The Local Search Association predicted earlier this year that Google would roll out new features and enhancements to its Google My Business platform. The predictions were correct! With 3.5 billion searches each day and 52.2% of all web pages served through mobile phones, it’s obvious credit unions need to keep search, including local search, top of mind.
Here are four updates to Google My Business that you need to know:
1. Local Descriptions Are Back
Did you notice that your descriptions in Google My Business listings pages went missing for a while? That’s because Google got rid of them in 2016 because companies were using them in an abusive manner to manipulate ranking results by entering lots of key words to this section instead of a true description. They, therefore, replaced the descriptions with attributes which you could select. The good news is that descriptions are back and you can now edit/add them to your listings in your Google My Business Dashboard. This is a great way to put your best foot forward as these show at the top of your Google listing, so make sure to get these updated! The best practice is to keep them short, around 250 characters or less.
2. Services Field Has Been Added
The all-new services field has been added. How is this useful to credit unions? That’s still up for debate. This is meant more for the service industry to provide services and their prices to the market. This doesn’t appear to be a good spot to promote things like loan rates, but sit tight and we’ll let you know if you should pay attention to them in the future.
3. New Guidelines About Review Generation
Late last year, Google came out with a new policy against bulk review generation/solicitation. Recently, Google took its review policy a little further by adding that companies are not allowed to discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.
What does this mean for credit unions? Google doesn’t want you to selectively pick out reviews or attempt to influence, either way, those leaving the reviews. This is also known as review gating. At CUBrandMonitor we support this stance as it is ultimately what’s is best for your members.
Not familiar with the concept of review gating? Here is a definition provided by SterlingSky:
“Review-gating is the process of filtering candidates before asking them to leave you a review. Normally this is done by sending all customers an email template and first asking them if they had a positive or negative experience. If they had a positive experience, they are asked to leave a review on Google, but if they had a negative experience they are prompted to leave private feedback and are never sent the option to leave a review publicly.”
4. Local Listings Management Interface Released
If you have multiple locations, this last update is going to be most beneficial for you! Google recently released a new Google My Business dashboard to help with listings management. Beware, there are new buttons and layouts that might take some time to get used to! For example, you can organize locations into groups (think regions, brand managers, states, etc.). You can also click a listing and edit it right there (you used to have to go to another window). Posts and insights are also more accessible. The new interface is there to help you best manage your Google My Business listings.
Questions? Contact help@cubrandmonitor.com.
