SaraGarrison
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In light of Google's recent move to the NMX (have we found a better name for that yet?), I thought I'd share an experience for managing Google Updates for a single enterprise client, which I know other bulk users with enterprise clients will be acutely familiar with.
This particular client has just shy of 5k listings. ~600 are the main profiles. The remaining profiles are separate depts.
The client reached out about incorrect hours for one main profile. We found there was a Google Update with bad hours, which is typically the case.
We then looked through the remaining Google updates currently in the account - a daily management task. Of those, roughly 30 additional main profiles had incorrect hours due to Google Updates - fixed those too. When we log into this account again tomorrow, either these updates or others will be there again. Often the same updates come back or they are what we call "ghost updates" where you cannot tell what has been changed as nothing is highlighted or different.
The bulk discard feature for Google Updates does not work in GBP. To my knowledge (and I've been doing this since 2011) it has never worked. In the dashboard, you must go through each listing and manually enter the correct data again (the only option Google gives you is to "Accept" the Update, not discard, so it's not a simple one-click to discard). The NMX makes it impossible to see at a glance what has been updated or to correct these updates efficiently.
Add holiday hours, changing seasonal hours, temp closures, etc. to this soup (don't get me started on the COVID hours and temp closures of the past couple years), and you have a truly spectacular nightmare. This has real-world consequences - upset customers and damage to the brand's reputation.
This is a daily, whack-a-mole struggle. To be fair, there are other verticals that hardly see any Google updates, but others where there are more.
If you've read all of this and are still with me, bless your heart
. My hope here is to start a discussion surrounding Google updates. Google, please make the bulk discard feature function properly.
This particular client has just shy of 5k listings. ~600 are the main profiles. The remaining profiles are separate depts.
The client reached out about incorrect hours for one main profile. We found there was a Google Update with bad hours, which is typically the case.
We then looked through the remaining Google updates currently in the account - a daily management task. Of those, roughly 30 additional main profiles had incorrect hours due to Google Updates - fixed those too. When we log into this account again tomorrow, either these updates or others will be there again. Often the same updates come back or they are what we call "ghost updates" where you cannot tell what has been changed as nothing is highlighted or different.
The bulk discard feature for Google Updates does not work in GBP. To my knowledge (and I've been doing this since 2011) it has never worked. In the dashboard, you must go through each listing and manually enter the correct data again (the only option Google gives you is to "Accept" the Update, not discard, so it's not a simple one-click to discard). The NMX makes it impossible to see at a glance what has been updated or to correct these updates efficiently.
Add holiday hours, changing seasonal hours, temp closures, etc. to this soup (don't get me started on the COVID hours and temp closures of the past couple years), and you have a truly spectacular nightmare. This has real-world consequences - upset customers and damage to the brand's reputation.
This is a daily, whack-a-mole struggle. To be fair, there are other verticals that hardly see any Google updates, but others where there are more.
If you've read all of this and are still with me, bless your heart
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