Purpose of "Services" Section in GMB?

[freerunr]

Just looking to hear what others have been using the "Services" section in the GMB dashboard for as of late. Clearly it makes sense to use it for certain types of businesses and not others. For example, it's easy to use for something like a restaurant, but is there anything you'd really want to put in there for a family counselor? And what value does it provide?

I'm not seeing verbiage about this section in the guidelines, but maybe I'm totally missing it...

And for clarification, this is the section I'm referring to in the dashboard:

 

[Phil Rozek]

Hey Kerry,

It’s unclear what the payoff of the “Services” field will be, because it’s not showing up in the knowledge panel (or anywhere else) yet, and because Google has been mum on it.

But I’d say it has potential for just about every kind of business. I’ve been specifying “Services” for every client, with only a couple exceptions. (Those exceptions are businesses that only offer one service - a service that’s reflected in the GMB categories.) In the case of a family counselor, I would think you could list services like “Marriage Counseling,” “Counseling for Teenagers,” “CBT,” and so on.

(I offered some thoughts in my blog post last Thursday.)

Clearly the other shoe has yet to drop, but I haven’t taken my normal “wait and see” approach on this one, for what that’s worth.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Phil!

Here is a link to Phil's post and as always there are some good comments as well.

Google My Business Now Lets You Specify a List of Services

 

[freerunr]

Thanks Phil for your take, and Linda for linking to Phil's post. I suppose we still have to "wait and see" from the payoff standpoint, though. What we most likely won't have to wait for is spam abuse of these fields

 

[JoyHawkins]

It shows up on mobile but I agree that this doesn't compare to some features like Q&A or Posts that are really prominent.

We're testing to see if it impacts ranking.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Yeah, “Services” show up in mobile only in a limited sense. In the Maps app the “Services” shows up if you click on “Menu.” In a mobile browser the “Services” tab appears, but nothing happens when you click on it. At least that's what I've seen so far.

 

[Seo Guru]

Thanks for these tips, trying to get a handle on this myself