At the heart of every business are customers.
More importantly, having a way where potential customers can find you online.
Google have helped make the process of customers finding you a little easier with the launch of Google My Business in June.
Google My Business combines all the benefits of Google Places and Google maps but brings everything together in one place. So now you can have one dashboard where you can access and manage everything in place. This includes:
- Your Google Business Listing,
- Google AdWords Express
- Google Plus Business page
- Customer Reviews
- Analytics for your business listing and Google Plus page
- You Tube
Like the former Google places, Google My Business allows you to update your business info, add photos and virtual tours of your business and stay on top of reviews, however with the integration of Google+, it now enables you to share news and events with your fans. Your business will also show up in search, maps and Google+.
If your business has multiple locations, you can upload a spreadsheet with all the location information.
An added benefit of the integration is that you may now potentially be able to change ownership and management of your Google places listing. This was previously almost impossible to do.
Many businesses have different Google accounts and logins for their places listing and Google+ page. It was a massive pain.
The problem was there were no way to change ownership of the Google local listing and merge the two different platforms together easily.
Now you can.
The trick is to change ownership of your Google+plus page to the same email address as your Google+ local page.
Once both platforms share a common owner, you will be able link your Google+ page with your Google+ local page and delete the old account. Any reviews you have accumulated over time will also be merged making the transition seamless.
Now if you don’t to retain that old account that now houses all your Google Business page and listing, it is just a simple matter of changing the page owner back to your preferred Google account and deleting your old account if you no longer use it. It sure beats having to login into multiple Google accounts all the time.
Managing your information on the go is also a lot easier with the addition of Android and iOS web apps.
So why has Google places changed?
According to a recent Google Partner hangout, a key driver of the change was mobile.
Previously, it was difficult to manage your business on the go via mobile. Now its a lot easier.
Another major pain point was that it was not easy to transfer ownership of your Google listing to a new owner without surrendering your Google logins or starting a new listing by scratch (thereby compounding the issue of inaccurate and difficult to update listings. Now its a lot easier to transfer ownership and merge accounts.
If you have ever had the heartache of trying to change your business address details in the past, this integration may provide an opportunity to clean up and resolve any issues once and for all.
Have you made the change yet? We have and are thrilled with the ability to have one login to manage everything in one place.