🌴 A Note From The Jungle
It’s already the middle of September and the changes in the Google Business Profile ecosystem to continue. This week we look at how Google’s changing guidelines create unrealistic expectations when adding new locations and what Google’s sunsetting of the Q&A API means for the future of this feature.
🦍 Ask GMB Gorilla
Hey GMB Gorilla…my competitor across town has a physical address profile, but I have been trying to get one for months and keep getting denied. What’s up with that?
Howdy human! Sounds like Google is dropping coconuts on your head. Ouch! Trying to get a physical address profile (like your competitors) when you are a service area business is no easy feat. This is because Google doesn’t want your business to have a physical address business if customers do not go to your location for services.
Google has two classifications for GBPs - physical address and service area business. To qualify for a physical address profile you must have clear, permanent, exterior signage on the business (or in the main lobby or entrance to your suite), have a person on staff at the location during open hours, and be able to demonstrate customers are coming to the location to receive goods or services.
A service area business profile on the other hand is for businesses - such as home services and trades - that primarily provide their goods and services at the customers location. Even if you have an office or shop, if you conduct the majority of your business offsite, you are a service area business.
Google’s enforcement of these guidelines is subjective, but getting better. Depending on when a competitor created their profile, the guidelines were more loose and less well defined. This is why you may see competitors in your category with a physical address listed on their profile…while you receive denial after denial.
While this is frustrating, Google’s guidelines and enforcement are always changing. It’s definitely possible for service area business types to get a physical address profile. However, it takes more than a virtual office or well stocked home garage to pass video verification or get reinstated.
The service area businesses that can get a physical profile, without jumping through hoops or spending a ton of time building out their presence, have actual retail storefronts customers can visit, large, pronounced signage on their building, a lot full of branded vehicles, and facilities that indicate people are clearly coming to the location frequently. Anything less than this is often a string of fruitless communications with Google.
You may not like this reality, but we don’t see it getting easier to get a Google Business Profile verified. Even the influencers in the space have gotten wind and are talking about methods to trigger easier verification methods by claiming other online directories, setting up a Google Search Console account on the associated domains, etc.
The good news? Despite what most hear and read, you don’t need a physical address profile in order to win your market and get ample amounts of clicks and calls. Plenty of service area business profiles outrank their physical address counterparts. But that’s a post for another time. Maybe next week…
🌴 Jungle Watch
Google Sunsets the My Business Q&A API
Google sent notice to development partners they’re sunsetting the Q&A API
Google continues to remove functionality from GBP APIs: Google has been removing more API functionality then they have been enabling the past few years. A move that corresponds with the general lack of aggressive investment into improve the product and support for users.
Google has been testing AI powered Q&A: The removal of the ability to ask and answer questions via the My Business API comes on the heels of Google introducing a new AI power Q&A feature on Google business profiles. It’s a feature that’s inline with Google’s general push towards a more gen AI focused search experience.
The announcements mentions changes to the function: We interpret this to mean that Google Business Profile owners and manager may soon lose the ability to add Q&A to their profile, with Google relying on profile details, the associated website, and what they know about the location in their index, to show relevant Q&A about the business.
While we expect manual Q&A to be available in the near term, this lever for influencing clicks and calls once a user is on your profile seems to be going the way of AI…and will soon be out of direct control.
🍌 Banana Bites
OpenAI releases a official study on how people are using ChatGPT 🤖 OpenAI
Google Search Console adds achievement functionality 🥇 Search Engine Land
Free Local SEO Audits? Here’s why you should run and hide. 🙈 GMB Gorilla
🆘 Need GBP Help?
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Did You Know? There are two species of gorilla: eastern and western 🦍
Till next time,