Google’s new AI updates are killer for local businesses
Google announced tons of new AI features at their I/O conference last week. There are two in particular that are killer features that local business owners and marketers should fully understand.
Feature #1: Google is rolling out AI-generated local search results when somebody asks for a specific type of business in their area. This is great news for all of you who are already working to optimize your GBP because this new Google feature reads through all the data on GBPs and then shows the ones best suited for the search. Adding everything you do to your GBP is more important than ever since if Google doesn’t know you do something they cannot show you to people looking for it. We’ve seen examples where Google didn’t even show website URLs in these results, which is another indication that if you’re a local business, you need to focus on your Google Business Profile SEO as your #1 marketing channel.
Feature #2: Google released AI summaries of business reviews, which is just another clear indication cares a lot about what customers say about businesses online and uses them to determine which businesses to show in the results. Use this as a reminder to start asking your customers to leave you not just reviews, but reviews with comments in them. We’ve been anticipating this for a while and have built ways to get reviews automatically as part of your operations inside our new fully automated Google business profile manager, Paige. We will also soon suggest SEO-optimized reviews customers can leave based on what they indicate they liked the most about your business!
None of this should come as a surprise if you read our newsletter weekly since we’ve been explaining the importance of fully optimizing your Google Business Profile with as much information as possible and getting tons of reviews ongoing, but it does solidify the importance of it now that we’re heading towards an AI search results world.
What should you do about this right now? First, go have Paige optimize your Google Business Profile for just $1. If you don’t want Paige to automate your GBP SEO ongoing for $99/month, just cancel right after getting the GBP tune-up. It only takes 3 minutes to do!
ProfilePro tip of the week:
ProfilePro is giving a shoutout to its big sister this week, Paige. If you haven't checked out Paige yet, go do that now: www.merchynt.com/paige
Go to Your Google Business Profile
Wondering how well your Google Business Profile ranks on Google Maps for different keywords? We built a free local ranking audit tool you can use to quickly find out!
Check out our guide on every possible ranking strategy for Google Business Profiles!
Google Updates You Should Know About
Google updates their algos regularly, and we check and then digest them for you. Here are the latest ones local marketers should know about:
- March 2024 - Core Algo Update
- November 2023 - Core Algo Update
- October 2023 - Core Algo Update
- August 2023 - Core Algo Update
- March 2023 - Core Algo Update
You can find details on all algo updates here.
