Google is a pretty popular site these days and is incredibly useful for looking up and learning about the things you need. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. The search engine experiences about 5 billion searches per day. This is the place you’d go online to search for products and services. But optimizing for local SEO […]

Google and Homewyse have formed a partnership to test a feature that displays estimated cost in the local pack in Google Search. The costs presented in the local pack don’t count as ads, as that information is pulled from a third-party. According to a Google Spokesperson, “We strive to surface relevant information that helps people […]

Recently, Google began making the Google Guaranteed badge available to businesses for a monthly, outside of participating in Local Services Ads. The cost of the badge will set you back $50 a month, or $600 a month., and will appear on the local business profile, as well as in the Local Pack. Currently, Google Guaranteed […]

A number of announcements were made during Google’s virtual Search On event on October 15 including how it’ll make search more sophisticated and user friendly. Google is now using its natural language understanding BERT algorithm on almost every query in order for the search engine to better understand search intent. Several of the announcements made during […]

Google is testing ads for local businesses in Google Maps auto-suggest search results. This was noticed by Thibault Adda, a local search specialist at Darden Restaurants on Thursday. This was confirmed by Google as an experiment. A spokesperson said in a statement, “We’re always testing new ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and […]

Google is currently testing a “call history’ feature for Google My Business, and was made to help businesses see and respond to any missed calls that originate from Google Search and Maps. How does call history work? According to Google: When a customer uses the “Call” button on your Business Profile, their calls show up […]

If you have a business and also have a verified Google My Business account, you can now add a Black-owned business attribute to the listings. These, and any other attribute will be highlighted as icons on mobile business profiles. The announcement was made on July 30. Google also announced the inaugural class of the Google for Startups […]

A new feature has been launched for Google My Business, giving local businesses more flexibility with their business hours that reflects ways they are adapting for social distancing as they begin reopening. It’s now possible to set up “more hours” in Google My Business with special time for different things, such as seniors, pick up, […]

One area that Google can dangle over Amazon is Local retail. Because of the COVID-19 restrictions, Google has been giving local businesses more messaging options, including: Special store hours Pickup and delivery options More in Google My Business.  Google has now enabled “Curbside pickup” badges for Local Inventory Ads. The “Curbside pickup” features has been piloted […]

For about five days as of this writing, when a searcher clicks your website URL within your Google Map listing, they receive a “redirect notice” from Google. The notice reads: “The previous page is sending you to [the URL you clicked on],” and then adds, “If you do not want to visit that page, you […]