GMB Announcement: Edits by unverified merchants

[freerunr]

I missed this announcement on 9/30/19, and didn't see any threads here about it yet. If someone has provided commentary here or elsewhere, please do point me in the right direction. I have not experimented with the feature myself yet, so curious if others have.

First, I'm not sure what the purpose of this feature is as a distinction from "Suggest an edit."

Second, I'm curious if it works better or worse than "Suggest an edit.

Third, the link on the announcement brings you to this section of the "Edit your business listing on Google" help file. Under the "Computer" heading, it mentions this:

What in the world is "section" referring to?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hey Kerry, that is really odd. I have no idea what that is referring to either. I'm going to ask Google about it now and I'll circle back when I get some information.

Thanks

 

[freerunr]

I appreciate it, Colan.

While we wait to hear back, I came across a good situation to test what it's all about.

It's an unclaimed listing already on Maps, so I went through the first steps of claiming, but chose the option to verify later. I then modified a few fields in the backend, then after selecting "Confirm," I received these prompts:

After selecting "Finish up" and "Publish," I received the message below, which of course indicates that it's still not verified:

It will be interesting to see if the edits I made ever go live. It remains to be seen if it really is just a different avenue of what suggesting public edits is, or if it's something between that and editing a verified listing

Also, I realize I didn't look for / notice what I asked about in my third question in the original post before making the edits -- oops:

Third, the link on the announcement brings you to this section of the "Edit your business listing on Google" help file. Under the "Computer" heading, it mentions this:

What in the world is "section" referring to?

 

[Annika Neudecker]

My thought is that it could relate to when you get an existing listing and add it to your account, then are asked to verify it when it's in your dashboard. We pick up a lot of listings like this. I'll leave myself a note to check next time we get one in. It would be nice to be able to make some edits on those since it usually take a bit to complete postcard verification and officially change everything. (I know phone/email is faster but we usually can't use those, sigh.)