And we're continuing our deep dive into Google Business Profile aka Google My Business. In the previous article, we've covered such features as Products and Services. However, if you would like to use GBP to a full extent you also should know about Insights and Post Types.

One quick note: Google recently renamed Google My Business (GMB) to Google Business Profile (GBP). When we were doing this research it was GMB, and when it was published GMB was already called GBP. However, the described functionality remained the same :)

Insights

Google Insights gives you information on how people find your business listing on the Internet. As defined by Google: “Because many customers find businesses on Google Search and Maps, Insights focuses on how customers use Search and Maps to find your listing, and what they do once they find it. You can get Insights for individual listings or in bulk.”

To be more precise you can find out how customers search for your business (direct/discovery/branded), where on Google they viewed your business (Maps/Search), what did they do after discovering your listing (visited your site, requested direction or called you), then you can find out how many times your business photos have been viewed. Google Insights also give you a comparison on the same statistics of businesses like yours. Moreover, it gives you some ideas on photos quantity. Not too bad, right? Especially if you’re trying to create a data-driven approach in your business.

However, getting all of the data is not yet enough by itself and one also needs to interpret it somehow. Joy Hawkins from Sterling Sky has a pretty good explanation on it, so I would recommend you to read that if you would like to get more into these metrics.

At Geojet we have more advanced Analytics that complements Google Insights.

You would be able to get an analysis of reviews/responses and reviews/ratings over a certain period of time, review semantic analysis that allows you to find out the tone of reviews and keywords. In addition to that, you get advanced competitive analysis, which allows you to compare your business with nearby competitors by such aspects as distance, work with reviews, clients’ opinions, and ratings. Pretty neat, huh?

Posts

Google Posts allows businesses to provide customers with the most relevant updates. These posts can be used for various purposes: highlight products or events, advise customers on your business, promote special offers and discounts, and let customers know about Covid-19 restrictions. With this timely information, you could make the customer experience more engaging and fully integrate Google My Business into your Customer Experience strategy.

That’s how Google defines this feature: “You can connect with existing and potential customers through your Business Profile on Google Search and Maps through posts. You can create and share announcements, offers, new or popular items in stock, or event details directly with your customers.”

However, in the same manner, as Google Products Google Posts are not available for every type of business. Usually, it happens because the industries of these categories are heavily regulated. Sterling Sky provides a detailed list of industries with limited or no access to GMB Posts. For instance, you can find there that hotels and lodgings industries cannot use it.

Interestingly, as was also pinpointed in a Brightlocal study, Google used to limit the ability of multi-location businesses to create Google Posts en masse. However, due to the pandemic, these restrictions have been lifted. Nowadays businesses could manage it by setting up their own API access or using platforms/tools which allow them to schedule Posts via the API.

Geojet is one of these tools, where you could create and schedule your posts as well as publish en masse. With Geojet you could work with all of the available GBP Post types.

So, let’s dig in for what exactly you need specific post types while there are 5:

Covid-19 Update
This feature was released in April 2020 due to the global pandemic. It allows businesses to tell their customers about:
- Reduced working hours
- Additional restrictions due to Covid
- Let your customers know about online events made by your business (meetups, classes etc)
- Hygiene and safety practices
Offers
This is quite handy as you could let customers know about special offers and discounts. However, it doesn’t have to be something that you sell. You can also include things that you give away for free, such as a research paper or a consultation. Offers should include a start date and an end date. You can run your offers for a maximum of 12 months. Offers also give you an opportunity to use coupon ‘codes’ and then it could be included in your Posts.
Pro tip: Coupon codes could be used as a good metric to measure the importance of Google Posts in your digital strategy. Just measure how many people would come over to your actual location and show the offer.
What’s New?
Also known as an “Update” post and can include images, some text, and CTA.
Products
Here you can add your products with description, price, category, and a CTA. You also have an option of adding the products not from Posts but from Products directly, but there is no actual difference between them since 2020. If you want to know more about GBP Products vs GBP Product Posts Claire Carlile from LocalU did a pretty good study on it.
Events
Here you can let customers know about potential events that you organize. And here you can also include a photo, a title, start and end dates (timing should be within a one-year time frame). Then you can ‘Add more details’ and you can add some CTA in ‘Add a button’.

Important to note. Some Posts can get rejected, even if you’ve done everything according to Google’s guidelines. No worries about that. Sometimes Google gets a little buggy. Instead of being published, you would see a ‘Rejected’ label in your GBP dashboard. By starting this process again you can get your Post published. However, sometimes the problem could be in the content of attached images, which Google might consider ‘explicit’. You can check how Google views that image with Google Vision API. If it wouldn’t provide you with a clear answer, we would recommend you to check Google’s Policy on it here.

Now you're all set to work with GBP Insights and Post Types. Don't forget that you also can share a GBP Post but I don’t know who would be interested in it :)

Keep following us, if you like our posts. In the next article, we will share some more advice on Google Photos and Google Posts, so stay tuned :)