Keeping your online business info up to date is important. Customers are more likely to turn to the internet to fin out information about your business than to give you a call. It’s important that your website has your current hours, products, and any sales you are running. But keeping your Google business listing updated is just as important. Your Google My Business listing is often the first result customers see when looking up your business. This guide will walk you through how to update your Google business listing.
When your business adds services, changed hours of operations, or special sales or promotions, you need to update your online presence to reflect those changes. This guide will walk you through how to update your business’s Google My Business listing so you can update and keep your customers informed.
Google My Business
This is perhaps the most important listing to update because when customers search your business, this is often the first thing they see. Updating your listing is easy if you’ve already claimed your Google My Business listing. However, if you’ve not claimed your listing (which really you should do), we have a strategy you can use to update your temporary business information.
Add Temporary Special Hours
This feature of Google My Business lets you add temporary business hours or mark a temporary closure. It’s usually used to mark a business closed during a holiday or when it has special hours for a few days at a time. It’s also the best way to mark your special hours when a novel coronavirus turns economic activity on its head.
- Go to business.google.com and log into your account.
- If you have multiple locations, select the location you want to update.
- Click Info on the left sidebar to bring up your business information
- Beneath your normal hours, they’ll be listings for Special hours, click the pencil icon to edit your special hours.
- Click Add new date to edit the hours for a particular date. You can either add new open or closing times or click the blue slider to mark your business as closed. In the example below, starting on March 17th, I added new hours for the next three weeks. Later, as I know more information, I’ll update the hours for the rest of April and May if they will be running on reduced hours.
Add New Services in Google My Business
If you are offering new services because of the coronavirus, it’s a good idea to add that to your Google My Business listing too. If you are a restaurant offering carry out, create a post letting people know that. Or if you are offering delivery, this is a great way to update your customers.
- Go to business.google.com and log into your account.
- If you have multiple locations, select the location you want to update.
- Click Posts on the left sidebar to bring up the posts screen.
- From here, click Add Update to create a new post updating your customers about your current services. Be clear about any special instructions (online orders only, call ahead, etc.) that customers would need to know. Including a photo with your update post is a good idea too as photos will draw attention to your update.
Google My Business is a great tool to market your business to local customers, even when there is not a world-wide pandemic. We’ve just scratched the surface on ways you can use it to provide information about your business to your customers. Play around with the different options and see what is available. We offer a Google My Business optimization service designed to super charge your Google My Business listing so it’ll be seen by more prospective customers and clients.
COVID-19 Update
Google has rolled out a new type of Google My Business post called COVID-19 update. These type of post is designed to update your customers on how your business has changed because of COVID-19. These option is like the regular Add Update option, but doesn’t allow you to attach an image. From the testing I’ve done, it looks like these COVID-19 updates are put into a priority review queue and appear live on your listing immediately.
What If I Haven’t Claimed my Google My Business Listing?
If you haven’t claimed your Google My Business listing, you are not out of luck. Although you will not be able to create a new post, you can still change your business hours. I suggest going ahead and claiming your Google My Business listing now. It usually takes about a week to finish the process, but Google has announced that there will be a delay for the publication of new listings, claims, and verification from non-critical health-related businesses. In the mean time you can do the following steps to suggest temporary businesses hours.
- Log into your Google Account.
- Search for your business name on Google
- Beneath your business’s phone number, find the link Suggest an edit and click on it.
- Choose Change name or other details
- Click on the current business hours.
- Under the current hours, there will be a link to Add or remove special hours. Click it.
- Since you aren’t the verified owner of this Google My Business listing, you’ll only be able to suggest special hours for the following week. Select all the days you need to change. Either update the hours or mark the business as closed on those days.
- You will have to wait for Google to verify your changes. It could take a while for them to go into effect.
Other Ideas
Be sure to update the other common places customers find your business information. Your Website, Facebook page, and Yelp are all common places people use to lookup and verify business hours and information. It is important to keep your listing up to date and current during these uncertain times.
If you’re interested in using Google My Business to it’s full potential as a marketing channel, we offer a Google My Business Optimization Service. We optimize your Google My Business listing to help drive more local customers to your business.
