Google My Business Pages - Still Relevant or Phasing Out?

[BlueCorona]

Google My Business plays a big part of getting your company to rank in the local pack for local search queries. Apart from making sure this is correct and up to date, where do you think the future of GMB pages is headed? Will Google eventually start phasing these out and come up with a different way to populate the local pack?

[MiriamEllis]

It's always my pleasure! I appreciate the good question you asked.

[BlueCorona]

Hi Miriam! Once again, thank you for taking the time to leave such a great response. This was extremely helpful and I really appreciate it. You made some awesome points that I didn't even consider!

[BlueCorona]

Thank you, John! I appreciate the response!

[MiriamEllis]

Another good question from you, Blue Corona!

Are GMB listings going away? Not any time soon, but as John mentions, be prepared for increased paid-packs as time goes by, in some industries. Basically, any industry into which Google can position itself as the middle man (leads for home service providers, bookings for hotels, etc.) will be one in which free packs could become obsolete.

If you're trying to take the long view of what's happening, basically, Google is trying to become the platform on which actions occur that would previously have occurred mainly on a company's own website. Google wants to provide directions, facilitate phone calls, govern reputation, show photos, book appointments and arbitrate leads all on their own product instead of on yours (your website). As Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm discuss in this interesting chat transcript, Google is becoming your new homepage: http://streetfightmag.com/2017/03/06/why-google-is-becoming-the-new-homepage-for-smbs/

So, whether we like the idea of Google having a finger in every pie or not, what you want to do as a local business owner is to influence as much as you can the accuracy and persuasiveness of your presence in all of Google's results (and that includes paid results in some industries and tough markets, as well). This is what users will be interacting with - this layer of data that exists on Google about your business, instead of only on your website. Your GMB listing will be a major factor in this for the foreseeable future.

So, that's basically the eagle's eye view, with some unknown quantities like the ultimate impact of voice search (controversial) and future updates to Google's algorithm (unpredictable). Hope this helps!

[MiriamEllis]

Some good gut feelings here, John, and you are so right about Google's rebranding history - it has been especially volatile in local!

[dohertyjf]

Well, they are already starting to put ads in there so I expect this to go fully paid eventually. But that said, I don't see the idea of GMB going anywhere soon, but we have seen how they change things all the time and they could possibly rename it while only changing a few things.

Branding has never been Google's strong suit. Just look at their maze of chat apps.