Updating Google My Business During COVID-19

Hello friends,

As you know I am always promoting using the excellent Internet Real Estate called Google My Business Knowledge Panel (GMB). Updating your GMB is helpful for customers to learn of your new hours and/or cleaning processes and even delivery or online services. This is often your customer’s first stop in finding new information about your business. During this time and always I am here to answer questions and support you and our community.

Below are some temporary updates from Google.

Temporary COVID-19 Google My Business Updates:

  • Businesses can mark their listings as “temporarily closed” 

    • The ability to mark your listing as Temporarily closed has rolled-out in many dashboards. You can confirm that your business is closed and then reopen it when you are fully operational again.
    • If the thought of using the temporarily closed feature is unsettling, you can instead use Special Hours to indicate that your business is closed right now.

  • Review functionality has been disabled.

    • New reviews will not be published. A user can write a review, but it will not be published publicly and it will only be visible to the user in their contributions section on Maps.
    • Business owners cannot respond to reviews.
    • The likelihood of these reviews being published once Google enables the review feature is slim, however, it’s still unknown. We suspect Google has done this to prevent negative/irrelevant reviews during this unprecedented time.
    • Pause any of your automated emails going out to customers asking for reviews on Google until this feature is available again.

  • Questions & Answers have been temporarily removed.

    • Any new and any previously added Q&A’s from business owners and users are no longer published on the Business Profile.
    • The functionality has been removed by Google until further notice.

  • Critical health-related businesses get priority.

    • The GMB support team has reduced capacity, so any business edits that require review before publication will notice a lag.
    • Other top priorities for business edits go to open and closed states, special hours, temporary closures, business descriptions and attributes.

  • New listings and verifications are delayed. 

  • Restaurants, grocery stores, and breweries adding “Delivery Available” or “Take Away” to their services.

Google’s full article:

Limited Google My Business functionality due to COVID-19

During the unprecedented COVID-19 situation, we are taking steps to protect the health of our team members and reduce the need for people to come into our offices. As a result, there may be some temporary limitations and delays in support as we prioritize critical services.

Our current focus is on the quality and reliability of information on Google Search and Maps. We want to ensure users and business owners have access to essential features like whether the business is open or has special hours. Learn about best practices for affected businesses, and what you can do to keep your customers informed.

Please take note of these temporary product changes:

Business information edits

We will prioritize reviews for edits critical to health-related businesses. At this time, we will also prioritize reviews for open and closed states, special hours, temporary closures, business descriptions, and business attributes edits for other verified businesses.

Newly created listings, claims, and verifications

Our support team will manually review new listings, claims, and verifications for critical health-related businesses. While we prioritize these critical services, please expect a delay for publication of new listings, claims, and verifications for other types of businesses to Google Search and Maps.

Reviews and Q&A

New reviews, review replies, and all Q&A will be unavailable during this time.

 

Thank you for your patience during this time. We will provide further updates as they become available.

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Vickie Christensen of Wellman Works Ltd. in Cameron Park, specializes in getting your business found on the Internet. I use my wealth of knowledge in the technical field earned over the last 30 plus years. I love working with businesses and making them more successful because that makes our community stronger.

Internet Visibility and Brand – you have found the person that listens and understands and will help you understand. It is my mission to give the opportunity that large companies have to your business and to promote the ethics of the Rotary 4-Way Test: In all things we do and say; Is it the Truth, Is it fair to all concerned, Will it build good will and better friendships, and Will it be beneficial to all concerned.

I look forward to hearing from you and discovering how I can best help you. Please call or text me at 916-825-5704 or email at: vickie@wellmanworks.com