The Google Maps They Are A-Changin'

Your Weekly Briefing

The Google Maps They Are A-Changin'

Some weeks we need to scrape the bottom of the bucket to find notable local marketing news to share with you, but not this week! There is a big change coming to Google Maps that all business owners & marketers need to know about if they want to rank at the top of Google Maps. Google is redesigning the Google Maps interface to put a lot more emphasis on images and will even let users search for local businesses by photos. That means if someone is searching for the best pizza near them, Google will show images of pizza slices sold at local restaurants as the focal point, with the business info taking up less real estate on the screen. Google Maps will also show images in the map area instead of showing their standard red point of interest icons. All examples we could find online so far are food-related, but you can imagine Google will roll out this new feature to many, if not all business types shortly. Google says they are using AI to determine which photos to show for each Google Business Profile, which means you cannot control the one that shows up, at least for now. So what does this mean for you? The same thing we've been telling you for months. Go take a bunch of photos of your business, your teams, your products, people performing your services, your front door, happy customers, etc., and upload them to Google. You want them to have lots of good options for your business.

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OK, on to the next thing. In case you missed our new product announcement last week, we just released a free local ranking audit report tool that will create beautiful reports showing how high your business ranks for your most important keywords on Google Maps. Below is a quick video you can watch to see how it works. Seriously, it's free.

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ProfilePro tip of the week:

Take a video of something related to your business using your cellphone today and upload it to your Google Business Profile in the media section. Don't know what to take a video of? Consider one of your front door walking into your business, your team smiling, a walk around your branded service van, or of you completing a job.

Go to Your Google Business Profile

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If you manage reviews on many Google Business Profiles you need to try RoboReply. It helped us save hours a day on Google review management.

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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!

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Struggling to rank Google Business Profiles? Maybe we should talk about our...

• Google Business Profile management services

• Listings/citation management software

• Reviews management software

• Reputation management software

• Google Business Profile SEO AI tool

• Bulk Google review responding AI

• Agency partner program

The best part? Everything can be 100% white-labeled for agencies

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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:

1. October 2023 - Core Algo Update

2. August 2023 - Core Algo Update

3. March 2023 - Core Algo Update

4. December 2022 - Spam Link Update

You can find details on all algo updates here.