a result, businesses that had been successfully using GBP Posts to drive potential customers to their website experienced a significant drop in users from this method.

If you UTM tag up for Google Business posts (more on this below) you’ll be able to judge the efficacy of your Google posts in terms of driving conversions on your business website.

Here’s where you can find Google Business Profile Posts today.

On Desktop in the Business Profile

At present, Google Posts appear on a desktop in the business profile, which appears in the knowledge panel, directly underneath the business description and above the link to the social profiles (if present). I call this the ‘Posts carousel’.

The most recent Posts will be shown. A click on ‘View all’ will generate a pop-out where a user can scroll through all historical Posts.

Offer posts don’t currently appear on a desktop (though they used to, and we hope they come back!)

Google Maps on a Desktop

On a desktop in Google Maps, Posts show just under the primary business information. If you click on the Post, you can then scroll through all GBP Posts from that business.

In Search on a Mobile Device

When using a mobile device, GBP posts keep getting moved down the business profile. You’ll currently find them by scrolling down the page (and then probably down some more).

In the Google Maps App on a Mobile Device

On the Google Maps app you’ll see Posts if you scroll down in the ‘Overview’ tab and in the ‘Updates’ tab:

On Your Google Website (if you have one)

If you publish your GBP website (which some small businesses do) then your Posts will populate your content, like on this Escape Room business.

In what order do Google Posts appear?

In the ‘Posts carousel’ on a mobile and a desktop, Posts appear in the order they were published.

Before Google shifted in terms of the longevity of Posts, Event Posts always used to show first in the ‘Posts carousel’ and only shifted once the event had expired.

However, Posts now show purely in the order they were published, reverse-chronologically. Even if an Event Post or an Offer Post is still ‘in date’, newer Posts will show first. Conversely, once an event or offer has expired, if it’s one of the last 10 GBP Posts that were added, it will no longer show on the Posts carousel. It will show (in order of the date the GBP Post was added) in the ‘View all’ Posts pop-out.

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How long are GBP Posts ‘active’ for?

Currently, GBP Posts are active for six months. If no Posts have been made for six months, Google shows a link that says ‘view previous updates on Google’:

When Google Posts were first launched, they would only appear in the business profile for a certain period of time, depending on the Post type—for example, seven days for an Update Post, until the end date for an Event Post, and until an offer’s expiry date for an Offer Post.

Google used to prompt business owners to continue to post by emailing them when a Post was about to expire:

Google probably got peeved that businesses couldn’t manage to post regularly (when they’d invested in making this lovely shiny functionality). In January 2021, this changed and Google started showing GBP Posts for six months. 

This change has various implications. It’s good news for business owners who found it a challenge to post regularly. As long as you posted in the previous six months, you’ll have something visible to customers in this area.

However, the change does mean that you’ll need to make sure your Posts are fresh and relevant.

Before You Get Started

You’re no doubt excited to get stuck into setting up GBP Posts for your business or your clients, but there are a few things you need to be aware of before you do.

Can a business control GBP Posts?

I’d say mostly yes, but also a bit no.

It used to be that when a business updated their opening hours or added new photos, Google added these automatically as a new GBP Post. This was originally thought by businesses to be a bug, but Google quite likely did this as an attempt to keep the ‘Posts’ section more active across devices and platforms.

Google solved this issue when they changed the ‘expiration’ schedule for Posts so that they remain active for a much longer period, and (for the moment) stopped adding these automatic updates into a business’s Posts timeline.

In early 2021, Google added a new area named ‘For visitors’ in the ‘Updates’ tab in Google Maps. In this section, visitors are able to add images along with captions for that image. In this case, an area of the Google Business Profile that businesses are used to 100% curating via GBP Posts is now open to user-generated content.

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Potential Issues

Sometimes Google Posts can be a little buggy and a Post can be rejected, even when you’re adhering to Google’s guidelines.

When you publish a post you might see this message:

Google gives guidance for how to make and track the status of Google posts, and explains the ‘live’, ‘pending’, and ‘not approved’ post status:

This guidance from Google also contains clues as to why posts can be rejected, so be sure to make sure your posts comply with the following:

• Make sure that it’s high quality: Avoid misspellings, gimmicky characters, gibberish, and automated or distracting content.
• Keep your posts respectful: Refrain from obscene, profane, or offensive language, images, or videos.
• Only post links to websites that you trust: Links that lead to malware, viruses, phishing, or pornographic material aren’t allowed.
• Regulated goods and services: If you offer products or services in an industry that is regulated, you’re allowed to use posts but you can’t post content related to the products themselves. Regulated industries usually include adult services, alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical products, recreational drugs, health & medical devices, gambling-related services, fireworks, weapons, and financial services.
• Keep your posts family-friendly: Refrain from posting sexually suggestive or explicit content.

What happens if a Post is rejected?

If a Post is rejected, it won’t get published and you’ll see a ‘Rejected’ label on the image in your GBP dashboard. Sometimes, just by starting again, you can get the Post published:

In other cases, the rejection might require a little more investigation…

The Google Posts content policy can be found here, so take a look at the guidelines, particularly with regard to ‘inappropriate’ content.

If you’re having an issue with rejected Posts that you think could be caused by the image you’re using, you can use Google Vision API to check to see if Google would consider the content of your image ‘explicit’. The ‘SafeSearch’ feature detects explicit content, such as adult content or violent content, within an image, using five categories:

• Adult
• Spoof
• Medical
• Violence
• Racy

To use SafeSearch, upload your image here and check the results:

Google’s SafeSearch detection (for me at least—as you can see above, I work with attractions like farms) can often trip a rejected Post, as well as the inclusion of certain words, in the Post content or in the image filename.

If you’re having an issue with Posts, check your image, image file name, and your Post copy to see if there is something in them that could be tripping some sort of filter. Failing that, check the GBP help community or Local SEO Twitter etc. to see if anyone else is having an issue with GBP Posts—bugs do happen from time to time.

GBP Posts CTA Options

Update Posts and Event Posts both have the option for you to ‘Add a button’ where you can use the following microcopy options:

1. Book
2. Order online
3. Buy
4. Learn more
5. Sign up
6. Call now

When you choose options 1-4 you’ll usually be adding a link to your own site—because, after all, you’ll want to send traffic there to measure the efficacy of your Posts.

When you choose the ‘Call now’ option, anyone that clicks on that button will call you using the number that you’ve added as your primary contact phone number in GBP. You won’t be able to measure this unless you have call tracking in place.

Offer Posts have fields named ‘Link to redeem offer’ and ‘Terms and conditions’ where you can add relevant links to your website.

Sharing GBP Posts

My main question here is: why? Why would anyone share a GBP Post?! This might have been added as part of the glorious mish-mash of GBP functionality and fits in with the idea of GBP somehow replacing Google+ and the element of ‘social’ that this represents.

I can think of a small handful of scenarios where someone might want to share a Post, in the example of ‘offers’ posts. Another example could be a small business that had no website and was relying on GBP to secure their online presence.

To be honest, I don’t think you need to spend a lot of time thinking about this feature! However, it is there if you need it.

How to Create a Google Business Profile Post

You’ve been patient enough—now it’s time to get stuck in and create a Post for yourself. But how should you format it, can you automate it, and crucially, what on Earth should you post?

How to Format Google Business Profile Posts

A GBP Post can include an image, images or videos. Posts are displayed differently across devices and platforms, so there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, but here are some general guidelines to start you off!

As always, I recommend testing and seeing what works best for your clients and audiences.

Images

Google gives us these general photo guidelines for images in Google Business Profile:

• Format: JPG or PNG.
• Size: Between 10KB and 5MB.
• Recommended resolution: 720px tall, 720px wide.
• Minimum resolution: 250px tall, 250px wide.
• Quality: The photo should be in focus and well-lit, and have no significant alterations or excessive use of filters. In other words, the image should represent reality.

Google Posts Image Size

I’ve always used a 1200px wide by 900px tall image, and I make a Canva Post template for each of the businesses that I work with using their brand guidelines.

If your image for your Google Business Profile Post is too small, you’ll get this message while posting:

So images in GBP Posts need to be a minimum of 400px by 300px.

Tips for Quick and Easy Access to Your Images for Google Posts

Canva

Use Canva to design a set of images for Posts that could be used for various Post types across the months, make them in-keeping with your brand and tone of voice guidelines.

Upload these images into Google Products. Google will then store these in the ‘Album’ section. You can then delete them from your Products section.

Dropbox

You can upload your Google Posts images to Dropbox. Copy the ‘link’ to the image once it’s uploaded into your dropbox. The URL will end with this parameter:

Change the ?dl=0 to ?raw=1, so the image URL will look something like this:

You’ll now be able to use that URL in Postamatic or any other third-party posting tool that requires a media URL.

Should images include text?

In her analysis of 1,000 Google Posts, Joy Hawkins found that, in her test sample of GBP accounts, images that included text performed better than those that didn’t. In my experience, using text in images can be problematic because of the range of ways that an image is displayed across devices and platforms, so I tend to avoid text in images. This just highlights the importance of testing, testing, testing for your own business or clients.

Videos

You can, of course, use your own video content.

If you don’t have video content, a quick and easy win is to put together a slideshow of images that can be exported in a standard video format.

Google provides the following guidelines for video uploads:

• Duration: Up to 30 seconds long
• File size: Up to 75MB
• Resolution: 720p or higher

Words

These general tips for Google Posts from Ben Fisher are super useful:

1. Stick with 80-100 words per Post. Even though you’re allowed to write up to 300 words, depending on the device, not all those characters will be visible, and the number of characters displayed will vary—especially between mobile and desktop devices.

2. Remember, a Post is your opportunity to talk directly to your customers, so speak semantically and use a “real-world” conversational tone in your copy.

3. Following SEO best practices—make sure to put keywords and the most important message towards the front of the paragraph of your Post.

– Ben Fisher, Steady Demand

We’ve already talked a little about how we’re looking to grab the attention of our potential customers via Google Posts—we need to come up with compelling and click-worthy content that sets us apart from our competitors.

In the study mentioned above, Joy Hawkins found that Offer Posts got more clicks than Event Posts or Update Posts. She also found that Posts with a sense of urgency and Posts with a special or a discount performed the best. Posts that used emojis also performed better.

Of course, take these findings into account when planning your GBP Posts, but you absolutely should test these for your own business or client rather than slavishly following someone else’s results. Different verticals and different businesses will all perform differently!

Links

All types of Google Posts allow you to add a link. Make sure the landing page you send visitors to matches the content of the Post and meets a visitor’s expectations given the content in the Post.

For example, an Event Post should link to that event landing page, an Offer Post should link to that offer’s landing page, and so on.

Take care to make sure that you link to the correct URL—double-check that the links go straight to the canonical URL, and not go through any redirects (the Redirect Path extension for Chrome is useful for this). Redirects can strip out the UTM tracking from our URLs, and we really don’t want that!

How do I know how my Google Business Profile Posts look across devices?

You can, of course, manually check on your desktop and on your mobile devices. Depending on the number of Google Business Profiles you’re managing, you might do this straight after you add a Post, or (if you’re posting for a few businesses) maybe check once a week to make sure everything is in order.

I like to use Mobile Moxie to allow me to track how my Posts are displayed across a number of devices—you can see how they look across Google search and Google Maps on both a desktop and on a huge range of mobile devices.

You can also use the ‘inspect’ element in search and resize the page accordingly, making sure you click ‘refresh’ between dimensions changes:

Manual Posting vs Automation

Manual Posting

You have a few options here. Small businesses and those with just a few locations can add Posts via the GBP dashboard on a desktop, or via the NMX.

For businesses with multiple locations, or for agencies managing posting on behalf of a number of locations, you’ll probably need to look into third-party automation.

Automated Posting

To automate posting GBP Posts you’ll need access to the GBP API—one of the easiest ways to do this is to use a third-party tool.

How often should I post?

There’s no hard and fast rule here—I’d recommend making sure you have one (ideally 2) special offers that are ‘in date’ and valid at any one time.

As for events—add them as you have them. Update posts should be added as relevant—they’re available in your business profile for 6 months—but how about you try and post once every couple of weeks and see how they perform?

What should I post about?

We’ve heard GBP Posts described as ‘micro-blogs’ but in my experience they’re not really like blogs at all.

GBP Posts are your opportunity to grab the attention of a potential customer, much like you would in the copy of an ad. When we make ads, we craft something compelling and eye-catching with just a few words; something that encourages the reader to take the next step, be that calling the business or clicking a button to follow a link. We need to do the same with our GBP Posts.

Google talks about using GBP Posts to ‘connect with existing and potential customers’, but in terms of ‘existing and potential’ the lion’s share of views will likely be from potential customers—those at the top of the marketing funnel. These aren’t people who have followed you on social media, subscribed to your newsletter, or are checking back in on your blog to read your new Posts.

Google makes some solid suggestions for GBP Posts content, including these points:

1. Directly communicate with your local customers
2. Improve your customer experience with timely information
3. Promote your sales, specials, events, news and offers
4. Engage with your customers through videos and photos

When you’re thinking about GBP Post content, I’d also suggest running through these two key questions:

1. What type of GBP Post could you write that would fit into the four suggestions above?
2. Where will you link to and what will happen to that content once it expires?

How to Measure GBP Post Effectiveness

In Search

GBP Performance ‘website clicks’ data will also give you an idea of how many people clicked through to your website from your GBP listing, but this isn’t specific enough to let you know which of these was via GBP Posts versus one of the other links on your business profile.

In Google Analytics

When you tag your Google Business Profile Posts (and indeed any links to your website in GBP) with UTM tags you’ll be able to see how many visitors GBP Posts are driving traffic to your website as well as what they actually do when they reach it.

In my guide to UTM tagging for Google Business Profile, I detail the process of tagging your GBP Posts using the ‘Campaign content’ field, which will describe the content of that Post. By adding UTM tagging, a business can see which type of Posts (Update, Event, Offer) plus the content of those Posts, and can help you test what works best in terms of driving website visits, conversions, and micro-conversions.

If you have your goals and events set up in Google Analytics, and you have a process for UTM tagging, you can answer questions on which Post types and content types:

• drive revenue?
• drive newsletter signups?
• drive downloads?
• drive clicks through to social media profiles?
• drive clicks-to-call or clicks-to-email?

…and any other goals and events you are tracking in Google Analytics!

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So, should I bother with Google Business Profile Posts?

Yes! Google Business Profile Posts offer a great opportunity to attract and convert customers, as well as providing Google with lots of information about your business in terms of ‘entity’.

But… are they worth investing in? Only you can answer this in the context of your business or the businesses that you serve. Bookmark this guide, test some testing, and see what works best for you in terms of Post types and Post content. Good luck!

What is Google Business Profile Q&A?

Q&A is a feature within Google Maps that allows user-generated questions about the business to be asked and answered publicly. 

This is what Google tells us about the Q&A function:

“In Google Maps, you can ask and answer questions about the places and businesses you find. Business owners and others can respond to these Q&As directly. You can ask or answer questions from search on any device, and from Google Maps.”

– Google Maps Help

What does it look like?

Q&As can be shown in a business’s Google Business Profile on both Google Maps and in the local Knowledge Panel:

For the question to show natively in the local Knowledge Panel, you must have more than two questions. One of the questions (ideally, the one you’d like to show natively) needs more than three upvotes.

When does the Q&A panel appear?

Even if there aren’t any questions that have been asked, you’ll see the Q&A panel on local Knowledge Panels:

Who can ask questions?

As a business, you can wait until someone asks you a question—or you can go ahead and ask and answer your own questions.

This is a great way to offer more information about your business to searchers via your local Knowledge Panel.

If you’re going to ask your own questions, take the time to think about your business’s frequently asked questions (FAQs). By asking (and answering) them here, you’ll save time for both your potential customers and your own customer service team. Ideally, you’ll also be illustrating the factors that would encourage a potential customer to choose your product or service over a competitor.

What happens when a user asks a question?

Once they (or you!) have clicked ‘ask a question’ Google prompts them to jot their question down in a box. As they type, Google will parse the existing reviews and questions to see if an answer can be found.

If their question isn’t answered in the ‘suggested answers’ section, they can go ahead and click ‘post’.

Once your question is posted, Google shows a message to say that they’ll let you know when your question is answered by the business or by another user.

How does a business know when a question has been asked?

If a business is managing its Q&A natively inside the in-search editing experience, it’ll need to make sure that they have turned email notifications for questions and answers on:

Once this has been toggled to ‘on’, businesses should get an email to let them know that a question has been asked.

The exception to this is if you manage more than 100 locations in your account, at which point Google will no longer send notifications to your account.

If you manage more than 100 locations, you’ll likely be using a third-party tool that taps into the Google Business Profile API—be sure to ask your provider for the best way to manage Google Q&A at scale.

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Who can answer questions?

What businesses need to keep in mind is that anyone—any Maps user—can reply to a question that has been asked about your business. 

Take, for example, this answer to a question asked about the London Eye:

Businesses need to keep in mind that they need to be proactive in managing their Q&A; the above example might have made you chuckle, but unanswered and unmanaged Q&A can be a reputation management nightmare or, at the very least, reflect badly upon the business.

If you are signed into an account that is the manager of the Google Business Profile when you post your answer, it won’t show as coming from your personal account. Instead, it will show as being answered by the business name, with ‘owner’ in brackets:

If you need to edit an answer that the business posted retrospectively, then only the person who originally posted that answer can edit it. So, if you have multiple managers of the listing managing Q&A, sign off the answer with a name so that you know who answered it.

How can I reply?

Once you know a question has been asked, you can reply. There are a few ways you can do this. 

You can reply directly from the email Google sent to you by clicking on the ‘answer now’ button. This is probably the easiest way, as you’ll be taken directly to that question.

Alternatively, you can find Q&A in the in-search editing experience:

The newest question will not show at the top; you’ll likely need to scroll to the bottom to find new questions, especially if you are answering them immediately and they haven’t garnered any ‘likes’.

Can I get a question (or answer) removed?

Like most Google Business profile features, there are guidelines as to what content Google considers acceptable. Google details these policies for Q&A content in full—but these are the content policy headlines:

• Advertising
• Spam
• Phone numbers or email addresses
• Off topic Q&A
• Keep it clean
• Conflict of interest
• Illegal content
• Copyrighted content
• Sexually explicit material
• Impersonation
• Personal and confidential information
• Hate speech
• Regulated goods and services

If you feel that any questions or answers violate one of these policies, you can report the question or the answer.

What else should a business keep in mind when answering questions?

A business should remember that asking and answering questions is not a one-and-done process. Businesses need to make sure that they are regularly replying to any new questions.

Businesses also need to keep in mind that their answers to previous questions can easily become ‘dated.’ For example, if prices or services have changed since you answered the question, then those answers are now dated. Try and keep your answers evergreen, so that the answer can apply year round.

You’ll need to revisit your old answers on a semi-regular basis—for example, when prices change.

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Why should businesses care about this feature?

Google’s Q&A section can take up a considerable amount of space in the local Knowledge Panel and in Google Maps. Because of this, they can earn a good number of eyeballs from people who are looking to learn more about your business and the products and/or services that you offer.

This can either work for or against the business; if the business embraces this opportunity, it can use this space to illustrate popular questions and answers that will allow it to showcase its unique selling points.  

However, if the business fails to embrace this opportunity, the Q&A section could end up full of unanswered questions (a high percentage of which will be customer leads) or, worse still, questions answered inappropriately by random maps users. So, businesses should take care to see that their Q&A section is carefully looked after to keep putting their best foot forward in front of searchers. 

Content from GBP Products and GBP Services can show in their Google Business Profile as well as in the Local Finder.

By adding GBP Products and GBP Services, you provide potential customers with additional information that might help them choose your product or service over a competitor’s. And by adding your products or services you’re directly ‘feeding’ Google details about your organization as a ‘named entity’.

Should I use GBP Products or GBP Services?

Like most things in the world of SEO, there’s no correct answer to this question, and a one-size-fits-all approach is nigh-on impossible to adopt.

However, I’m going to do my very best to equip you with as much knowledge as possible about the pros and cons of both GBP Products and GBP Services so that you can decide if, and how, to implement them for your own or your client’s business.

What are GBP Services?

Google tells us this:

“How the services editor works: In Google Business Profile, you may get an option to add the services that you offer, along with their descriptions. If your business has multiple categories, group services together into sections under the appropriate category to keep your services organised. When local customers search on Google for a service that you offer, that service may be highlighted on your profile. Customers on mobile devices can also find all your services under ‘Services’.”

Google, ‘Add or edit your services‘

Which types of business have access to GBP Services?

If the listing has access to ‘Services’, you’ll find it in the menu when you log into your Google Business Profile dashboard on a desktop:

It also appears in a section on the ‘Info’ tab:

You’ll also find it in the GBP app, in the ‘Overview’, tab when you click ‘View all’:

Where do GBP services show?

GBP services have very limited visibility. They don’t show up as a list of services on a desktop. Like, at all.  

However, on a mobile device, you’ll find the services displayed in a tab labelled ‘Services’ in Google search:

In the Google Maps app, it looks like this:

I’ve noticed that some businesses (for example a coffee shop) have services available as a section in their GBP dashboard but the services tab is not showing on mobile. I don’t know why, or what this means, so watch out for that.

You’ve probably read something about ‘justifications’ on local listings in the SERP. If you haven’t heard of them, I’d recommend reading this post from Joel Headley from way back in 2017, and this 2021 post from Miriam Ellis.

‘Justifications’ do just that: they ‘justify’ a listings presence in the SERP by featuring (and usually bolding) relevant content; indicating that the business will likely meet that searcher’s need and intent.

The interesting news is that ‘services’ recently started to power justifications, like in the example below:

Note that the little blue tick icon also appears for ‘In stock’ justifications, which are powered by local inventory ads.

If you want to try to get your products listed like this, it’s free to add your products via Google Merchant Center.

How do I add my services?

The services dashboard can look quite different, and function quite differently, according to your listing.

Some listings have sections that are defined by the Google Business Profile categories of the listing:

Listings with a service dashboard like this may not add a ‘custom’ category. New services can only be listed if you first select one of Google’s predefined categories:

There exist other dashboards in which the services are added in a more freeform way. Here, the services are called ‘items’ and we see the use of the term ‘section’ rather than ‘category’:

With this services dashboard, you’re not limited by having to place your services menu within sections based purely on Google’s list of categories. I rarely see this dashboard in GBP, so if you have it be aware that at some point it could well be retired.

Another configuration of the services dashboard is when it’s seen for businesses such as plumbers. In August 2019, Joy Hawkins noticed predefined services showing up in the dashboard:

Whatever the configuration of the services menu in your GBP dashboard, you’ll find that you can edit your services in terms of the service name and you can write a description:

If you’re adding services to your listings, I recommend keeping a master spreadsheet to keep track of them. That way you have a record of what you’ve chosen to add and it’ll be easy to see if Google is messing with your data (read on to find out more about how fun that can be).

To make this easier for you, I’ve created a Google Business Profile Products and Services record sheet. Go ahead and make a copy, and add your own services on the ‘SERVICES’ tab.

Huh… why is Google filling up my GBP Services with irrelevant services, or services that I don’t want to list?

Ah Google, always keeping us on our toes!

Uh-oh, look at this:

Wut? Why are these getting auto-populated by Google, and where are they scraping this from? This isn’t new or recent. In fact, it’s been going on for a while:

GMB auto suggesting services taken directly from your website! You can edit/delete as necessary. Check your listings now it seems to be rolling out for some accounts. #localseo #smallbiz @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/d5PQUkiCOX

— Andy Simpson (@ndyjsimpson) February 9, 2021

Worst of all, each time it goes away, it comes right on back.

You’ll need to manually remove the erroneous services if they’re not relevant, so I’d recommend adding a task to ‘check GBP services’ to your schedule for your regular GBP checks.  

How can you stop Google from overwriting the information you’re adding to your Google Business Profile dashboard with data from other sources? Phil Rozek has some excellent advice on how to do this. In summary, make sure that the page that you link to from your Google Business Profile contains all of the information you’d want associated with your GBP listing, in crawlable, clearly-worded text.

Does adding GBP Services scale for business with many locations?

Yep! It can do. Thanks to Krystal Taing for sharing your knowledge on the Local Search Forum.

If you have API access to Google Business Profile, it’s possible to add ‘StructuredServiceItems’ and ‘FreeFormServiceItems’ via the API. You can find more details on this in the ‘ServiceList’ section of the Google Business Profile API documentation.

How can I measure the success or impact of adding GBP Services?

You can’t… well, not easily anyway. GBP Insights doesn’t offer any data specific to the consumption of your GBP Services content, and since they don’t include the option to link to your website, adding UTM tags isn’t an option.  

If you were a real keen bean, you could run a test where for a period of time you include services, and for an equivalent period of time you don’t, and then compare KPIs with and without.

You could check to see if your UTM-parameterized URLs in Google Search Console had more impressions and clicks before or after adding services. 

Obviously there are many factors at play here so you’d need to make sure that your testing was rigorous. Alternatively, you could just use that time to add your GBP Services and be done with it; it can’t hurt!

What is GBP Products?

From the horse’s mouth:

The Product Editor allows merchants to build a presence on mobile and the computer to showcase their products and drive customer interactions. Customers will see a more curated showcase of a store’s products on the Business Profile Products tab on mobile, or the Product Overview module on the computer. Items added through the Product Editor appear in Business Profiles on the computer and mobile version of Google Search.

Google, About Product Editor & Product Catalogue

Google refers to the functionality to add GBP Products via the GBP dashboard as ‘Product Editor and Product Catalogue’, but you’ll most often local SEOs talking about ‘GBP Products’, which is understandable given the labeling of this feature in the Google Business Profile dashboard.

GBP Products allows businesses that don’t have the ability to integrate product feeds via Google Merchant Center to add product inventory manually.

GBP Products has been around since 2018, when Products (Beta) made an appearance in the dashboard of many listings. Since then, this functionality is ‘out of Beta’ ? (I joke because GBP is in a permanent state of Beta) and many businesses will see ‘Products’ in their GBP dashboard.

Where does GBP Products show?

When GBP Products launched, it only showed as a section on mobile devices; desktop had no GBP Products visibility at all. There wasn’t a field in which to link to a product page on your website—there was just a ‘Call’ button that was added to the top of the products field:

GBP Products circa April 2019

These days, GBP Products has great visibility on both desktop and mobile in the business profile, and in Google Maps.

GBP Products has good visibility in the business profile on a mobile

On a desktop, GBP Products appears high up in the business profile, usually just under ‘events’:

You can click on a product to view that product:

And click on ‘view all’ to see all products:

Which types of business have access to GBP Products?

Access to GBP Products is dependent on a listing’s primary category. If you notice that competitors that have access to GBP Products and you don’t, check their primary category. If you share the same primary category but you don’t have access to GBP Products, this could be as a result of a bug last reported in 2020. If this is the case, head over to the GBP support community and ask for some help.

As with many Google Business Profile features, any business in the lodgings or hotel industry gets the short straw and doesn’t have access to GBP Products. This is because Google’s hotel listings are a very different beast to standard listings.

GBP Products is also not available to listings with a primary category related to alcohol, guns, cannabis, gambling and adult entertainment. Let us know if your business doesn’t have access to GBP Products and we’ll add anything new to this list!

What’s the difference between ‘Google Product Posts’ and ‘Google Products’?

Back in 2019, Google Product Posts were separate from GBP Products. If you’d like to learn more about how they were different, you can take a trip down memory lane here.

If you have access to GBP Products, you’ll also see ‘add product in your GBP posts section’:

This is a little misleading, as you won’t be adding a ‘product post’, you’ll instead be populating GBP Products.

If, historically, you added Google Product Posts, you’ll still see this in a Google Products category labeled ‘from Product Posts’:

In summation: there’s no difference between the two any more—they’re both GBP Products, just accessed from different areas in the GBP interface.

How do I add GBP Products to my Google Business Profile?

Many businesses now have access to the GBP Products feature. If you do, you’ll see it here in the GBP dashboard on a desktop…

…or on the info tab here:

Products can also be added via the ‘Posts’ section:

They can also be added in the Google Business Profile mobile app in the ‘Profile’ section in the ‘Products’ tab:

The interface to add products looks like this:

For each product, you need to add the following:

• An image (I recommend 1,200 x 900 pixels)
• Product name (58 characters max)
• A category (choose an existing one or create a new one)
• A product description (1,000 characters max)

When you add your products, I suggest you think about them in the same way that you would if you were setting up an e-commerce website. Ask yourself these questions:

• How many products will I add? 
• Which categories will they sit in? 
• What will I call my categories? 
• What copy will I need to add to describe the product in an appealing and encourage clickthroughs? 
• What images can I use that will show the product in the most enticing format? 
• What will I do if a product goes out of stock?

I recommend planning out your GBP products before you add them, and keeping a record of what you add and when.

As with GBP Services, I recommend using my Google Business Profile Products and Services record sheet to keep all of this data in one place.

I’ve automated UTM tagging for your GBP product URLs in the Google Sheet, but feel free to configure yours differently! If you’d like to learn more, check out my full guide on how to UTM-tag all the URLs in Google Business Profile.

Does adding GBP Products scale for businesses with many locations?

Google tell us this about Google Products:

The Product Editor is for small- and medium-sized individual businesses. All categories of businesses, except for a few verticals, can use the Product Editor to showcase their products to potential customers.

They go on to suggest that larger chains should provide data about the products that they sell, and their availability, through Local Inventory Ads.

It’s currently not possible to manage GBP Products via the GBP API, but I have seen larger chains make use of GBP Products, such as these car dealerships:

What else do I need to know about GBP Products?

I think one of the main things to keep in mind is that these all need manual curation. It’s not a ‘set it and forget it’ job. especially if the URLs change or anything else changes with the product.

It’s not a good experience if they click a link and get a 404 page, or if they click a link and get a 301 to a different page. Redirects can strip out the referral data that’s communicated to Google Analytics via your UTM tags, so that’s a double-whammy of bad news if that happens.

For this reason, for Google Products it’s best to stick with purely listing your ‘evergreen’ products—items that stay in stock and rarely change in terms of pricing or URL location on your website.

Don’t forget that you can also use GBP Products to showcase your services. If your business listing has service offerings rather than physical products, then add those, too. Take advantage of this opportunity to list your services in a format that can link through to your website while also illustrating your unique selling propositions:

According to Allie Margeson, adoption of GBP Products by businesses is low, so by adding GBP Products before your competitors, or by adding products that are better than your competitors, could be your ways to stand out from the crowd and earn those clicks!

Also, is anyone familiar with the overuse of emojis ?? Guilty as charged ?

Unlike Google Products, Google Posts, GBP Services and a lot of other fields in GBP, you can’t use emojis in GBP Products, Google labels them as ‘invalid characters’. Harsh!

How can I rearrange categories and products in GBP Products?

In the olden days, you used to be able to move your categories up and down and alter the order that they appear in the business profile.

However, this is no longer the case. Your business profile’s arrangement is based on how recently a product was added or updated; the product which was updated most recently will show first, the product that was updated before that will show second, and so on.

If you want to change the order of your products, all you need to do is make a small edit, and then Google will change the product order in the business profile:

How can I measure the success of GBP Products?

GBP Insights is barren in terms of reporting on views on GBP Products. It does report on the number of people that ‘visit your website’, but this isn’t granular in the sense that it doesn’t tell you which part of GBP that click came from:

This is why I like to monitor Google Products performance in Google Analytics. If you fully tag up your Google Products with UTM tags, you’ll be able to see their performance here, in the Campaigns report:

The UTM-tagged product URLs won’t register any ‘impression’ data in Google Search Console because of the way that the URLs are served in Google, so sadly you won’t be able to use impressions, clicks or CTR data for your UTM-parameterized product URLs.

If GBP Products and GBP Services got into a fight, who would win?

I’d say GBP Products, hands-down.

GBP Services is certainly not a fierce opponent for GBP Products—you’re not able to link to your website via GBP Services, and at the time of writing, it’s only showing on mobile devices.

But, given that it ‘feeds the machine’ in terms of Google’s understanding of your business entity, and that it could be a conversion factor when it appears as a justification or if a potential customer consumes the services content as they’re browsing, it’s a no-brainer to add it if you have the time and resource.

If it’s easy to add services for your single-location business or a business with a few locations, I’d add them. If you have a multi-location business model, and your service provision is relatively consistent or uniform across locations and therefore easy to scale, then I’d get these added too..

All in all, in many cases GBP Services is a ‘nice to have’ rather than a priority when it comes to optimizing your GBP listings.

What should I do if I have access to both GBP Products and GBP Services?

Add both! I can’t see a problem with that.

It’s a bit like getting two bites of the apple ? (although admittedly the ‘services’ apple is much smaller, and far less juicy).

What are the pros and cons of GBP Products?

GBP Products, in my mind, is a heavyweight feature and a wily competitor to GBP Services, but there are some things you’ll need to keep in mind when you’re using GBP Products.

You Might Not Have Access to Them

Whether or not you have them is dependent on your primary category. I’ve known businesses change their primary category to get them, but since having the correct primary category is thought to be a ranking factor, and that GBP Products is likely purely a conversion factor, I know that personally having the correct primary category trumps having GBP Products.

Your Competitors Probably Aren’t Using Them

At the moment, businesses that are using GBP Products are few and far between. Get ahead of the curve, add your products, and stand out from the crowd while you still can.

You Can Use Them to Add Services

If you are the type of business that doesn’t sell tangible ‘products’ and instead you offer services, you can still use the GBP Products interface to instead showcase your services. Or your USPs. Or something else!

But obviously don’t abuse it—we don’t want Google to take away our toys!

Multi-location Businesses Can Use Them (But They Don’t Scale)

If you’re a multi-location business, or you work with multi-location businesses, the lack of API access makes GBP Products harder to implement, and thus harder to recommend. Google has also stated itself that GBP products added via Products Editor aren’t for larger chains. Chains like these are supposed to use Local Inventory Ads to push products into the SERPS and Google Maps, and Google started moving the merchant feeds for big brands into GBP products some time in 2020.

If you’re a multi-location business (and you’re not already using Merchant Center, or your products aren’t compatible with Merchant Center, or you’re a service-based multi-location that doesn’t have products per se) maybe you could test-run GBP Products across a few highly-trafficked locations to see if they drive revenue and conversions?

If they do, and the return on the investment is credible enough to populate GBP Products at more locations, you could go ahead and do that.

You Can Measure Their Impact in Google Analytics

For the businesses with which I work, GBP products are a definite conversion factor. They drive relevant, qualified traffic to my clients’ websites, and I can prove it with UTM tags and Google Analytics.

In Google Analytics, my clients can all attribute e-commerce revenue, or other on-site conversions, back to clicks that came from UTM-tagged GBP product URLs.  

Wrapping up

So, that’s it for now. We’ve looked at both GBP Products and GBP Services, what they are, where they appear, how to use them, and the relative pros and cons of each.