Blog • More Customers More Sales

1 July, 2019 By margaret ornsby

Beginners Guide to Citations

Introduction

What is a citation?

A citation is any mention of your business out on the web. It can come in various forms and consists of any combination of one or more of the following four items:

Company name
Company address
Business phone number
Website address

Note: It does not matter whether the information links to your website or not.

The accompanying spreadsheets provide links to various sites which contain citations for your business at its current location, and for the new location.

Citations come in various formats, following are examples:

Company name only
Company name & phone number
Company name, phone number, & address
Company name, phone number, address, & link to website
Company name with website address

Why do they matter?

Citations are a basic part of helping your business be found online.

For local businesses (businesses with a shopfront or who work within a service area), citations are a must-have ingredient in your mix. Local SEO is all about “entity signals” – in other words, bits and pieces on the web that confirm your entity (your business) is for real, is where you say it is, and has a good reputation.

Citations play a key role in the overall “findability” of a business – as in, when people are looking for a business in their area. They also create many other avenues for people to find your business and read reviews.

When you want your business in the top 3 or have higher visibility overall, one of the your tasks is to “clean up” (correct the information) and claim your citations.

After claiming a listing, update it to be consistent with Google and other listings. In other words, don’t have your business listed as Fred Nerk Enterprises in one place, Fred Nerks on Google, and Nerk Inc on still another site. Google does tolerate some minor variations, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say to make them all the same.

And that includes the street address, phone number, hours, business categories and more.

One really good thing about business categories on citations is they help search engines better understand your business. Often people will say Google’s categories don’t accurately describe my business. Many citation sites will have the exact category, or even better, allow for a hierarchy of categories.

Where do they come from?

Citations can be found in a wide variety of places – some a business can control, some not. You may have the idea that since you haven’t built any citations yourself, they won’t be there. Unfortunately that’s not the case. And if you haven’t built these yourself, there’s a high chance they will have *wrong* information about your business.

example citation — sample citation with name, address, phone and link to website all included

Examples of sources include:

Yellow Pages™
Yelp
Local business directories (such as TrueLocal, Womo, and lots more)
Industry related websites (such as the Australian Dental Association)
Newspaper articles online
Social Media pages

On the image above (links not active), you can see a citation of a business from the Yellow Pages™. This has all sorts of info about the business including all four key elements. Citations can be this extensive, or completely minimal such as a business name written in a blog post.
[swpm_protected for=”2″ custom_msg=”<i class=”fa fa-exclamation-circle fa-2x” style=”color:#fb2056;background-color:;padding:0px;border-radius:0px;”></i> The remainder of this content is reserved for members”]

Please do the right thing. Do not share this information with anyone. It is provided as part of your package, you’ve paid for it (or gifted it as a way of saying thank you for your business). There are countless hours & years of effort, research and testing to accumulate this information; it is provided for your benefit. And the heavy stuff – it’s copyright protected under Australian Law.

All product names, logos, and brands remain property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this document are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement.

How bits of info about your business can spread without you even knowing

Citation Sites

Citation sites come in many shapes, designs and intents. Very often the sites you’ll be using for citations will be business directories.

Some are fully automated. They scrape the web, collect the information, and then post your business info amongst ads. Their aim is to generate revenue through advertising and they have little/no interest in the quality of your information.

The better ones of these will allow you to claim and manage the information about your business.

Other sites are both automated and tended with loving care. These sites typically offer free listings with the aim of getting business owners to pay for promoted or premium listings.

The diagram demonstrates how sites on the Internet spread information about businesses in the US. Australia and the UK work similarly, with different key sites as part of the network. You don’t need to know this in detail, it’s more important you understand the concept.

Always look for a pre-existing listing on a citation site.

Sites that already have your business listed will be on the spreadsheet. For sites listed that do not have a link to your business, double check before creating a new listing.

Your Spreadsheet

Didn’t receive a sheet? Download my template

The document accompanying this guide contains a list of sites where your business information has been found. When moving or changing significant details about your business, it’s important to people and search engines, that the information they find “out there” on the Internet is consistent.

Your sheet may contain multiple columns: Tier, Domain, Citation Link (URL), login, password and Comment/Link. If it differs, it will be due to customisation specifically for you.

Tier is described below. In a nutshell it indicates the urgency and priority.
Domain is a formula to help you identify duplicate websites and find important sites quickly. No need to enter anything.
Citation link is what you’ll use in your browser to go straight to your listing. If blank, investigate the site to put a listing there.
Login & password are for your records. Some sites use emails, others pseudonyms. This is an important registry to help you manage your online presence, so keep these details up to date.
Comment / Link is where you’ll find important info about this particular citation.
The rest of the columns are up to you – we’ve added the kinds of info we track.

Tiers

Because it’s so easy to scrape or buy data and throw it up on the web, many local business directories started up as a means to generate revenue from onsite advertising, charging businesses for premium listings, passing leads onto businesses, or other “enterprising” means of making money.

Many of these local directories are good and credible, many more are not so much. Several of these sites also gather data and resell it. That’s one reason why you’ll find your business listed on websites you’ve never heard of before.

Tier 1 – most important and most urgent
Tier 2 – important, do soon
Tier 3 – average, can work through over time
Tier 4 – low quality site :-irrelevant, not geographically appropriate, too many ads, absolutely full of spam / fake listings, no way to update

Quality / quantity

More is not better. Quality & relevance over quantity.

Some people believe more is better when it comes to citations. That used to be true. Experience has shown quality counts over quantity. The list we’re providing you with is comprehensive, and may include some sites which are not as beneficial to your online footprint as you might like. Nevertheless, it helps for you to know your business is there.

You don’t need to do the whole spreadsheet at once. Do the whole top tier first (Tier 1), then work your way through Tier 2 over a week or two, then the Tier 3 over 3 -6 weeks. Tier 4’s are sites where there should be no harm in asking for your listing to be removed.

If you see a listing on a website that looks of poor quality (hard to navigate, looks cheap or covered in ads to the point you find it hard to find your info on the page), feel free to check back in with me about it.

If it’s a low-quality site you may want to ask your SEO to “disavow” any links from this domain for you IF your SEO can determine the site is a low quality site.

Claiming a Listing

Emails to use

For your own protection, contact these sites using an email that is associated with the domain of your website. This helps reduce listing hijacking. Yes, that’s a thing…

Create a second one just for managing the Tier 2 & 3 citations. Use your primary business email for the Tier 1’s.

If a second email isn’t possible, then use a gmail account.

The reason I ask you to create a second email for Tier 2 & 3 is that some of those sites are full of self-importance. They spew out automated messages, seeming to need to hear frequently how good they are for you. Others will try to convince you they can build the perfect website for you that will make gold rain from the sky.

Emails from the Tier 1 citations tend to be more important (such as the Google listing) and usually are important! As well, the Tier 1 sites tend to give you options about the type and frequency of messages you receive.

Examples of emails:

Tier 1 – info@yourdomain.com
Tier 2&3 – listings@yourdomain.com OR yourdomain@gmail.com.
Record and remember your passwords!

Claiming / Adding a citation

If you have the opportunity to claim the citation, do so by following the instructions on the webpage.

Typical phrases sites use to let you add complementary listings include “add your business”, “add listing” and so on. Typically, these are in the very top or very bottom of the web page.

Typical phrases to let you claim the listing include “is this your business” or “claim this listing”. Usually you find the link near the name & address.

Most will ask you to sign in to claim it. More on this in a bit.

Verifying Claimed Listings

Many sites want some form assurance they’re dealing with the business owner. That’s why using an email associated with the website domain is strongly recommended.

Most citation sites that require verification will allow you to do everything via email. The very top ones often require phone calls. Those services will call the phone number on the business listing and provide a verification code that you then type in. These include: Apple, Bing and Yelp. Sometimes these codes are time sensitive, so set aside a block of time to do these all in one go.

Sensis (Australia)

Yellow Pages™ do everything over the phone if you’re a paid advertiser. If you’re using one of their free listings, you may have to become a paid advertiser for a short time to get anything done. This is a critical and key citation for Australian businesses, so it’s important the information here is correct. And unlike other parts of the world, the YP online are still a good source of clients for many businesses.

Google

Google’s verification process is very often by postcode, and takes around two weeks. If you’re in a regional area it seems to take anywhere from 2-5 weeks. If it takes 5 weeks, the card will have expired and you will need to start again or contact Google Support.

Occasionally a listing will be able to be verified via Search Console or even more rarely by phone. Your Google listing may display in the local pack before it’s verified, but you won’t be able to respond to reviews or keep the information updated.

One more important note about Google verification process. Once you request the postcard, don’t do anything with the listing until the postcard arrives and you’ve entered the code. If you edit the listing while the postcard is in transit, it voids the verification code and you have to start the process all over again.

Citation Information

Nothing needs changing

If everything about your business listing correct including taglines, business hours, description and any other details possible. Mark as complete in the spreadsheet.

Logins needed to update information

Try not to use the social media login shortcut many of these sites offer, as it gives them access to information about you and your business they don’t need to know. Instead use your primary or secondary email, depending on the Tier level.

Updates often take weeks or months to get processed, so marking these as In Progress allows you to check on them periodically.

No logins needed to update information

If you do not need any type of login to change the information, change or add as needed. Sometimes this will be in the shape of an online completion form.

If verification is needed from the tech team, they will email you at the listings email you give them. You will be checking that email for the verification that it’s been changed.

Once done, note that one the sheet and mark as In Progress.

Only phone number belongs to your biz

If you come across a citation that doesn’t belong to you but has your phone number – change the info for that other business if possible (or alert that website that this is false and give them the correct phone) and make a whole new business listing on that site for yourself.

Duplicate entries

Sometimes a site will have more than one listing for the same business – typically it will be due to a variation in name or address. Claim & edit one, request the duplicate be deleted.

Delete listing

There are a few instances the best course of action is to ask the citation be deleted from their site. If in doubt, mark on sheet and feel free to ask us.

The site may require you to fill out an online form or you may need to email them directly if you can find an email address on the site somewhere.

Examples:

Any site that won’t let you sign up via email and only lets you sign up via a social media network fails the quality test.
Sites with no way to login, change or request information to be updated.

Citations in Progress

Check on the In Progress listings once a month. If there’s no progress at the first 30 days, send an email inquiring as to the progress if you find a contact form. Repeat for the second month if needed.

If the site doesn’t update or communicate back within 3 months AND it’s not a key citation site, include it in the “disavow” list. Mark those citations as complete.

Once an In Progress site has updated the listing as requested, mark it as complete in your spreadsheet.

Apple Maps

If you don’t already have an Apple ID (yourname@icloud.com) account, you’ll be asked to create one.

This listing is important from a navigation perspective. While Apple Maps was initially very poor, the app has improved dramatically and is used more and more by iPhone users.

Bing Places

If you don’t already have a Microsoft account, you’ll be asked to create one.

Yelp

Depending where you are and what your industry is, Yelp can seem critical or like a waste. Even if you’re sure none of your customers or potential customers will ever see you on Yelp, you need to create or claim this listing. Yelp feeds Apple Maps, Bing Places, and a few other key sources around the web.

No Spreadsheet?

If you’ve come to the article without a spreadsheet provided, this information is still for you! The only difference is you’ll need to do the legwork and fill out your own version of the template you can find here ->

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LJnYd-gqcDOHNQLWcwhQODVCrJ6h_LtgbSnEOlOIe2o/edit?usp=sharing

Below is a list of sites I recommend as a minimum.

Country	Site Brand	Link
Australia	YellowPages	https://www.sensis.com.au/sensis-free-listing
Australia	TrueLocal	https://www.truelocal.com.au/#
Global	Yelp	https://biz.yelp.com	change domain to reflect country - eg Australia=.com.au, UK=.co.uk
Australia	Womo	https://www.wordofmouth.com.au/users/new_with_business
Global	Apple Maps	https://mapsconnect.apple.com/
Global	Bing	https://www.bingplaces.com/
Global	Facebook	https://www.facebook.com/
Global	Foursquare	http://business.foursquare.com/
Global	Google My Business	https://business.google.com
Global	Industry / Professional Association
Global	LinkedIn	https://au.linkedin.com/
Global	Local Council/ Chamber Commerce
Australia	Local Search	https://www.localsearch.com.au/
Australia	SuperPages	http://www.superpages.com.au/users/signup/4
UK	Yell	http://www.yell.com/
UK	Thomson Local	https://www.thomsonlocal.com/product/freelisting
Global	TripAdvisor	http://www.tripadvisor.com	change domain to reflect country - eg Australia=.com.au, UK=.co.uk
UK	Scoot	https://www.scoot.co.uk/add-listing

A more exhaustive list of suggested sites can be found here: https://whitespark.ca/top-local-citation-sources-by-country/. I generally would recommend only their top 20 in any list.

Be mindful of what you read earlier – more is not better. Be choosy (if you’re a plumber or real estate agent, why would a site like TripAdvisor be relevant for you).

Another way to find good citation sources is to “google” your competitors. Do this with 4-6 in your region. Look down the list of sites in the organic listings and make a note of the sites. Keep track of how many times that site comes up in your searches. From that list pull the top 20 and add to your spreadsheet.

Clearing an old business out

If you’re moving premises and another business has been there before you, chances are their business will have citations as well. If search engines find two businesses listed at the same place, the older business is likely to be considered a safer bet to display to searchers.

Previous business gone out of business

If the premises belonged to a business that has gone out of business, then the previous owner has zero motivation to clean up”the old data. In that instance, you get the “pleasure” of tracking their listings down and reporting the business as closed on all the sites.

It’s important to do this so search engines and people don’t have conflicting information about which business is at the physical location.

Previous business moved

If you’re able to contact the owner, encourage them to update their data, as it will only serve to help them in their new location.
If they don’t understand or can’t be bothered, then you get the job. It’s nice if you update their listing to the new details, but not required.

A word about Sensis (in Australia)

Sensis is a huge organisation with multiple brands under its belt. Data that comes from one source can be spread across multiple sites. That can be a problem if the data is incorrect.

Sites that can be good for citations or marketing that also fall under the their banner include:

True Local (only site you can set up and maintain the listing entirely)
Whereis
Whitepages
Yellow Pages

A Final Note (or two)

Citations might seem overwhelming and confusing at first. Every site has its own way of going about things, and every site has its own design. Take your time, be patient with yourself, and feel free to leave one and come back to it later. Sometimes it seems “that wasn’t there when I looked yesterday!” – it’s OK, it happens to everyone.

After a while you realise they’re more tedious than anything.

Examples of Claim Options

Site header

Footer links

In page links/buttons

Note: Many sites show the option to claim a listing, even if it has already been claimed. You get to find out which ones the hard way.

Keep your sheet!

You may not have realised in the process of fixing your citations, you’ve created an asset for your business. You’ve created a registry of where your business is found online.

You have also likely created a registry of sites where customers leave reviews.

Should you ever move locations, use this list to update your business info to your new location.

This sheet now becomes a living document, one you can refer to regularly. As new mentions for your business are found, simply add them to your list.

This registry also would be something you would hand over to a new owner should you sell your business.

The not-so-pretty truth

Cleaning up and creating citations is tedious and time consuming. There, I said it.

The truth is it’s not anyone’s favourite job. However, this is the sort of task you can do in bits and pieces and over time. The faster you do it the better, but you don’t *have* to try to do it all in a day or a week.

You can pay people to do it, but be wary. If the deal is cheap, then they will be using one of two things:

Automation – OK to a point. Not typically my preferred option unless the volume is huge and the budget just isn’t there to do this manually and properly. Even then I reserve the automation to some of the level 2 & any 3 Tier citations. Level 1 is just too critical to rely on a machine getting this right. As well, some services have gotcha’s if you choose not to pay month after month, year after year.
Cheap Labour – attention to detail is not their forte. They make mistakes it can be nigh-on impossible to fix some of them.

If you’re on a tight budget, do what you can manually yourself. That’s why I published this guide.

If you get part of the way through this and simply cannot bear another minute of doing this yourself, let me know and I’ll get one of my team to help.

Send me an email with a couple of options for when you’d be free to have a chat. You can ask me questions about anything that’s not making sense, or needing help with a site or two.
[/swpm_protected]

5 June, 2019 By margaret ornsby

How to Link to a Specific GMB Question & Answer block

Ever wondered how to link to Google’s Question & answer block on your Google My Business listing? You might do it to

It’s not simple, but it is easy. It gets a little technical, so I’ll break the URL down in to steps.

Let’s do this with business named Australian Ugg Boots P/L and they’re in Braeside.

Go to a Google search, and type in the business name. Or business & location, if needed. You’re aiming to get the knowledge panel for that biz to display.
The URL will be long. Google makes its search results URLs complicated by putting in a bunch of info not needed for the query itself. Much of the “junk” in the URL is for Google’s own use. It includes things like the browser, version, language and so on. https://www.google.com/search?q=Australian+Ugg+Boots+P%2FL+braeside&oq=Australian+Ugg+Boots+P%2FL+braeside&aqs=chrome..69i57.2787j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
The first part of the URL will always be
https://www.google.com/search?q=
and the second part will always be the search phrase you entered
Australian+Ugg+Boots+P%2FL+Braeside
(a + separates each word and the “/” is converted into ASCII as a %2FL). The entire rest of the URL is not needed for our purposes.

Click on the See all questions link
You may notice Google has just added #d,2 to the end of your URL.
Click on the specific question and you’ll see the #d,2 has been changed to a #lpqa=d,3,a,AIe9…dbS.
This brings up the Q&a box for a specific question. The question is at the top, followed by all answers. The AIe9…dbS is a unique number for that specific Question and answers. The long string of numbers and letters is 140 characters. It is different for each Q&a.

Copy and paste the URL into a document and strip out everything past the first query and up to the #lpqa

So putting the pieces together, you to give a link to a client, you’d use:
https://www.google.com/search?q=business+name+location#lpqa=d,3,a,uniqueid

URL parameters to add to your query for Google’s Question & answers:

#lpqa=a,,d,1 create a question box for a listing
#lpqa=d,2 see all questions
#lpqa=d,3,a,AIe9...dbS see the Q&A box for a specific question. The question is at the top, followed by all answers. The specific Q&a box id is 140 characters long, and made up of numbers and letters both uppercase and lowercase..

26 April, 2019 By margaret ornsby

Customer Review Links – Finally! No CID or PlaceID needed

Up until now, Google has made it ridiculously hard for businesses to give customers a link to write reviews for their Google listing. You needed an easy way to invite customers to leave reviews.

Google’s Answer for years has been to manually create a link for customers to write reviews¹

Google’s own documentation suggests two ways:

Copying the link from search. The resulting link is too long to put on a business card or letter, and scary looking if you put it in an email. OR
Go to one of their tools, do a search for your business, grab the number out of the tool and paste it on the end of another URL. If you’ve ever tried copy & pasting on a mobile phone, you’ll know just why this option is horrid. Add to that, if the business is a service area business (someone that only comes to your home or business to provide a service) Google’s tool won’t return the PlaceID number.

Based on the number of times we would get questions from people asking for their CID or PlaceID in the forums, it was clear Google’s tool method was not a good option. My guess is most folks used to take the long link from search and use Google’s now defunct URL shortener to come up with something to give to clients.

Business owners who wanted to give a short and sweet web address had to devise their own work-arounds to make it easy for customers.

Fortunately, Google has heard the feedback and have just released a new feature on Google My Business listings called “short name”.

Short Name = g.page/

This new web address (URL) enables each business to create a unique Local Vanity URL for each listing. Bear in mind, this is intended for smaller businesses with fewer locations rather than franchises or businesses with lots of locations.

Short names are only available for verified listings.

The short name does not replace either the CID approach (https://www.google.com/maps?cid=1083889242972429966) or the PlaceID approach (https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJlWh8xzxs1moRjh49F4a_Cg8). Both of those methods still work, and will continue to work along side the g.page link.

At time of writing, this feature is rolling out to both Android & Desktop.

Short name endpoints

An endpoint is the destination target element of the GMB listing. Thinking of your listing, you might have a reason to direct people to your reviews, reservation feature, photos, appointments, and so on.

g.page/shortname/review – open up to a “write a review” box.
g.page/shortname/reserve – only available if you’re using a 3rd party “reserve with Google” partner, and your industry is restaurants, health or beauty.

As this feature rolls out, the range of options is expected to grow.

Choosing your Google short name

Keep your short name simple so you can easily promote it, and customers can remember it.

Google allows you to choose your own custom name for your business. It is not dependent on your GMB listing name, however Google will recommend your biz name.

To pick a unique short name, try to use words that represent your business name, brand, location, or other description. For example, you can use your business name with your location, like your city or neighbourhood.

There is no specific ‘right’ to names, unless there is a legal matter. Remember these short names are global, so just because you may have legal rights to the name in your country, it’s unlikely you’ll have rights everywhere on the planet.

Names can be 5-32 characters in length. There are no rules for acronyms, and each location gets just one unique name. If you do have multiple locations, it makes sense to use a combination of your chain name + location. Google is working on the right experience for medium to large chains. For now, listings have to claim names individually. Bulk editing may come later.

Because these are not officially being indexed, keyword stuffing your short name doesn’t make a lot of sense. (I say officially because I can find thousands of URLs that are indexed.) Keyword stuffing is also against the guidelines, so you could end up with your listing suspended.

The short name gets quickly turned into a maps link when your customers use it.

Google also says the links are not case-sensitive, but if you want to make the URL easier to read, you can use caps to help separate words for humans. For example: g.page/ShortName/ is the same as g.page/shortname/.

For the technically minded, be aware the URL has a 302 redirect, meaning no link juice or ranking benefit.

Changing your short name

You can change your local vanity URL up to 3 times in 12 months. You can’t update an existing one, only create a new variation on that name.

Don’t take this lightly, there are repercussions. If you change your custom name, the short name turns into a Google search. Eg: https://www.google.com/search?q=shortname.

HOWEVER

- If you’re using an endpoint such as “/review/”, a changed vanity URL will turn into 404. That’s not a good user experience.
- If you change a short-name, the old name stays out in the “register” for a period of time and is not usable by others. Am checking with Google on how long that is supposed to be in quarantine, as testing shows it’s weeks and still counting.
- If you change a short name, there is no “redirect” option to move people along with your change. The URL simply malfunctions.
- There may be times when the short name is not removed if not deemed as abusive. Google recommends you choose another name.
- You can have only have one (1) short name, and it cannot be transferred.

Who can change the name?

Listing owner, managers & site managers. Communication between the parties will be key to keeping any naming conventions intact.

Tracking the vanity URL

Google are not including visit use information in GMB Insights, unfortunately.

Close examination of the final URL reveals Google has inserted tracking codes on the base URL. The source is defined as coming from g.page. It doesn’t, however, have a source if the URL has an endpoint.

Still, it would be useful if they did extend the tracking to all URL’s. As the feature expands, I can see value in knowing if people are using the link for reviews, maybe photos, appointments, or any other element.

Play Nice

Use this where it makes sense, and how it makes sense. Remember this system belongs to Google and they can suspend the link, the listing, or the whole account, depending on the circumstances.

Google’s Announcement > Pilot launch: Short names on your Business Profile
Google’s Documentation > Create a short name & URL for your business
For legal issues, like copyright or trademark disputes, submit a report here

1 – source: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7035772

26 February, 2019 By margaret ornsby

Google testing a new layout for “People also search for”

Is Google helping drive customers AWAY from your business?

First time I’ve seen “People also search for” in this spot. Not a fan of the placement. Perhaps if a business has a rating of 1 after so many reviews Google is trying to make it even more obvious you should consider a different business. pic.twitter.com/9LaXLHUq4s

— Tom Waddington (@tomwaddington8) February 23, 2019

Why the layout matters

The old layout shows the People also search for section at the bottom. That gives viewers a chance to see the score on other review sites as well as extracts from your reviews. If you’re truly doing a terrible job, chances are the Reviews snippets and the Reviews from the web will be relatively consistent.

However, if you’re being targeted for some reason, those other sections of the knowledge panel really matter. Being targeted is a terrible thing. Some targeting is by trolls, some will be negative review campaigns by competitors, and others are by extortionists.

And it’s when they’re not consistent that Google is doing customers and your own business a huge disservice.

Looking at this Tony & Guy listing, if it were to show with the new display, I’d completely miss the bigger picture. Most folks would be inclined to click away to the next salon, simply because People also searched for shows above the Reviews from the web as well as the Reviews snippets.

The test display would not readily show the vast imbalance of 12 Google reviews vs the 421 on Salon Spy.

Google’s new People also search for can work against you and customers.

And now Google is testing a new People also search for layout which seemingly encourages people to check out your competition. While aiming to improve the customer experience, I fear all too often they’re helping send perfectly good businesses to the wall.

Every day businesses are losing thousands of dollars in potential revenue due to negative reviews. Many lose so much they simply don’t survive -> Review Scam That Targets Photographers

So much for wisdom of the crowd.

Why I’m Not Yet Recommending Google’s Messaging Service

Messaging in Google My Business = #Fail

Google is throwing a lot of effort at the GMB product, adding new features and making the knowledge panel the source of info customers need. In November of 2016, Google piloted a feature called Google Messaging. Then in June rolled this out further but not world wide.

On the surface, it looks good and has some endearing aspects:
1) Free messaging service
2) Integrates with Google My Business
3) Gives you one more Google-based point to help Google understand the nature of your business.
4 ) One more way you can to make it easy for people to contact you.

The reasons to use Google Messaging are strong.

I know I’m going against the grain here. Most articles I read about this feature are positive and recommend businesses use it. I have found it buggy as h*ck. My maths say the product is well over a year old and in my testing, the product is still behaving like it’s in beta.

To be clear, the primary problems are not the delivery of the messages between the customer and business. The problem is in the indication of the messaging.

Following are a handful of scenarios & results. The test base was small – just three Android phones with differing versions of operating systems. Two were Samsung Galaxy S5’s, one a cheap unknown brand (the kind you buy for your kids to take to school.) We used a mix of logged-in and not logged-in users, and accounts that had no prior contact with the listing before.

We didn’t try any other devices. I felt I had enough information with just these tests to form my recommendation.

UPDATE April 2019 – While I can’t give you specifics due to an NDA, I can say Google are aware of these issues (and more). It may be a while, but at least this is on their radar 🙂

Customer messages you & your Google My Business (GMB) app is not open

The phone will display a popup message for a second-ish, then the popup fades and goes away. The only indication you have at a glance then is the tiny icon at the top left of your screen.
- Arrow A = GMB notification. This, BTW, is the exact same “not urgent” indicator seen when Google tells me my post is about to expire.
- Arrow B = The GMB app. No notification indicator here – compare with the messages icon below telling me there are 7 unread messages.
If the app is open and not on the customers messages tab, the GMB app gives no obvious indicator you have an unread message. Except, of course, for the quick popover and the little icon in the upper left corner mentioned first.
If the app is open and is on the customer messages tab, the GMB app may not display the incoming message until you move to another screen in the app and come back. This only happened once, so this might have been a one-time thing and we simply fluked the timing.
The app sometimes displays a message promising the customer they will receive a notification when the vendor replies
Depending on the model of phone, some customers will see the message feature button on the standard maps display of the business. Others will have to click through to get the full information panel before they see the button.
The messages can be delayed in coming through, by quite a lot compared to SMS. If you’re using this feature, I recommend getting your customer off the chat and onto the phone as quickly as possible.
Your welcome message (below) sometimes displays in customer’s chat streams, other times not.
Notifications were seemingly randomly sent again days and then weeks later about a particular incoming message. It only happened with one, and I don’t know why.

Step 1 – turn on messages

Step 2 – edit welcome messages

Step 3 – default message

Step 4 – custom welcome message. Note – limited to 120 characters.

You message the customer

Their phone will display a Google message popup notification for a split second. Then the popup fades and goes away. That assumes the customer doesn’t have notifications turned off. And there are numerous ways those messages can be switched off by accident or design.
The only indication they then have is the tiny icon at the top of the screen. We did see that icon not turn on in our testing. Argh.
There is no indicator (as described above) of an unread message on the Maps app icon. The only place they’ll see an indicator is the “for you” icon at the lower right of the screen once you’re in the Maps app. If customers tap on that, their phone may or may not have an indicator to check their messages via the hamburger menu.
All this seems to get worse with anonymous users (people not signed into their google account on their phone). The only way they’ll know you responded is
- if they stay in or go to the chat stream, or
- happen to notice the popup, or
- swipe down to view the notifications.
If the customer’s phone goes to the lock screen, I didn’t see any notification at all. This wasn’t just a phone setting or account basis, it was across the board.

Other notes about Google Messaging

The messaging feature can only be used by a business from within the GMB app on a mobile device. You can see messaging is active in the GMB dashboard, but can only read or respond to messages from GMB app. Turning it on and off also requires the app.

Because this is happening on a mobile, nearly instant response is critical for this channel to work well.

This feature could work well for some businesses. Two types of businesses come to mind – ones that can have someone dedicated to the GMB app (perhaps a social media person who’s also managing the twitter feed / FB chat / live chat) or businesses who do not need to provide fast responses to their customers. Even if you don’t need to give a prompt response, you’re still taking a risk because you cannot be sure your customer’s message or reply are seen.

If yours is the kind of business that needs a live-chat on your website, I definitely wouldn’t recommend it.

If you don’t need it, then you do need the discipline to check your phone regularly.

Unless and until this app is made to behave consistently, across all devices, and provide better real-time notification of incoming messages, I worry this feature is destined for the dustbin.

It’s a real pity, there is so much potential.

UPDATE: 11 February 2019 –
From Joy Hawkins
Recently I told a client to set up the GMB messaging feature by downloading the GMB app (since I can’t set it up for him). He did but never got the test message I sent him, despite the button being on the listing and not giving me, as the user, any type of error message.

I asked Google about it at LocalU and they told me that this is a known issue with any listing that is in a Google My Business account with location groups.

https://www.localsearchforum.com/threads/google-my-business-messaging-issue.53853/

So yet one more reason not to enable this feature for your business or your clients.

27 April, 2018 By margaret ornsby

Google Business Descriptions

“A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff”
– Dr Who (tenth)

If you have had a local business for a while, you may remember the days of Google Places and Google Business descriptions. Even if you haven’t, this “new and improved” version of business descriptions is worth getting to know.

As I’ve written about another aspects of the Google My Business listings (reviews from the web in the Knowledge Panel), they’re baaack.

As previously, badly written business descriptions on Google listings (spammy, keyword stuffed, etc), will work against business owners / SEO agencies trying to game the ranking algorithm for local packs. This time around, Google has implemented a few new rules and filters to try to reduce the rubbish.

The basics are this:

Enter a brief description of your business—what you offer, what sets you apart, your history, or anything else that’s helpful for customers to know. Focus primarily on details about your business instead of details about promotions, prices, or sales. Do not include URLs or HTML code, or exceed 750 characters in the description field. For the full list of guidelines, read Business description guidelines.

I am encouraging my clients to fill in their business description. Google’s business description goes in the section “from your business name” and appears below your reviews on both the Knowledge Panel on search, and on Maps. It is *not* the same as the very brief summary Google creates and shows beneath the business name & review stars.

knowledge panel display — Google’s Knowledge Panel display

google maps display — Google Maps display

It’s also important to remember the description does not publish immediately. Google does advise it may take up to 3 days to appear. Sites I’ve tested took under 24 hours.

There is a little more to it though. There’s the obvious banning of naughtiness you’d expect – things like no: misleading customers, sexually explicit content, child exploitation, profane or hateful language, harassment / bullying language, sale of prohibited goods, terrorist activities, etc.

One thing that may trip up the average person is

No focus on special promotions, prices and offer sale. Examples of content not allowed include, “Everything on sale, -50%, and “Best bagels in town for $5!”.

(Beats the heck out of me how Google are going to enforce that last one. They’re pretty lousy at detecting outright spam in other places. But I digress…)

Oh, and one important thing to note – don’t stuff it full of keywords, thinking you can influence the rankings. Google learned the last time – descriptions are not included in the ranking algorithm.

1 March, 2018 By margaret ornsby

Google Adds Menu Items Link

Google Announces Menu Items Link on Google My Business Dashboard

UPDATE:

Google has now rolled out this feature to services businesses. Think dentist, marketing agency, lawyer, nutritionist, and even a singing teacher! Depending on your category of business, the link will say either “menu” or “services”.

Google has added another information-rich feature to the Google My Business information panel. This one adds functionality aimed mainly at restaurants, cafes, deli’s and the like. You now have the ability to add and edit your own menu items in the info tab of your dashboard.

appointment & menu biz type — appointment option

services menu — services business version of “menu”

Depending on the category of business, you may see no menu link, a menu link, or a menu link and menu item link (plus or minus a few variations), or a “service” link (essentially a menu of services). If you’re a restaurant or cafe type business, you will now see a link to add menu items (3rd).

You’ll see the new feature in the dashboard only if the listing is not currently connected to a third party provider. The 3rd party providers often have their own menu schema around your menu items, and Google does not want conflicting information about your menu.

You’ll see the output of this effort in search, when someone types in your restaurant name and the word “menu”. On a desktop display you’ll see a box at the top of the search results, with tabs for the varying menus.

Why does this menu item link matter?

This new feature is best suited to businesses that do not have a someone to implement restaurant structured data on your menu on your website. If you aren’t sure what structured data means, then this is probably for you!

You’ll see the new feature in the dashboard only if the listing is not currently connected to a third party provider. The 3rd party providers often have already placed structured data around your menu items, and Google does not want or need that additional info. It also restates the importance of having your menus with those services accurate and up to date!

Here’s what it looks like

You’ll see the result of this effort in search, when someone types in your restaurant name and the word “menu”.

On desktop, the menu can only be displayed (for both restaurants and service businesses) by adding the word “menu” after the name of the business. So it isn’t exactly desktop friendly. But ultimately, it’s not designed for desktop – remember Google is all about products for mobile.

On mobiles, the menu displays automatically –

GMB Menu Item Features

140 characters for the menu section (eg breakfast, lunch, dessert, etc). This is helpful with sections such as Children’s menus, as they often need additional description space for complimentary drinks & desserts.
140 characters per menu item for the tile
1,000 characters per menu item for the description (can anyone say “just because you can doesn’t mean you should”?)

When setting this up, you must add at least one item per menu section.

One thing I found is you can flick back and forth between the items, and it doesn’t lose the content. This is handy for copying and pasting meal descriptions between menu sections.

Once you enter your menu items, the items may go through an approval process before they’re published. You may see a “pending” message on your listing, yet nothing showing on the information panel with a “pending” notice. I suspect this is a little bit of sloppy coding that will be picked up as the feature matures.

GMB Menu Item Limitations

This feature is currently for Food Establishment type businesses only.
Text shows in a block. You cannot list items on a line-by-line basis; quite inconvenient if your menu item is a multi-course meal and you want to separate each course to its own line
There’s no place to add the “fine print” – the small items like BYO, tipping, surcharge, per scoop, etc.
No images of the individual menu items – this is text only
Like Google Posts, there’s no text formatting available (no bold, italics, etc)
Displays in English only at this stage.
No currency symbol displays with the number, and the number is in dollars format. This could lead to the wrong impression entirely about your business.
No price range – this is particularly important for services businesses. So for now, I recommend service businesses skip prices.

Troubleshooting

If your listing is currently displaying an incorrect menu, contact support, as this often requires manual intervention to correct.

20 December, 2017 By margaret ornsby

Three Key Changes to the Google Review Guidelines

In mid December, Google quietly rolled out an upgrade to the customer reviews filtering algorithm. It was intended to take out a lot of review spamming that has been going on.

Around the same time, Google also quietly removed the old Google My Business Reviews Policy page, making much of the reviews guidelines part of the Google Maps content policy.

The new review guidelines include a broader range of no-no’s, all of which are common sense. There are the usual suspects such as no hate speech, no adult content, no confidential info, no copyrighted or illegal content, etc.

Subtle but significant changes to the guidelines

1. Former/current employees are no longer able to leave reviews

This is finally explicit. Not having this clear has caused a fair bit of frustration when a former employee gets the sack, leaves a horrid review and then Google refused to take it down. If you’ve ever been in this situation, sing out and let’s try to get that resolved.

2. Don’t offer or accept money in exchange for reviews

This is a confusing change, as the old guidelines stated “Don’t offer or accept money, products, or services to write reviews for a business” . This version specifically says just money in one article. Yet Google keeps the more broad wording incentives, in another help article.

So does this vaguery mean discounts and other inducements are OK? Depends on the overriding law of the land.

If you’re in Australia the ACCC guidelines state:

Incentives should only be offered in exchange for reviews of your business (its products or services) if:

incentives are offered equally to consumers likely to be complimentary[sic] and consumers likely to be critical, and positive and negative reviews are treated the same

the reviewer is expressly told that the incentive is available whether the review is positive or negative

the incentive is prominently disclosed to users who rely on affected reviews.

In the US, the FTC isn’t as detailed in its offering of guidance, but follows along the similar lines.

If there is a material connection between an endorser and an advertiser, that connection should be clearly and conspicuously disclosed unless it’s already clear from the context of the communication.

So after that, I’d still say even though the wording is changed, it’s not really a change.

3. Don’t solicit reviews from customers in bulk

This one is also concerning, because there isn’t clarity about what “bulk” constitutes. Logically you’d say don’t email out 200 customers a day and get 10 reviews in a day and expect any of them to stick. While that makes sense, we’re wondering how Google will determine whether something is a “bulk”.

Is it a link in an email that gets used “too frequently”?
If so, is it then the click of the link that sets the trigger or the review left by using the link?
If you happen to be using Gmail or Google Apps for your mail, know that Google follows links in emails (we tested it). So a another option could be the number of times that link gets known to Google.
Is it the volume of reviews left based on historical trends? If that’s the case, then how does a business get started? I’ve seen Google wipe a handful of reviews for a business that took a couple of months to accumulate. The listing had been around for awhile, and the business owner “woke up” to the importance of reviews. That’s good right? Maybe not so much – you can imagine the frustration of getting the reviews and then having them wiped overnight.

My advice in with reviews is to start slowly, build naturally.

Offer multiple options (website, google, facebook, yelp, etc).
Start with a handful of invitations a day or week, and work your way up to a larger number over a period of several weeks. If your business is seasonal, let the volume be reflective of the seasonality of your business.

4. Missing: mention of kiosks

(#4 here because despite it’s appearance, #2 isn’t really a change)

In the older guidelines Google had expressly stated

If you’re a business owner, don’t set up review stations or kiosks at your place of business just to ask for reviews written at your place of business.

The “new” guidelines don’t mention kiosks. Nevertheless I still believe they’re a no-go because of this wording on the Get Reviews on Google page:

Let them know that it’s quick and easy to leave business reviews on mobile devices or desktop computers.

And we know historically, Google checks the devices where reviews are written. If it sees multiple reviews from the same device, it filters them out.

Local Guides

Local guides in particular are incentivised to add photos and longer text in reviews.

If you find your listing suddenly receiving more reviews than usual and you’re not sure why, check to see if it’s coming from Local Guides. If it is, double check the photos. We’re seeing a rise in the amount of photo spam coming from fake LG profiles, often associated with reviews.

Links to key articles about reviews & review content

(now spread between Maps and GMB support documentation)

This article summarises the most significant changes to the guidelines, and intended to cover the vast majority of situations with a fairly quick read. Joy Hawkins has already done a good post about the nitty gritty details.

31 August, 2017 By margaret ornsby

Google’s failure with the new Question & Answer feature

Google has done it again with the new Question & answers feature. They’ve launched a new beaut feature with lots of optimism – and seemingly much naïveté.

The Q&A feature was launched a few weeks ago. You could say it “sort-of” fills a gap left when the business description was removed. But rather than having the biz owner write a bunch of self-promotional bunk, Google decided to let “the public” decide what they want to read about a business.

Questions from potential customers can be asked, and the biz owner or the public can respond. Questions can be voted up; the idea being the most popular or common questions will rise to the top. Questions/Answers cannot be voted down.

The Benefits

While this might seem initially as “yet another thing to do” by Google, this is also an opportunity. You can use this for:

insight to what customers most want to know
insight to the language people use to describe your products / services
insight to the problems people most expect your product/services to solve
not necessarily having to answer every single question themselves.

Take those first three across to your website and other marketing collateral – they’re gold!

style=”font-size: 1.4rem; font-weight: 700;”So with all this upside, why am I not singing it’s praises?

Because Google has a remarkable capacity to underestimate the stupidity and haters of the public. I love that they know the vast majority of people are intelligent, and genuinely try to be helpful. Yet that minority of reprobates really seem to stand out on the web.

Below are some screen shots taken of Questions and Answers from around the world.

Sometimes people are using the feature for reviews. Some exploit it to get points for their Local Guide status (3 points for responding to Q&As). Some use it as a free-for-all trolling opportunity. Still others seem to think it’s a customer service portal where their individual case can be dealt with.

In the case of the Pentagon’s Q&A stream (last image), one profile (presumably a person but wondering if it’s a bot) posted around a hundred nonsense “questions”. Here are two of them translated:

Google doesn’t appear to be doing ANY sort of quality control over the questions at this stage.

Update: Google is using a limited amount of word filtering on Questions.

Google appears to heavily be using votes as a way to determine the ranking of the questions. So if a silly question gets the most votes, it’s most likely to be seen in the knowledge panel. Worse still, an answer provided by the business owner seems to have the same (not more) clout than one by the general public. So there again, a silly answer can be upvoted and show in the knowledge panel above the business owner’s response.

To be fair, Google does have a report feature. Some of the earlier ridiculous questions I’ve seen in screen grabs have been taken down.

Whose business has Q&A?

This Q&A feature was rolled out to all businesses, owners had no say in opting in. So far I’ve only seen schools, universities, some landmarks, child care centres and prisons exempted from this. There may be other categories excluded – if you spot one post in the comments below for other readers.

Why can’t I see it?

At this point in the rollout, these Q&A boxes show ONLY on Google Android Maps App. You won’t see it if you have an ipad, iphone or desktop computer.

Notifications

As the business owner, you won’t see the questions people ask if you log into your dashboard – on any device. This means many business owners are completely unaware of spam or ridiculous questions being posted on their listing.

And if someone does ask something inappropriate, the best you can do is report it.

There are third party apps that do monitor these listings for you. Most are paid, but I’ve tested a free plan at https://pleper.com/, and did receive a timely notice of a question being posted on the listing. So if you have just a few listing (5 is max on his free plan) this is a good option for you.

How Can I Delete Answers?

The short answer is you can’t – directly. This is meant to be a community content area. You’re allowed to contribute but not control. That said, there are a couple of ways to take action.

You can report the answer to Google. From what I’ve seen, Google is taking the feedback from owners seriously – far more so than they do with customer reviews.
You can also write your own responses, and then upvote the responses. Up votes by a broader community normally pushes answers to the top. That way if the silly answer remains, at least it gets pushed down.

Reporting bad questions or answers

Firstly, you will need to be logged into your Google account on your phone’s browser. To report, click on the three vertical dots next to problem question. Google will then trigger a browser window with a number of options for reporting the bad question or answer.

Depending on the reason you select, you may get a follow up screen. When finished, the browser will give you the chance to “undo” your report. If you tap “done” or click the x next to “thank you for the report”, nothing happens. At least not on my phone, so I simply close the browser window.

Managing Q&A

Since we all have this “feature”, here’s what I suggest you do.

Write down three questions you most frequently get asked on phone inquiries or the first face to face contact.
Get a friend to post them onto your maps listing from their phone. You can put most any kind of text in the box, including URLs and emojis. URLs are turned to straight text (so they’re not clickable), but emojis go in as they are.
Search for your business by name, look in the map and answer those questions. Don’t make them spammy with keywords, sales pitches or other rubbish tactics. Use plain, ordinary, everyday language questions and answers.
Then ask your friend to vote up the answer.
From then on, check your listing regularly.

Questioners can edit or delete questions, and you can edit or delete your answers.

You can’t risk ignoring Google’s Q&A feature

If you never get any questions from the public (bar the three you orchestrated), you’ll be laughing. However, as the weaknesses of this feature become more apparent, spammers, trolls and other reprobates will exploit this for all it is worth.

Emojis such as the “Pile of Poo” will start appearing in these questions/answers, along with heaven knows what claims about the business. Competitor’s websites, phone numbers or offers may magically appear as a question or answer to try to woo customers away.

Customers may think this access to an online customer support department. And unanswered questions have the potential to be more damaging to people’s perception of you as a business owner, than unanswered reviews.

–

For all the obvious frustration in print here, I do like what Google is trying to do. See the benefits above.

But they have released this with too little control around it. They need to make this something business owners can manage, with notifications. And we need the ability to remove bad questions/answers without having to rely on Google’s artificial intelligence algorithm to determine whether something should be displayed.

24 July, 2017 By margaret ornsby

How to Use Google Posts

Google continues to evolve the Google My Business suite of features, this time with an addition called Google Posts.

With any “how” it helps to have a “why” –

Google Posts improves Google’s understanding of your services and products. By posting content about events, products, services, and other points about your business you want to communicate to your customers, you’re helping Google get a better understanding too.

You don’t want to stuff your post full of keywords. Instead, use synonyms and give context around the phrases you use that describe your business. This will have a direct and quick impact on the effectiveness of your knowledge panel. It typically results in more calls, more clicks through to your address/website, and can give you a broader range of searches where your listing is featured.

Consistently posting also helps people know you are very much “alive”. Actively updating your posts shows would-be customers your business listing is not abandoned or neglected. It gives a reassurance to people the information displayed is up to date. Posts also give people an “at a glance” about the latest and greatest goings-on in your business.

Increased customer interaction on that knowledge panel, in turn, correlates with better ranking for the listing.

The initial intention with Posts was to provide a straight-forward, one-click direct path to action. Instead of people having to click to your website and then your online store, a reservation site, subscribe to a course, etc., one click on posts can take them straight where you want people to go.

Google Posts are “disposable” content, a variation on a micro blogging concept. They’re displayed in the Knowledge Panel and in the Local Finder.

On desktop, a posts section shows *if* there is an active post (7 or less days old). If there is an “active” post, you can navigate via the posts carousel to see all active and then with another click, see all Posts. If there are no active Posts, you cannot see any Posts.

On mobile, you can see all posts in the “posts” tab, and posts about products in the “products” tab.

Event posts show as active posts for as long as the event is active.

Uses for Google Posts include:

Daily specials or current promotions – encourage new and existing customers to do business with you.
Promote events.
Showcase top products.
Announce new products or services.
Make it easy for customers – one-click path to make a reservation, sign up for a newsletter, learn more about latest offers, or even buy a specific product through your website.
Encourage people to your blog.
Encourage people to an article on another site which shows your expertise.

Introduced in May 2017, posts show as a new menu option in your dashboard menu (desktop below), and can be posted from both desktop and mobile versions. At time of writing, the mobile version is not easy to work with, but can be done.

If your business has a large number of listings, you will only want to use desktop version.

Table of Contents

Google Posts Guidelines

“Published content should be relevant to the business that the author is posting on behalf of and help users better understand the business.”

Google has a fairly long list of things that can and cannot be in Posts. Most can be summed up as: keep it clean, family friendly, and no spamming.

The official Announcement about Posts
Google’s online documentation

Create a Google Post

Go to the Google My Business dashboard

If you are on the old dashboard and have several listings, you’ll need to switch to card view

How to Add a Google Post

There are a few ways to create a Google Post, but all start with the same first step: Log into the account that manages your Google My Business listing.

From the GMB Dashboard:

Select the location, click Manage Location and then select Posts.
Search for your business by name so the knowledge panel comes up on the right

From the left hand menu:

Option 1 – Second option on the left hand menu is Posts
Option 2 – From Photos (left-hand menu), then click on an image. In the upper right hand corner is the create post icon. ( Colan Nielsen)
Option 3 – On the main dashboard home panel in the upper right is an icon to create a Post

From the Search Results

Search for your business by name. You should see a blue box above the search results with a number of actions, as well as the Knowledge Panel on the right side of the screen.

Option 1 – In the area on the left, you’ll see an icon underneath the business name to create a post.
Option 2 – In the Posts display area in the Knowledge Panel, your current active post will display and next to it will be a blue circle with plus sign.

Both options will take you into your dashboard and bring up the create post popup.

–

Unlike the other new feature, website builder, if the listing is not verified you cannot create a post and you will not see the menu option.

Posts are not currently displaying for businesses with a category of Hotel. If you’re not seeing posts and your business is not an accommodation category, use this form to report it so Google can investigate.

Posts have 3 main areas – the image, the text and then an optional call to action.

Select the type of Post

Google offers 4 basic types of posts

What’s New (news)
Event
Offer
Product

What’s New Posts

Informational in nature, useful for quick messages (self contained content), or click-through (to promote a blogpost).
These posts last 7 days before they automatically expire and stop displaying as an active post.
Optional action button.

Event Posts

Designed for events.
Requires start and end dates (optional time) allowing you to display this post type up to the point the event is finished.
Optional action button.

Offer Posts

Designed for special offers, daily specials, introductory offers, and so on.
Require start and end date as well as time, allowing you to display this post type up to the point the special is finished.
Optional coupon code display, link to redeem offer display, and terms & conditions link to display.

Product Posts

Designed to showcase your products or services.
Optional price, or price range.
Optional action button.
Product posts are displayed as a separate tab on a mobile display.

Add a Photo or Video

When you want to put media in the post, you have two ways to do it – loading from your GMB image library, or loading from your device.

If your image is already in your GMB image library, the best way is to first go to “photos,” click on the image, and then click on select “create a post” from the upper right hand corner.

To load from your device, do not click and drag it into the grey area (yeah, I learned that the hard way). Your browser may load the image into the window and you lose your post!

Instead, click on the blue camera and then a popup window appears, giving you the option of uploading an image or video, or selecting an image from one of your Albums.

The image is now in a 4:3 ratio (think slideshow slide). Google recommends a minimum image size of 720(wide) x 540(tall) pixels. As previously, make sure the image is large enough to show nicely on a mobile – the screen sizes seem to be getting bigger with every new model. 720×720, with a minimum requirement of 250 x 250. If you use an image as small as 720, be sure it’s high resolution. Some mobile phones have displays larger than that and the image loses quality. I recommend 750px.

Once you’ve loaded the image, Google does its best to automatically crop the image for you. If you’re not happy with the job, click on the crop icon below the image. And if you’d rather try another picture you can delete the image and start again using the trash can icon.

Leave some space around the main focus of your photo so something important doesn’t get cut off when it shows in various shapes & sizes.

You can load any aspect ratio; the process will guide you through cropping the image to the 4:3 ratio. If the image is

Google also now accepts videos in the following formats: AVI, MP4, MOV, FLV, WMV, MPG, M4V, MKV, M2TS, and MTS. The maximum file size for videos is 100 MB. When you upload the video, you may receive a message indicating Google is processing the video in the background and you can continue to work on your post and publish it. The video will play and be live in the post once it’s completed processing.

To save the image, select Upload a Post Photo.

Images are stored – somewhere. For a while you could access them via an album called “Scrapbook”, then you could access them via Picasa. At this point in time it is a mystery where they go.

Images at this stage should be JPG or PNG format. Despite some of Google’s own documentation stating GIFs are OK, they’re not accepted (at time of writing).

Tips:

Image size A quirky thing with this new sizing, is that it’s not precisely 4:3. For instance, if you wanted to have a sharp-looking image that you know will work well on any screen, you might use one 1200×900. You most likely would have the main feature of the image centred. However when it displays on some screens, the right side gets chopped slightly, mucking up the “centre”. For now, my tip is to centre the subject of your image, then move the crop slightly to the right.
Product images – if you’re featuring a product in your image, don’t make the product fill the image to capacity. Leave a moderate margin around the outside of the product, to allow for various screens to chop top/bottom/side a wee bit to display the Google Post.

Write Your Post

Google recommends 100-300 words. A colleague who provides this service as a cornerstone of his business says 80-100 words plus a good image are the go.

If you have an action button, you’ll likely see only around the first 70 characters on the knowledge panel display on desktop, slightly less on mobile.

If there’s no call to action, you’ll likely see around 115 characters on desktop. On mobile, you’ll see the entire post.

There is a maximum of 1500 characters. However, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. This feature isn’t intended for long-form content.

You may be wondering why Google recommends so many characters when it doesn’t display them in the knowledge panel?

Posts are not required to link to anything. That means posts exist as an entity on their own as part of the GMB suite. As such, they have their own unique link.

When people click on a post (not the call to action button), a square popup box appears over the search results. If the text is long, the scroll bar appears on the right.

You can add links in the body of the text, and they become clickable when displayed as a post. You have to use the URL, and the whole URL displays. If you’re going to use campaign tagging (and I recommend you do), you might want to use a link shortener.

Add a Call-to-Action

Action Posts

Google provides a range of phrases to select from as your call-to-action. These show underneath the text.

Book
Order online
Buy
Learn more
Sign up
Get offer
Call now

Event Posts

Add your event start and end date & time as well as title.

Titles can have up to 58 characters. If you exceed the maximum, the error message doesn’t show until after you try to publish the post.

One other caveat with the title, only 28 characters will display in the knowledge panel. (see examples)

In your dashboard, events show with the date and time, event title and action. The description does not show.

Events also allow you to add the same buttons as non-event posts.

Posts show in the carousel order they were posted, not the dates of the events.

June 2017 Current glitch: Events scheduled for the same day they are posted may receive error “cannot create an event that has already passed”. It’s a known glitch and has been reported. No ETA for the fix yet. has been fixed

Links to web pages

Select the most appropriate phrase to show as the Call to Action.

Add the link – links do not need to be complete with the http etc.; they can be as simple as the domain.

When ready to publish, click Preview. If the preview looks good, click Publish. If you need to edit something, click the grey back arrow in the upper left corner.

You can delete posts once they’re published. Simply click on the post from your dashboard, and select delete.

To get the best value out of Posts, where possible, create links to content on your own site, not another site (unless it’s something like a booking or tickets page for your business).

Think of this from a visitor’s standpoint. They’ve searched for you by name or they’ve clicked on your name from Google Maps. You have a Google Post that piques their curiosity (you’re featured in Forbes, as an example) and so they click on it. Suddenly they’re taken to Forbes Online. Now they’re on someone else’s site, and it’s all too easy to run down that rabbit hole and forget about you.

Can you see how that works against you?

So instead, create a blog post with extracts from the Forbes article (maybe even an image of it), and put it on your site. To give proper credit, you can put a link to the Forbes site. But now when people click, they can still satisfy their curiosity as well as see how many ways you can help them with their problem.

Publish & UnPublish

When you’re ready to publish, select Preview. Google gives you one last chance to have a look at it before it goes live.

If you like it, click Publish.

If you want to correct something, click the back arrow to return to edit mode.

Once you publish, the post usually goes live within a couple of minutes.

Want to un-publish the post before it expires? The only option at this stage is to delete it.

Deleting a Google Post

As mentioned before, if you want to remove a post completely or take it off the “production line”, deleting is your only option.

Be aware when you delete it, you lose all the statistics that go with the posts. The only place you *may* have some residual information about the post is in Google Analytics, IF you have used campaign tagging.

Performance

Google Posts come with their own in-built stats. They’re fairly rudimentary and don’t yet transfer across to Google Analytics.

The stats you’ll see only on the post itself. In the posts view you see just one data point – views.

If you click on the post you’ll see two data points – views and engagement (clicks).

July 2018 Current glitch – the engagement numbers are seriously understating the count at the moment. Do not believe the engagement number shown, instead use Google Analytics to get a better estimate of people’s interaction with your post (see next section – tracking in Analytics).

Note: the number on the card view is not a total of all actions, it is only the views.

Similar to Analytics, stats take 1-2 days to be recorded in the view.

The view is incremented if it’s seen in the Knowledge Panel or if someone views on the place sheet in the Local Finder.

Tracking in Analytics

As with any marketing effort, knowing what’s working for you and where visitors or customers come from is important.

I won’t repeat what has already been well explained on the web, but I will add three resources.

Neil Patel wrote a good article on GA tracking. It’s a bit out of date, but the concepts are still solid
Google’s campaign tag builder
And if you want to systemise your campaign structure, use the UTM Builder Chrome extension from Effin Amazing.

The system I tend to use is:

Source = google
Medium = organic
Campaign = posts
Campaign content = postKeyPhrase

Whatever system you devise, the most important aspect of it is consistency. Don’t use “Posts” one time and “posts” another, for your campaign. These create separate entries in Analytics and make it harder to quickly analyse the commercial benefits you get from Posts.

The reason I put in this much detail with the tracking is posts seems to be mucking up the info that comes across into Google Analytics at times.

As an example, you might have a link that goes to a blog post in the Google Post. But the landing page that might get tied to the campaign tracking might be the home page of the website – not the blog post.

Examples of Google Posts in the wild

Other Bits & Pieces

The carousel shows up to 10 posts on both mobile and desktop.
When a post gets taken down for spam, the owner will get a notification. When a post is taken down, searchers stop seeing it immediately. Google won’t tell you specifically which rule was violated – it’s up to listing managers to read the guidelines.
On desktop, only the current post/s are available from the search results. On mobile, you can see all present and past posts.
If people click on the Call to Action, it takes them straight to the destination page.
If people click on the post text or image, it takes them to the post.
When people share the post on social media, email or via the link, they get the link to the post, not your destination page.

Limitations

At this stage, there’s no automated scheduling built in or available through a third-party app such as Buffer or Hootsuite.
It’s available on most categories, and Google is working to expand it further. Posts is not currently available for hotels or B&B’s. UPDATE: Google has extended the exclusion categories to Gun Shops,
There is no connection with Google’s website builder at this time.
There is no integration with Google Analytics at this time.
Posts are part of a listing’s data, but not indexed as part of organic search. UPDATE: Posts can have a beneficial impact on ranking in the local pack.
There is no “draft” or “scheduled” posting option. Posts are either in and live, or expired.

Sharing Google Posts

When a post is viewed in its entirety, there are options to share or report the post.

The options for sharing are Facebook, Twitter, email and a direct link.

When sharing to Facebook (left) the business name + on Google shows as the title of the post.

The image and some of the text from the post comes across. When you click on the post, it takes you to the post display on Google’s search results.

When sharing on Twitter, you get virtually the same with the business name + on #Google.

Reporting a Post

Next to the sharing icon is an option to report a post and select the guideline the post violates.

Google periodically update this selection of reasons for reporting. The most recent addition is copyright / legal violations.