Last week Google announced Google My Business will now be called Google Business Profile.
This change comes with a raft of changes and updates to the old Google My Business, including the ability to claim and verify your Business Profile directly on Google Search or the Google Maps app. This allows business owners to simply search for their business by name and see an option to claim and verify the associated Business Profile. Once the business is verified, business owners can edit your business’ information, including the address, opening hours, photos and more.
Google will also be doing away with the Google My Business app and shifting users to the web to manage their listing.
These changes will take place at some point in 2022 after the new year, but it’s not yet clear when exactly companies will have to adapt to their new home.
The existing Google My Business web experience will transition to primarily support larger businesses with multiple locations, and will be renamed “Business Profile Manager.” We’ll share more details on these changes in the months ahead.
Obviously, this is all meant to simplify the experience of using Google’s tools for small business owners who only look after one or two business.
New Features of Google Business Profile
Google also announced some new features coming to Google Business Profiles. The new features include:
- Claim and verify your Google Business Profile directly in Google Search and Google Maps (as mentioned above)
- Call History is officially launching in US and Canada (more details here)
- Messaging can be done directly from Google Search (more details here)
- Message read receipts can be controlled in Google Search and Maps
What it looks like. Here are screen shots of the web interface for these features:
If you need help with your Google My Business or what these changes mean to you, please feel free to reach out for a chat with one of the team at Unbound.
