So, by now you know that with GMB you can update some basic information ( your business name, address, telephone number, website). Don't forget to claim your listing, add photos and get set to work with reviews. However, there are some other features that shouldn't be avoided and here we would like to tell you about Products and Services.
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 :)
Products
Here you can upload information about your Products. As Google states this feature is available for small and medium-sized individual businesses. However, Google doesn’t specify how many locations are needed to be considered a big or a medium-sized business. It’s also necessary to pinpoint that Google wants multi-location brands to provide their products through Local Inventory Ads. It’s planned to be a sort of virtual shopping interface, which allows businesses to showcase their products, so it could be quite handy in terms of connecting to the customers.
If you sign in to your GMB account and you see “Products” in the menu you’re eligible to use this feature and add products. However, you have some product exceptions that you cannot list and you can check them here. Sometimes that could be a little bit tricky.
If you didn’t list your category correctly you could be missing ‘Products’ and that could get especially disturbing if your competitors could use it. To check why they can use it and you can’t, we would recommend you the GMB Spy Chrome Extension, which allows you to check categories for any GMB page on Google Maps or in Google Search. However, if you would like to upload Products to a few different locations Google will not allow you to do that. You could add it manually to locations one by one or use an external vendor who would upload it via API. In Geojet you’re able to upload your Products in bulk.
Services
The place in your GMB where you can state your services. It will be shown when potential customers search on Google for a service that you offer. That works on both desktop and mobile. Google defines this feature as follows: “In Google My Business, you may get an option to add the services that you offer, along with their descriptions and prices. If your business has multiple categories, group services together into sections under the appropriate category to keep your services organized.”
It’s important to notice that they have relatively limited visibility and won’t show up as a list of services on the desktop. However, on a mobile device, they will be displayed in a tab named “Services” in Google Search and they will be shown in a Google Maps app.
Sometimes Google could auto-update your GMB information including GMB Services, so you need to keep GMB Services in check, especially because they are not being shown as often as General Information or GMB Products, but still could significantly affect the relevance of your business to search intent. Phil from Local Visibility System has some advice for you on what to do if Google auto-updates your GMB info in a wrong way.
It’s also hard to measure the impact of GMB Services on your business as GMB Insights doesn’t offer any specific data on it. Moreover, because Services don’t have an option to link to your site adding UTM tags also seems pointless.
The only thing that you can do, in my opinion, is to add some services for a certain period of time, measure your web metrics and KPIs. For instance, it could be UTM-parameterized URLs in Google Search Console and you can measure the number of impressions or clicks before and after adding specific services.
However, if you would like to update Services to a few different locations Google will not allow you to do that. You could add it manually to locations one by one or use an external vendor who would upload it in bulk. Hope you're all set to work with Product&Services and in the next article, we'll tell you about GMB Insights and Post Types.
