Google My Business Launches Offer Posts

These have been in Beta for a while but as of today I’m seeing Offer posts on all my listings in Google My Business.

Google Posts Now Accept Videos

You can now add a video to Google Posts.  Google says in their help center:  We accept the following file formats for video: AVI, MP4, MOV, FLV, WMV, MPG, M4V, MKV, M2TS, and MTS. The maximum size for videos is 100 MB.

Google Announces Users Will Need to Pay for Maps API

This change is coming June 11th.  Google says “Beginning June 11, you’ll need a valid API key and a Google Cloud Platform billing account to access our core products. Once you enable billing, you will gain access to your $200 of free monthly usage to use for our Maps, Routes, and Places products. As your business grows or usage spikes, our plan will scale with you.”.  What does this mean for businesses?  If they are using a plugin on their website to generate a map of their location, this will likely stop working on June 11th.  If they are simply embedding a map straight from Google, this shouldn’t be impacted.

[Bug] Google Reviews Go Missing from Profiles

This bug is now resolved but lasted for several days where reviews that a user left were not visible on their profile.

Google Adds to Guidelines for Restricted Content

Google has updated the guidelines for restricted content such as alcohol, gambling & guns and added the following items:

> Content cannot feature calls to action.

> Clarified this applies to products and services that are subject to local legal regulations

> Clarified that images of menus are fine.

> Clarified that images where alcoholic beverages are present but not the main focus are also fine..

Review gating is now against the google my business guidelines

Google has updated the review guidelines to clarify that review-gating is not allowed.  They added the following to their guidelines:

“Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.”

Google My Business Adds Services Field

This is similar to the menu feature that was launched in February but now applies to businesses that offer services.  You can add the name of your service, description, and how much it costs.  It’s not available for all categories and is still rolling out so you will probably see it in some accounts and not others.

Google My Business Adds the Business Description Field

Google has now rolled out the business description feature for Google My Business.

Review Links Can No Longer Pre-Fill Five Stars

This tactic that used to allow you to send a link to customers that would have the 5-stars pre-filled no longer works.  Stan from Pleper confirmed that the links still direct users to the page where they can leave you a review but the 5-stars are not automatically filled in anymore.  This is a great change since this tactic violates Google’s guidelines and has been known to cause businesses using the tactic to lose reviews.

Google Launches Secondary Updates to the Classic GMB Dashboard

Google announced yesterday that they have now split the “updates” to your listing so that you can view the more important updates separately.  Google has defined secondary updates as “non-sensitive” attributes that have been added when the listing owner has not added the value themselves.

Bug: User Contributions Disappeared

All reviews and Questions and Answers from users disappeared.  This is a known bug that was fixed the same day but we have observed that several user’s ability to publish edits was negatively affected as a result.

Algorithm Update

On March 14, 2018 there was a big shift in the search results (both organic and local) which was a tremor from the big update that happened March 9th.  A lot of the changes we saw on March 9 got refined.  In some cases unexplained losses from the 9th update got corrected.

Bug: Google My Business Insights Issue

According to Google: Due to a logging bug, you may see a drop for customer actions and direction requests for March 6-12th. The bug has been fixed but will not be able to backfill this data.

Q&A is Now Visible on a User’s Profile

Google has added a tab for Q&A to a user’s public profile on maps.  This is only visible on the Google Maps app.

Google Starts Showing Ads in the 3-Pack More Often

Previously we were only able to trigger 3-pack ads when the person was searching really close (proximity) to the location.  Now, we’re able to see them for businesses that are nowhere near us.

Restaurants Can Now Add Menu Items Directly in GMB

Now, in addition to using the GMB API or 3P menu service, listing owners will be able to showcase their menu directly on their Google listing for consumers on mobile by adding their own structured menu using the GMB Info tab.

Google Updated the Review Filter

This is a trend several of the Google My Business Top Contributors observed based on several threads where users lost their reviews due to the review filter that ran later in the fall of 2017 and then got them all back at the same time in January 2018.  

Google Posts Now appear on Google My Business Websites

If you have created a Google Website via your Google My Business listing, your Google Posts now appear live in your website.

Google Updates the Review Guidelines

Google changed the wording to clarified that both positive and negative reviews from an employee or competitor are against the guidelines (before it just said negative was).