Google My Business is a platform or a user interface created by Google. This platform works towards aggregating the Google services and providing the user's direct access to it.
The access to the facilities is mediated through a Google My Business dashboard. Moreover, Google My Business is a unified interface engineered with the aim of creating a healthy environment for the local businesses.
Key Facts about Google my Business
We see that the craze for associating with the Google My Business is rising amongst the local businesses. This preference follows the rising choice of the customers to opt for those businesses which are Google my Business verified. Such verified businesses are likely to be preferred twice than those that refrain from Google my Business verification.
It is further believed that those businesses which work on adding relevant photos to their listings receive more requests from the customers. This rate of the request received is around 42 percent for directing with the assistance of Google maps.
The businesses which are verified through the Google my Business platform receives around 35 percent more clicks than their counterparts.
Google had expanded their local ranking factors under Google my Business document on April 01, 2016.
Google my business project usage limits
Google my business platform has the following usage limits:
Creating Location Calls: 1 QPS per project. The daily location call establishing limit is restricted at 100 QPD.
Manager (Update/Delete/Associate) Location Calls: 5 QPS per project. The daily location call managing limit is restricted at 10,000 QPD.
QPS stands for Queries per Seconds per project
QPD stands for Queries per Day per project
You may find these updated statistics in the current version of Google My Business. V4 is the current version of Google my Business.
Is Google My Business Free?
Yes! Google my Business platform is entirely free of expenses. The website publishers do not charge any hidden costs for its usage. The free Google my Business tool is your personalized business manager who manages how your business platform appears on Google Search.
It also lists and maintains the appearance of your business on Google Maps. Both the Google Search and Google Maps are inclusive of the name of your business, location and working hours. It further monitors and notifies you about the customer reviews.
It accomplishes the task of adding relevant photos and informing you about how and where the people can search for you.
How Google My Business reviews help your brand locally?
Google my business platform emphasizes three critical criteria of relevance, prominence, and distance. The amalgam of these three criteria is the basis on which Google my Business helps your brand locally.
This analysis assists the Google my business to rate the business which satiates your search needs devoid of the location. It means that Google my business prefers the business which it finds the best fit for your need and rates it ahead of others.
You may thus get the notification even for the farthest business ranking first if it satisfies your requirements completely.
Let us take a more in-depth look into why Google my Business considers the three criteria of relevance, prominence, and distance.
Relevance
Relevance means precise. Relevance represents the exact or near to exact search results for the term being searched. It thus becomes essential for the business entrepreneurs to add all the relevant information about their businesses.
The more the information about a particular business is available, the more is it understood by the Google my Business platform and better it ranks your business.
Prominence
Prominence reflects the popularity of your business. The more robust your business identity is, the more prominent it is in the eyes of Google my Business. The prominence of a business on Google articles, directories, and web links even influence my Business.
To clarify this further, let us take an example of famous monuments. The Taj Mahal is one of the famous monuments of India and has a higher degree of prominence. Thus, Google my business will rate it accordingly in the local search results.
Distance
This feature works hand in hand with the Google Maps. Google my Business aids in locating a particular business from the current location of the Google My Business platform user.
It does not stop in tracing the distance of the business from the onlooker’s location; it also directs the person to reach his final destination. Google my Business calculates the range of the business entity from the user within a fraction of seconds.
How Google my Business reviews increase your SEO ranking?
Google my Business simplifies the process of increasing your businesses’ SEO ranking. All you need to do is reluctantly follow the below steps to rank your business higher with the assistance of Google my Business.
Complete your Business Information
While registering your business with the Google My Business platform never leave any stone unturned. This is the fundamental principle of every business to succeed in their online promotion.
Completely enter the entire details of your business. Your listing on Google my Business should reflect as a bible for your business. Include the business-related information such as the physical location and phone number of your business, business categories and attributes.
Be energetic on the Google My Business platform. It should not happen that you entered the information at the launch of your business and failed to update it with the change in working hours.
The information on Google my Business should be updated timely to avoid inconvenience for your clients. You may learn about updating the business information at
Verification of your business location
Verify the location of your business entity so that it ranks better across the Google Search and Google Maps.
Accurate Working Hours
Accurate inclusion of the business working hours is the pre-requisite for any business entity to rank higher on Google my Business. It also includes your business working hours on holidays and in the case of the special events. This accurate and precise information about your business working hours lets your clients know when your business is operating. This information gives them the confidence to drive to your business within the working hours.
Review Management
Review management plays a significant role in defining your business viability. Be active on the Google My Business platform and keep responding to the reviews raised by your clients.
Remember to react positively to every review irrespective of the positive or negative tone of your clients.
Photographs
Adding visual effects hold the visitors for a long haul. By adding photographs demonstrating your products, services, business location and the other necessities make it convenient for the clients to go through your website.
How to add your business in Google My Business to get customer reviews?
Follow the steps mentioned below to add your business in Google my Business
Click on START NOW button in green.
Fill in the detailed information as demanded by the popup on your screen.
Sign in to your business account with your business credentials.
Add your business entity to Google my Business listing and tick the checkbox displayed in the dialog box. Click on the blue button which indicated Continue.
Verify your business to start listing it on Google my Business.
Once you are done with the steps mentioned above, a dialog box appears with the verification link.
Click on the blue button which displays Mail text. Google my Business will email you a code.
This code laden email will be forwarded to you within twelve working days from the date you have requested for the verification.
Once you receive the code, log into your Google My Business account and enter the code. The verification process is now complete.
10 ways to ask your customers to leave reviews on Google My business page
Ask your customers to review your business listing
The role of the business entrepreneur accounts of prime importance here. It is his duty that this task is communicated to every single employee of every individual business. Ask your customers for review plays an essential role in direct customer reviews.
To ask your customer to review your business listing, you need to maintain a healthy relationship with them. This feature is mostly applicable in the case of those employees which deal with the customers daily. It can be related to the spread of word of mouth.
Educating Customers
Many customers might be such that they know about your business, however, lack the technicality to cast their reviews. In such scenario, it becomes the prime responsibility of the business employees to educate and guide their customers to generate review.
Personalization
Personalization goes hand in hand with the customer-centric approach. Here the business entrepreneur needs to maintain a healthy relationship with his long-term customer. Receiving a personal email from the business owner makes the customers worthy of their reviews.
Process Simplification
Keep the process of posting reviews short and simple for your customers. For this, you may make the best use of the bulleted text with special hyperlinking.
Alternatively, a more straightforward step involves direct copy and paste of instructions from the Google My Business platform. The later one is preferential as Google generates short and crisp review sentences for your business.
Third-Party Tools
If you are into a franchise model business or your business serves multiple locations, collating and managing reviews becomes a nail-biting task. Here, to simplify your process, you can make use of the third party tools which expedite the entire process as a cakewalk for you.
Multiple touch points
You can ask your customers to review your business across different platforms. This multiple touch point feature is inclusive of review on social media, in-store or office review and review over a call.
Incentives
Officially, offering reviews ifs forbidden. Have occasionally it can be achieved by issuing discount coupons for a review no matter if it is good or bad. However, do not make it a habit of offering incentives on every review. It violates the business policies framed under the law.
Respond to your business reviews
Be vibrant on the social media platforms and wherever your customers possess the liberty to post a review about your business. Respond to every review. It engages your customers that you acknowledge their reviews for the betterment of the services being rendered.
Email your business signatures
This includes adding a call to action statement in your updated business email signatures. Such a call to action statement can help your business to generate a more substantial number of reviews per month.
How to deal with Google My Business reviews and complaints?
You can deal with the Google my business reviews and complaints either through the desktop or the mobile.
With desktop
Sign in with your Google my Business account with your login credentials for your business.
In the case of multiple locations, you need to select one location at a time. Choose the preferred location you want to begin your review management with.
Search for the menu option. Scroll down the menu options to locate Reviews. Click on Reviews. Please note that if you want to respond to your customer review, you need to verify your business account first. Ensure that your business entity listing on the Google My Business platform is verified.
Select your preferred customer review. Click on the Respond to review option to reply to a particular review.
Type in your response. Please note to keep your response to each review positive. The positive review will inculcate a sense that even the negative customer reviews are being acknowledged with positive outcomes.
Once you are done with typing your business response, Click Submit option.
With Mobile
You need to download and install the Google my Business application. The application is available on the Play Store. Once you sign in to your Google My Business account, open the app and locate the menu icon.
Under Menu drop-down list, scroll until you locate the Reviews option. Please ensure that your business listing on Google my Business is verified. If not, verify your business listings and then proceed ahead.
Select a particular review and tap on the option RESPOND NOW next to it.
Type in your desired review and click Submit option.
Some essential tips while you respond to a customer review
Maintain politeness and avoid being personal.
As a business entrepreneur, you need to maintain courtesy and decency while you reply to a customer review. Never get into an argument with a frustrated customer. Winning a dispute over a frustrated customer is impossible.
Avoid burning bridges. Whatever you write as your response should be legible to your target audience. Keep it short and crisp. Moreover, you need to assure that your responses comply with the Google my Business local content policy.
Ass stated earlier your responses to the customer’s feedback should be short, crisp and appealing. The customers generally are await of your more concise and genuine responses.
Appreciate your reviewers for posting their product feedback.
Additionally, in case you have some new information updated with your business product, respond your happy customers with the updated information. There is no need at all to react individually to each of the review posted by your customers.
However, maintain an equal ratio of replying to positive as well as negative reviews.
You know that your business product reviewers are your existing product customers. So there is no need to bubble up the customers to post reviews by offering them incentives.
If you have any additional information to be shared with your existing customers, share it politely. Do not present yourself as a salesperson.
How to remove fake Google my business reviews?
Before you proceed ahead with the removal of the fake reviews, assure that you have read the Google my Business policy. Here, you need to be patient with your Google reviews as it takes several days for a particular customer review to be assessed.
In case you find a customer review violating your Google my Business policy, you may highlight the same by flagging it. Once the review is flagged, the Google my Business team will complete its assessment.
If the team finds the review to be violating the policy, it will be entirely removed from your Google My Business listing.
With desktop
Sing in your Google My Business account with your login credentials.
In the case of the multiple businesses, listings choose the one which you want to proceed ahead with. Open the business location indicating the review you want to remove.
Select the menu option and scroll down to locate the reviews option in the drop-down list.
Click Reviews option.
Locate the review you wish to mark with a flag for its removal. Click the three dots next to it and scroll down the menu.
Locate the option Flag as inappropriate and select it. The review gets flagged to be noticed for assessment.
Same steps you need to accomplish with the mobile app of Google my Business.
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