For businesses that operate in the physical world, Google My Business Industry Email List (GMB) has become the center of the digital universe. Google is relying more and more on GMB content for rankings and less on third-party citations and off-page signals than in the past. A lot has happened with GMB this year, far too many to sum up in one article. (Joy Hawkins does a great job of capturing and summarizing most of the local SEO-related changes.) In Industry Email List addition to four major algorithm updates from Google, there was at least one major algorithm update local related to neural matching, although
BERT will also affect local results. Below is a summary of most (but not all) of the GMB updates and changes that have happened this year, as well Industry Email List as a few that don't strictly belong to GMB. I also tried to add some perspective at the end Industry Email List with the help of local SEOs and experts Carrie Hill, Adam Dorfman, Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm. January: Messaging, SAB feeds, virtual office rules Google began emphasizing messaging in the GMB profile - although this required business owners and agencies to send messages exclusively through the Google Industry Email List My Business app - after its move away from SMS messaging. The company has introduced a new registration flow for service area businesses.
It starts with a question of whether the company has a store or an office. If the answer is no, it sends the user an SAB-specific path. Google has also provided guidance on who is eligible to create a GMB page for a virtual office. In particular, there must be Industry Email List personnel on site. February: Map review, AR routes, waitlist entry Google has announced that hoteliers can now enter their check-in and check-out times directly into Google My Business. The company has also started testing augmented reality walking directions in Maps. It rolled them out widely in August Industry Email List (called LiveView). But they are still not so useful ten months later. In February, Google also started allowing business owners