Google Beginning to Push Ads More in the GMB Dashboard

[Cordell Crowley]

Seems like Google is trying to use the GMB dashboard to draw businesses into doing Google Ads more and more lately. Saw this pop up in all of my clients' dashboards today:

With all of the problems that Bedlam has caused the last month, I think it's safe to say that this is definitely 100% without a doubt clearly coincidental timing. /s

 

[djbaxter]

Seriously, this theory that Google has pushed an algorithm update intentionally to mess up ranking so more sites will use Google Ads to regain traffic has been around since about the mid- to late-90s. It was nonsense then and it's nonsense now.

Any major update is going to impact on the SEO efforts for some sites, and for some sites more than others. And any major update will result in fluctuations for search results as Google tweaks it to better accomplish its goal. The goal, whether webmasters like it or not, is to create better results for their primary customer base, viz. those doing the searching. The happier they can make searchers using Google, the better their brand and the more people will want to advertise and use their other products. It's really not rocket science.