Your Weekly Update Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Why is my Google Business Profile doing so bad?
This is a question many people are asking right now around the world, and we're going to give you a few reasons why and why some of you shouldn't worry.
Simply put, it's one of two reasons:
Your profile is not optimized well. Check out our guide below to see where you're falling short.
You're feeling the effects of a recent Google reporting change that makes it look like you fell off the face of the (Google) map.
Details are still scarce, but this is what we've gathered so far:
In the before times, Google would count any time your Google Business Profile showed up in a search result as a new view. It didn't matter if the searcher clicked on your profile or not. If your profile was visible on the searcher's screen, you got a view. But now, if a searcher doesn't click on your profile (even if it's ranked #1), it does not count as a view. Moreover, a few weeks ago, if a searcher did the same search multiple times in a day and your profile was on the screen each time, each of those times would have counted as their own view. Now, you'll only get a single view for a searcher if they click (not just look) on your profile once per 24 hours.
These changes are painful to see but are a step in the right direction.
Let's break it down using a fun quiz:
You run a balloon store called Loon's Balloons. Mary is searching for balloons for her kid's bday party, and Ted is searching for balloons for his kid's bday party. If Mary searched for "balloons near me" 3 times on Tuesday and saw your profile each time but never clicked on it, and Ted searched for "balloons near me" 5 times on Tuesday, saw your profile each time, & clicked your profile to view your website two of those times, how many views would you have received before this Google change and after?
Before: 8 views
After: 1 view
We're still collecting data and waiting for more information to come out and will keep you informed as we learn more. If you want to be sure that your rankings aren't actually suffering, you can check how high you are ranking now compared to before, or check out Google Trends to see if the search volume for your target keywords has changed dramatically. If fewer people are searching for balloons in your area, you will naturally have fewer views.
Speaking of Loon's Balloons... have you checked out our new free AI-powered Chrome extension yet, called ProfilePro? Here's a video that shows how it optimizes Loon's Balloon's Google Business Profile in a few clicks:
We're still fixing a few small bugs and hope to have it working perfectly by this time next week, including support for over 50 languages, which was in high demand! Learn more about this new tool here.
Getting tired of doing your own Google Business Profile work? You deserve a break. We offer:
Google Business Profile management services
Listings management software
Reviews management software
Reputation management software
Google Business Profile Ai software (coming soon!)
The best part? Everything can be 100% white-labeled
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:
You can find details on all algo updates here.