Small business owners now have a new user friendly way to update their online presence. Google launched a feature that allows Google My Business listings to be managed directly in search results.
When signed into a Google My Business account, you can manage your business listing by simply doing a Google search of the name and location of your business.
You will then see a new inline dashboard that allows you to:
- See the number of people who have visited your listing
- See detailed information about your performance
- Add or correct business information and post updated hours
- Create posts that allow you to update customers on events, news, and other things relevant to your business
- Share photos
- Know when users upload photos of your business
- Quickly take the most important actions to complete and enhance your business listing
- Get suggestions to help you improve your online presence
You can do this through desktop or mobile Google search results.
Google shared some of their own figures on why it’s important to keep your listings up to date (source: searchenginejournal.com):
- More than 80% of people search the web to find local information.
- Businesses with complete listings on Google are:
- Twice as likely to gain customer trust
- 38% more likely to attract in-store visits
- 29% more likely to see a purchase
This new feature is a great solution for individual and small business owners for Google listing management. However, it does not support the needs of multi-location businesses, nor does it include support for other sites such as Facebook, Yelp, and TripAdvisor.
Franchise managers would have to search location by location to make edits. That’s if they are logged into each Google My Business Account.
Add on the hundreds, if not thousands of reviews a large business receives across multiple sites and it’s easy to see that an all-in-one solution is needed. One such solution is the STARS Platform. Successful businesses like Firehouse Subs, Jiffy Lube, and Bar Louie use STARS to manage their online presence and reply to reviews for all top sites in one place.
No matter how many locations you have, it’s important to consolidate your listings to be able to successfully manage information and reply to reviews.
