I'd like to talk about Google Updates

[SaraGarrison]

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.

 

[Conor Treacy]

And here I thought handling a couple of dozen was a problem. I can't even imagine the headache, coffee intake, and punching bags you must be going through! I don't have any solution or input other than to say WOW!

 

[whitespark]

Ugh. These updates are the worst. We have a product launching soon to solve this problem. You can sign up to be notified when we launch here: Whitespark GBP Management Early Access

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi @SaraGarrison, I recently made a similar post looking for a solution to assist in monitoring our GBP client locations due to very similar issues that you are encountering albeit we don't manage near that many locations: GBP reporting tool that monitors changes made to profile info?

There is currently a tool in beta made by the same publisher of GMB Everywhere - GMB Audit for Local SEO, called GMB Alert. We are currently using the free version to try things out and it seems to doing a nice job, plus the developer is also a member of the forum and is very responsive, tagging him @Will_GMBEverywhere.

Also, as Darren commented, @whitespark has a tool they are getting ready to launch soon, we are very eager to try out.

Lastly, one of the members replied with a suggestion of an app called Telegraph, but that solution might work for a one or two GBP accounts but not really for enterprise management.

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@SaraGarrison
Sorry to hear about your experience. That is a lot of GMB's you got there.

This is definitely one of the use case we are planning to solve with GMBAlerts.com. This is a problem lot of people face. Another common scenario is when competitors sabotage the GMB by suggesting edits.

The way we do is, you can log in and provide the name of the business you want to track. That is all you need to do. We do monitor it on Google Maps and see if there are any changes to it, then we notify you if there are any changes. We also track the 'additional info', 'working hours field', 'shop traffic' field and so on. So you can track all this in one go.

We are still in beta, so feel free to try it out. We have a free version which you can use to see the value. This is the link to try out: GMB Alert - Keep track of changes in Google Business Profile.

@JeffClevelandTN
Thank you for tagging.

 

[GMBapi.com]

@SaraGarrison - this is a pain in the ass for a lot of our clients as well. When you find an acceptable solution - please share.

Have you tried downloading the GMB locations in bulk - Google Updates included. Filtering the location based on any suggestions to "opening times", deleting these new suggested columns and uploading the bulk upload sheet again (with only the old values in the column)? That might override the Google Updates no?

Bulk Upload has been wonky though lately.

 

[bluetech2003]

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.

"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 "

Another Google Bug thats been a plague

 

[SaraGarrison]

@SaraGarrison - this is a pain in the ass for a lot of our clients as well. When you find an acceptable solution - please share.

Have you tried downloading the GMB locations in bulk - Google Updates included. Filtering the location based on any suggestions to "opening times", deleting these new suggested columns and uploading the bulk upload sheet again (with only the old values in the column)? That might override the Google Updates no?

Bulk Upload has been wonky though lately.

We have. File upload doesn't override Google Updates because technically nothing you are uploading has changed from what you previously uploaded. No diffs detected so no updates applied. You would have to "accept" the Google updates, and then upload a file to change the data back to what you originally uploaded.

We've used the API to reject updates for years as well. It works occasionally. The only truly reliable way we've found is to reject manually one by one - and even those come back.

 

[hajnasiewicz]

We have. File upload doesn't override Google Updates because technically nothing you are uploading has changed from what you previously uploaded. No diffs detected so no updates applied. You would have to "accept" the Google updates, and then upload a file to change the data back to what you originally uploaded.

We've used the API to reject updates for years as well. It works occasionally. The only truly reliable way we've found is to reject manually one by one - and even those come back.

Maybe I've just been lucky, so far bulk upload updates are accepted and reflected in our profiles (enterprise not agency). I was worried going into the 2022 holiday season with NMX introduction (AWFUL planning on G's part) and over 250 locations with holiday hours to put to the business profiles, after testing only errors found were my own. Still, HUGE Fail with NMX overall... I'm totally grumpy over NMX for enterprise management.

 

[JS Girard]

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.

NMX is at least better than the bunch of ad-hoc terms we'd have to use otherwise. (Google deosn't even give a French translation, which makes it a hassle for us to do communication and education...)

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.

In my experience, it actually does work for hours. The operating difference is whether you can click directly oin the "accept/reject" button in the preview of the change. Things that do NOT work for me are things like "accepting new patients", recycling and accessibility parameters because I have to manually set it instead of actually accepting or rejecting them.

At least they've fixed the silliness that if you accepted certain changes, it would wipe out all payment attributes!

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.

My big beef with Google edits are "ghost edits" which are edits that are invisible and impossible to resolve, so they are perennially in the list (my current theory is that they are edits to attributes that are not actually available outside the US...). The recent waves of edit have caused these cases to increase and I estimate I now have well over fifty of therem (out of ca. 2k GBPs total). Also the button to "accept all changes" (there are never any actual visible changes either...) at the bottom of the window that has started reappearing? Doesn't work ever so far.