Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

[Amber Robinson]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

Am I missing the part of insights where it provides the keywords the listing has received impressions for?

Overall, I am pleased b/c I know that was their ultimate goal

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

New Posts One Day POST-Launch 6/12/14​

Darren, Myles and a few other pros got a Hangout with Jade yesterday, I believe covering most of the same things that were in our TC Hangout last week. Here are their overviews which you'll find bring some clarity on a few points. Especially branding of the public facing page which is something I'll be posting about later today.

<a href="http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/33-google-my-business-what-you-need-to-know">Google My Business - What You Need to Know | Whitespark</a>

<a href="http://www.brightlocal.com/2014/06/12/google-business-introduced/">Google My Business - Video Guide & Insider Insights | BrightLocal</a>

Running off to a GMB Hangout now. Back in an hour.

 

[Louis Nava]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

Thanks for posting all the continuous updates!

Not sure I like the Insights section, but can't really say I liked it before - lol.

One cool thing, on the main dashboard header section, is the button that says "Add Virtual Tour" if you don't already have Google Business View. (If you do, the dashboard shows the "see inside" image.)

If businesses click that, it goes to the Business View main page and tells them how to get their tour and links to all the Trusted Photographers. If you are on that list, expect some calls to start coming your way!

This is very exciting. The Virtual Button was on a previous Places dashboard before it went total G+ and was short lived. We didn't really see an increase of calls because of that. It was at the very bottom and nobody knew what it meant. LOL

But we are hopeful that because of this new dashboard Business View does get much more recognition. For starters, Google has created a Business View campaign alongside the My Business Dashboard launch. It starts with a pilot "project" in San Francisco, Chicago, and London that will allow business owners to signup for Business View directly, it hopes to make it easier for a business owner to request a virtual tour. When I hear more I'll try to post it here.

 

[21Development]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

I'm curious, what are thoughts on managing multiple businesses within the new GMB dash? Should we still break them out into separate accounts or do we know if the accounts are independent of each other (and penalties).

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

OK so I created some controversy and maybe was not technically correct in my initial announcement title. My post initially said "Goodbye Google+ Local.

I explained why I said G+ Local even though that was not technically correct here. But in a nutshell my audience and the people I serve are mainly consultants that kinda get it, not so much SMBs. And I've had soooo many consultants here at the forum and via email tell me I was wrong to still call 'it' Place or refer to a Place page. They thought I was behind the times. Then I'd have to point out that in the dash and help docs (up until 2 days ago) it was still called Places for Business and that was the business owner brand. It was only the public facing page that was rebranded to Google+ Local. But eventually the majority of consultants started calling it Google+ Local EVEN IF they were referring to the dashboard.

So anyway in my announcement I struggled and decided to use the most popular name, even though technically Google+ Local did not change, BECAUSE everyone was so confused they thought the old dash was G+ Local and thought I was behind the times to still refer to Places. So in a nutshell that's why I did it. But it created controversy which you can read in the thread above if you like.

OK here is clarification about the branding confusion & what changed!

The back end owner dashboard was rebranded from Places for Business to "My Business".
The public facing live page has not been rebranded but still gets called a variety of names.
(So still a little confusing.).

Just copied an answer I gave at over at Mike's blog.

@Danielle asked:

“I was just wondering now that there is Google My Business, does this mean that the Google Places and Google+ Local no longer exist?”

My Reply:

I’ve been hashing this out with some leading local search consultants today and I asked Google for clarification to be sure we are all clear.

The "Places for Business" dashboard (where you used to edit listings) was re-branded "My Business".

My Business is in fact the dashboard for creating ALL G+ pages now, even a non-local brand page.

So yes Places is gone.

But this re-branding was just on the business owner and/or page creation side.
So it's an internal change on the back end dashboard - that unifies and simplifies everything.

The branding has not been changed on the public facing page.
But really now all pages are just Google+ Pages.

If you want to differentiate you could call the local page a Google+ local page.
And many will still call it Google+ Local.

But Google often simply calls it a "local listing" or sometimes a local Google+ listing (Flipped word order.)

I'm going to have to re-program my brain to drop Google Places. I've lived and breathed it 70 hours a week for a long time now.

I think generically I'll refer to it still as a Google+ Local listing or maybe just Google Local. And when I'm talking about changes in dash I'll use "My Business" or GMB for short.

So anyway I know, still a little confusing, but does that help clarify?

AND FYI Business owners don't care that much and may call it one of 8 other names. Most Dentists still call it a Place page. So in that thread on top we were a bunch of consultants talking in an echo chamber just trying to hammer it out. In talking to business owners just use "Google My Business" or Google+ Local depending on if you are talking about the dashboard or the live page.

 

[Louis Nava]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

I just went to Google Places main page and it's now Google My Business

 

[21Development]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

No matter where I login in takes me back to Google+ now. Except for the bulk dash, that's the only one that hasn't changed for me.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

I just went to Google Places main page and it's now Google My Business

Yes that's the new name for the back end - business owner side.

(FYI I edited and added a lot while you were posting so re-read and see if clearer.)

 

[Amber Robinson]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

I can't find the answer anywhere about the missing "Top Search Queries". Was I the only one who looked at those in the old dash

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

Sorry Amber guess you were the only one?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

FYI ALL - I started a new hashtag for #googlemybusiness related tips and news so you can find all new info on the topic in one place.

So I may not have time to keep adding to posts to the original announcement in this thread. But new articles about GMB will be under that hashtag.

2 really good new ones just today.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

In post #65 above I talked about the branding or name of the live page and what we should refer to it as when talking to our clients, prospects or SMBs in general in our messaging.

One comment made in that discussion I had with pros - I think it was either Phil Rozek or Max Minzer that said something like: we are just talking in our own little echo chamber here. SMBs for the most part don't know or care.

Soooooo on that note wanted to share an observation I just made and posted at Mike's.

I had also just made a comment about how SMOOTH of an update this has been. There are usually all kinds of update bugs and considering how huge this one was, it's amazing there have been very few.

But here is my other comment that relates to SMBs not really caring or noticing this update or the rebranding that much.

"One interesting observation I wanted to share... has to do partly with how smooth launch went and also has to do with the fact the My Business is a big deal to <strong>US</strong>, but to the average SMB... maybe not so much.

Now I have to admit, I've been so busy with launch, I've barely had time to even peek in at the Google and Your Business Forum. However I always at least scan new posts in my feedreader several times a day, to stay on top of issues that come up there.

From the post titles it just totally seems like business as usual.

Still the same old issues are like: where did my review go or why is my page blocked, or my phone number is wrong. And many of them still call it Google Places. So seems like this update just largely went unnoticed.

I even started a discussion thread about the My Business update to get feedback about what folks think, since Jade's announcement was closed to discussion. Only 2 SMBs even weighed in. And Colan and I bumped it a couple times just to try to get more interaction and some excitement going. NADA.

Just really didn't seem to make much of an impact on SMBs, oddly enough. But I get that many are busy and don't even log in that often or read the forum or our blogs, so they may not even be aware yet."


What do you think? What kind of feedback are you getting from clients? Did they notice?

Or could they care less as long as they rank, data is right and their reviews show up?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

Wanted to share Mike's reply to my comment above.

Such a wise man! THIS is why they call him the Professor!

"Linda, the absence of discussion is a good thing and reflects the real impact of the product.

Google?s local product should be invisible in the sense of making life easier for SMBs. This product is?. is it Plus? Is it Places. Doesn?t matter wherever you were going before will take you there now. Clarifying the relationship between Places and Plus was never easy, now it is an non issue. Can?t prove the negative but I see that lack of comments as a good thing and reflective of the amazingly and mostly bug free nature of the roll out.

Branding isn?t important to existing users, they already were using the product and don?t care what it is called. It is however critical to bring new users into the fold. Google now has a place where every type of SMB can go in response to Google?s marketing?..

As those new users are brought into the fold the issue of how to interact with Google, what kind of page they should choose etc is much, much clearer. Making many of the problems like ?merging brand and local pages? a non issue. So support requests should go down in those areas.

Also if Google brings more external marketing on line then there is a clear message for them to give. In fact their outreach on this product was interesting. They reached out to most Local SEOs. When did they ever do that? Clearly an indicator that they are looking to not only patch up their reputation but to move forward with the product.

New widgets, new features, new uses of Plus via mobile etc? these will all impact SMBs down the road. This is a forward facing product/platform from which they can provide a clear value to the SMB.

So while the day of wasn?t that amazing to the SMB the future can be. The lack of noise in the forums, from my perspective, is exactly what Google needed to put the ugly past firmly behind them."


So true... so true!

 

[Greg Schueler]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

I also think that most SMBs either use an "seo" company or rarely log in to their "Google Places" dashboard.

We, the seo people, saw this update right away (as soon as your post went live).

The other SMBs that have a self claimed Google+(Places) listing probably only log in once a month at most, if ever, so they won't notice the change until they log it to check monthly stats, or if they get a bad review and want to find out how to reply to it.

The good thing though is that when they do finally log back in, they will see everything now and perhaps all the other pieces they have been missing.

 

[whitespark]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

I'm not surprised at the lack of response to GMB from small businesses. It's basically all the same functionality they had before, but in a much better, unified dashboard. I'm obsessed with local search and Google+ Local and even I wasn't too excited about it. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent and much needed upgrade that will solve a lot problems for Google and SEOs, but there just isn't any new functionality to get excited about.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MichaelJ]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

Thanks for posting all the continuous updates!

Not sure I like the Insights section, but can't really say I liked it before - lol.

One cool thing, on the main dashboard header section, is the button that says "Add Virtual Tour" if you don't already have Google Business View. (If you do, the dashboard shows the "see inside" image.)

If businesses click that, it goes to the Business View main page and tells them how to get their tour and links to all the Trusted Photographers. If you are on that list, expect some calls to start coming your way!

I seem to think that the insights are waaay overstated. And I wonder, do you think the time will ever come when we can upload our own Virtual tour?

 

[Mopo100]

'Google Places' is now 'Google My Business' - totally confused!

Just received an email from Google stating 'Google Places' is now 'Google My Business'. So I logged into what used to be my 'places' listing (or was it 'local' because I've lost track what the h*ll it's called by now)

Anyway, instead of getting the normal dashboard, where I used to edit my places/local whatever listing, I now have just an almost blank screen that says 'your pages' and a button that says 'get your page'

Someone please can you help me, life's too short to spend half of it constantly keeping up with google changes. What do I do now? 'get my page'?? But my 'Google plus business' listing is still showing normally? So what am I getting?

Totally... totally.. confused.

 

[Dustybones]

Re: 'Google Places' is now 'Google My Business' - totally confused!

Hey Mopo. Google switched over to the new dashboards and rebranded on the 11th. Check out this other thread to get caught up. I think you will find a lot of positive changes to the dashboard, but there are some things to be aware of. Hope that helps.

 

[Mopo100]

Re: 'Google Places' is now 'Google My Business' - totally confused!

Thanks! I'll have a read of the whole thread later..

Just a couple of quick questions...

1. Is the 'Google + business listing' still a separate thing to this new 'Google My Business'? Or is it merged into this new thing? I ask because my Google + business listing (that I used to edit through my 'places' dashboard) is still visible.

2. Are we supposed to 'get our page' even though we already have a Google + business listing?

Thanks

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!

Hi Mopo100

It's not as confusing as it seems. Your live page is the same and still called a Google+ Local page.

All that changed is the Places dashboard where you used to edit is now called Google My Business and it's been upgraded with better features. It's also been integrated with Google+ dashboard so everything is all together in one place.

Your listing does not change and you should not try to claim it again. There is just a new place to manage your listing. If everything is correct you don't need to do anything specific due to the change.