Google’s recent rebranding and new profile management options may be a sign that it’s improving features for multi-location brands, while driving adoption with SMBs via profile controls in Search and Maps.
These changes included retiring the Google My Business name in favor of “Google Business Profile,” improving the functionality of the “direct edit” experience (in which a business owner can manage their profile directly from the search results), and retiring the Google My Business mobile app in 2022.
Google My Business’s place at the heart of any local business’s online marketing and visibility efforts means that any significant changes cannot be ignored. Tie those updates in with a name change — something that usually generates a lot of fanfare and speculation, whatever the industry — and it’s easy to see why some (including myself) saw this as an emergence of a new era for local SEO and businesses on Google.
But is it?
After the dust had settled on the announcement, I wanted to hear how industry experts view the changes and whether they’d be doing anything differently. I also wanted to know what the average local search marketer made of these changes. Would it make any difference to their day-to-day?
Let’s look at the announced changes, one by one, and see what the people have to say.
Google My Business is now Google Business Profile
As a content marketer by profession, my interest was naturally piqued most by the announcement of a name change. But in reality, what does this really mean beyond my fellow content marketers having to sigh and make plans to change/update content in reaction?
First, what has actually changed? Well, before the change, the platform to access the dashboard of your Business Profile was called “Google My Business,” but the actual output — the profile users see in the Knowledge Panel and that appears in Local Pack and Google Maps search results — was commonly called Business Profile anyway.
You can think of it as the thing you “did” being Google My Business, but the thing that actually changed was your “Business Profile.” Google has clearly acknowledged the confusion here and decided to put everything under the umbrella of Google Business Profile with the old GMB dashboard renamed to “Google Business Profile Manager.”
Experts agree that the retiring of the name “Google My Business” matters very little, and, if anything, it’s going to make the discipline of local SEO and profile optimization far easier for agencies and consultants to explain to their local business clients.
Andrew Shotland, of Local SEO Guide, told me: “This kind of reminds me of when they switched from Google Webmaster Tools to Google Search Console. While it caused a brief dust-up on SEO Twitter, ultimately I don’t think it impacted anyone other than the teams at Google working on these services.”
“In other words, while the GBP name provides a bit more clarity about what the product is, for current users I don’t think this matters,” he added, “I guess for businesses that this is all new to, it might help them better understand what in fact this service is. So I would expect this will improve uptake of the service from SMBs, which I would expect is Google’s goal.”
That note about making the service more appealing to SMBs is an interesting one, something that we’ll come back to.
Meanwhile, DealerOn’s Greg Gifford sees complaints about rebranding as ultimately unfounded. “Everyone’s complaining that Google keeps rebranding, but it’s been seven years since the last name change. And now everyone’s making the same complaints they made seven years ago. In reality, Local SEOs are the only ones complaining; for the run-of-the-mill business owner, it’s a complete non-issue,” he says.
Still, I can’t help but feel for my team of content specialists weaving their way through years’ worth of GMB content and working out what, and how much, to change. My sympathies are with you if you’re in a similar boat.
As Joy Hawkins, of Sterling Sky, puts it: “It’s really only annoying for us to have to go back and update the dozens of blogs on our site that reference ‘Google My Business.’”
A veteran of local SEO, Joy had the foresight to stop playing Google’s game a long time ago, though. She says, “Google constantly does this, though, so when we renamed our Facebook group, we decided to go with Local Search Insiders instead of having to rename our group every four years when Google decides to rebrand again.”
To ensure I captured a range of opinions on these changes, we polled BrightLocal users to learn what they thought would impact their work, if anything. When it came to the name change, just 12% thought it would have any impact on their business, with 4% of agency respondents and 3% of consultants believing the name change would have some impact on their business.