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I always like when Google drops a subtle hint about what it wants you to do.

If you haven’t done a Google My Business post recently, and if you have a good-sized pile of Google reviews, there’s a good chance Google will auto-generate a “Suggested Post” that quotes one of your Google reviews.  (As of this writing, I call this feature “Suggested Review,” because the only type of post Google seems to suggest is a somewhat-bland excerpt of a review.)

You may see it when you log into your Google My Business dashboard.  It will look something like this.

The “suggested” review seems to be an offshoot of the “Small Thanks” program, in which Google tries to charm you into making your Google reviews more visible on Google.

I’m not the first to spot this.  Cordell Crowley posted on this at the Local Search Forum last month.  I hadn’t seen the “Suggested Post” feature then.  Because I haven’t heard anything about it since then – or seen this new kind of GMB post in the wild – I assume most other people also haven’t seen hide or hair of it in their Google My Business dashboards.

If you’ve done a Google My Business post recently (within the last 7 days, or you used my workaround), you won’t see the “Suggested Post” option.  Likewise if you don’t have many reviews (I’m trying to get a bead on the number), or if you see a “suspended” message in the GMB dashboard.

It doesn’t appear there’s a way for you to see Google’s “Suggested Post” if you have been active in posting to GMB, which is a shame.  Apparently, there’s also no way to pick a different review for Google to excerpt.  The spirit of Henry Ford lives on.

Not a game-changer feature by any means, but a handy new capability.  Hope it stays around for long enough to determine whether it’s useful.

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Do you see the “Suggested Post” option in your dashboard?

Have you tried it out?

Leave a comment!

Two problems with Google My Business posts are (1) they’re not too visible anymore unless someone searches for your business by name, and (2) people without itchy mouse-fingers only see a tiny preview of the post in the sidebar.

Those are valid concerns.  Though you can use my hack to keep Google My Business posts from becoming a big time-taker, you still might wonder whether you should bother with them at all.  Or you might figure that if very few people see your posts, you might as well load them up with keywords, in case that helps your rankings on the local map.

Those also would be legitimate reasons not to do a Google My Business post for a coupon or other special offer.  “You want me to offer coupon nobody will see?  No thanks.”

What if your coupon showed up in the Google Maps 3-pack, like this?

(Thanks to Anas of Batteries Shack for the tip.)

That coupon is from a Google My Business post.  As you may have noticed, Google often grabs the content of GMB posts and sticks them in the 3-pack results, when the content of a given post is relevant to the search term someone typed in.

You can get your offer to show up in the Maps 3-pack if you create an “Offer” type of post, but it doesn’t need to be an “Offer.”  It could also be an “Event” post, for example.  Google can grab the content from any species of post and stick it in the Google Maps / 3-pack results (Brodie Clark briefly mentioned that fact in this great post he wrote with Joy Hawkins.)

Most of the benefits of that are obvious.  But I would assume that a compelling offer in the 3-pack also may help your rankings when people type in a search term, see you ranking for that term, and click on your listing because your offer is relevant.  Just a hunch.

Anyway, I suggest you try putting out a coupon or other special offer in a Google My Business post.  You may or may not get any takers, but at least your offer won’t be relegated to sidebar Siberia.  People will see your offer whenever you pop up on the local map, and for search terms relevant to the offer.

For tips on creating a solid Google My Business post, check out this post from Ben Fisher.

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Have you used Google My Business posts to put up offers?

What have you noticed?

Leave a comment!

I’m talking about a local search result like this (click to enlarge):

Local “one-box” results (as they’re called) show only one Google My Business page, alongside some organic results.  It’s good for your business to have a one-box result any time you can nab one, because of how visible you are on the page: You’re the only business on the map (on the right), and you’ve got an organic ranking (off to the left).

A one-box only pops up for a business that have a Google My Business page.  If you’re a customer/searcher, you’ll usually see a one-box result pop up in one of four scenarios:

Scenario 1: You search by name for a specific company near you.

Scenario 2: You search for specific company that isn’t near you, but that has such a distinctive name that Google knows you want to see search results for that company.

Scenario 3: Google falsely assumes you wanted to see results for a specific company, when in fact you searched for a term broad enough that you thought several local businesses would show up.

Scenario 4: Google concludes there’s only one business near you (or in a specific city or area you search in) that provides the service or product you’re looking for.

Scenarios 1 and 2 aren’t relevant to this post.  In those cases the way you show up in the one-box results is just by having more people search for the name of your business, and that’s just a matter of “brand-building.”

I won’t be talking about scenario 3, either, for two reasons.  The first reason is that one-box visibility is a fluke in that case (Google incorrectly assumes people are searching for a specific company by name).  The second reason is that usually the only way to try to confuse Google into giving your business a one-box on the local map is to use a fake name for your Google My Business page, or to stuff keywords into the name.  Neither strategy is one you want to bank on.

Scenario 4 is a card you can play: If you can appear (to Google) to be the only business nearby that offers certain services or products, you can engineer more one-box results for your business.

How, exactly, do you go about that?

Some have speculated it’s a matter of getting reviews, or of general “on-page optimization,” or that it depends only on what the search term is  But based on my experiments and dissections, I’ve found that all you need to get a Google Maps one-box result is:

1. Create a separate page on your site about each specific, preferably “niche” service or product you offer. I don’t mean a page on something broad or that’s saturated with local competitors, like “Personal Injury Law” or “Riding Mowers.” I mean you need a page on “Banana Peel Injury Law” or “Duffer 9000 EZ Riding Mower,” or on whatever is the most specific way to characterize your service or product.

2. Point some internal links to that page: maybe one in the main navigation, another in the footer, one on the homepage, one on the main “Services” or “Products” page, and wherever else seems appropriate. Don’t go crazy with the internal links, but err on the side of more rather than fewer.

3. Mention that product or service on the landing page you use for your Google My Business page. (Preferably you also link to your dedicated page on that product or service, rather than just mention it.)

That’s it.  Of course, not much will happen until Google has indexed your page, but steps #2-3 may help expedite that.  Though I doubt you need search-term-relevant links or reviews to get one-box results for niche services or products, scaring up some reviews and links wouldn’t hurt, and is a good idea anyway.

A few notes:

• Is it possible other ingredients go into Google’s one-box sausage?  Sure.  It’s also possible that Google’s rhyme and reason will change later.  But in my experiments for clients and observations on others’ businesses, the above 3 steps are all you need to do.
• What if you want to get a one-box for more-competitive, non-niche search terms?  That’s a tough putt (even if you take a spammy approach), because Google knows of other businesses relevant to those search terms.  In that case, you’re vying for 3-pack rankings.

• Any Google Maps one-box results you get will be in addition to – not instead of – your organic rankings for those products or service.  It’s not an either-or deal.  Local SEO is mostly organic SEO in disguise.
• A bonus: even if you don’t get a one-box result, but you show up alongside local competitors in a Google Maps 2-pack or 3-pack, you’ll get the “Their website mentions [service or product]” snippet showing up under your name on the map.  That may help get you more clicks from the right searchers, among other benefits.

I’ve long said that you need a page on every distinct service or product you offer – preferably in-depth pages, and preferably on your more-niche offerings.  When clients and others have asked why they should bother, my reasons have always been (a) “You’ll convert more of the people who are looking for something very specific, and (b) “You want to show up in the organic search results, especially when there’s no local map.”  But these days, more so than I’ve ever seen before, creating a solid page on each offering will also grab you more visibility on the map.

 

 

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Have you tried rustling up some one-box results?  If so, what did you try, and how did it go?

Do your competitors have any one-box results you just can’t figure out?

Leave a comment!

This example is from one of my clients, who’s got a seasonal business and had a great winter.

Two screenshots up the difference between Google visibility and Bing visibility.  The screenshots are of those two search engines’ “dashboard” stats.  I doubt either source of intel is Swiss-watch accurate, but each can give you a rough sense of how many people see you on that search engine’s local map.

Bing Places dashboard stats:

Nice spike.  Reflects how good business was.

Notice the high-water mark of 957 impressions.  Add up all the times the Bing Places page showed up in the local search results in February and you’ve got a few thousand impressions in a month, which is pretty good.  Who said Bing doesn’t matter?

Now, Google My Business stats, from a somewhat different range (more on that in a minute):

One thing you’ll notice is a high-water mark of almost 9000 impressions in a day on Google My Business, compared to high-water mark of a tenth of that in a whole week on Bing.

My little comparison is far from scientific.  You may notice the date ranges aren’t the same.  Bing’s doesn’t capture most March, which had a good amount of action.  That’s because Bing’s data is about two weeks old and doesn’t reflect more-recent data, and neither Google nor Bing lets you pick a custom date range.  The result is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Still, based on the parts that overlap, impressions on Google outnumber those on Bing by at least 10 to 1.  (Probably more like 20 to 1.)

“Hey Phil, party foul.  That’s still an unfair comparison.  Google has so much more market share than Bing has, so of course Bing’s local traffic is a gnat.”

Exactly.  It’s a good thing that Bing Places is pretty hassle-free to set up and manage, because my advice is not to lose sleep over your Bing rankings.

Why not make your local competitors work to outrank you?  They won’t have to work too hard if you assume Google keeps the Google Maps results clean, because that doesn’t happen much.

“Spam patrol” is my name for the process of identifying Google My Business pages that violate any of Google’s guidelines and that, as a result, stick out on the map more than they should.  Though anyone can send in an edit on any Google My Business page, the most likely reason you’d do that is to counteract a competitor who’s breaking the rules at your expense. You should do spam patrol whether you do your own local SEO or work with a third party on it.

If you do it right and have the patience of an oyster, spam patrol can keep some, most, or maybe even all of your local competitors from outranking you unfairly.  Like earning links and reviews, spam patrol has tons of long-term payoff if you stick with it.  But as with those other ongoing activities, few business owners approach spam patrol the right way.  Even fewer stick with it for long enough to see much benefit.

By the way, if you’re not sure how to sniff out local competitors’ spam, how to send in a Google Maps edit, or what to expect, I suggest you read this great post by Joy Hawkins, and maybe this post I did.

If you want to minimize competitors’ Google Maps spam, but you don’t want it to become another big commitment that frustrates you until you throw in the towel, follow these 10 tips to make spam patrol doable:

1. Use a spreadsheet to keep track of your edits. Like this one I use. (You can download and tweak that template as you wish.) Getting all your “Wanted” posters together is a hassle at first, but will save you a lot of time in the long run. Also, spam patrol will seem less daunting, and you’ll get a better sense of what works (and what doesn’t).

2. Focus on the two types of spam Google is most likely to act on: keyword-stuffing in names, and pages that are so spammy you can’t even tell what the “real” business is. Edits to the “name” field have the best chance of a thumbs-up from Google. The type of edit with the second-best chances of approval are “Spam, fake, or offensive.”  Marking listings as “duplicates” or trying to edit things like the address is less fruitful.  (All of that’s been my experience, at least.)

 

3. Try partial or piecemeal edits. If a competitor is breaking multiple rules, try to get Google to correct one first, before you deal with the others. If you Google won’t remove all the keywords or city names in a competitor’s keyword-stuffed name, try editing out some of it.

 

4. Don’t patrol only your main search terms. Also look at who’s ranking for “niche” terms you want to rank for (or that you already do rank for). Some of the worst spammers own a niche, or many niches, often because the competitive bar is low and their competitors are less likely to pay attention.

5. If you want or need to boost your credibility with Google by becoming a higher-level “Local Guide” – as I strongly suggest you do – don’t only rack up points by reviewing businesses. Do some of the other activities on Google’s “points” breakdown.

6. Don’t build up your Local Guide track record only by making edits in your local market. Wade into other spam swamps (near and far) unrelated to your business and submit edits on spammy businesses you run across. You need at least to look like a do-gooder to get enough credibility that Google might approve your edits.  Just being right often isn’t enough, it pains me to say.

7. Use Google’s new spam-reporting form to corroborate any “suggest an edit” edits where you’ve wanted to explain to Google how you know a competitor is spamming. (See this forum thread.)

8. Don’t forget to check out competitors’ hours, and to submit edits on them if necessary. The process for that is a little different; you don’t click the usual “Suggest an edit” button, but rather need to click on the business’s hours in the right-hand sidebar (the “knowledge panel”), and then click on a different link that reads “Suggest an edit.” Why bother?  Because you don’t want competitors to get undeserved clicks and leads because they posted erroneous hours while you faithfully posted your real-world business hours.

9. Get other people involved in spam patrol. Business partners, employees, friends, family, etc. Preferably some of those people live near the hive of spam you’re trying to fumigate. Don’t have them make exactly the same edits you make.  Just get them spraying in the same direction. (By the way, if you’re working with a local SEO person or are considering it, ask him or her where spam patrol fits into the strategy.)

10. Every week or two you should go through your spreadsheet, review your edits, add any new offenders you find, and make new edits. You don’t need to do spam patrol every day, but you can’t do it just once and call it a day.

 

Spam patrol is a never-ending task, and you probably won’t gun down every bogie.  But you do it in a way that’s efficient and not overwhelming, and that doesn’t sidetrack you from your other work, you’re more likely to stick with it.  Then your other local SEO work is more likely to pay off.

Did you learn any of the above the hard way?  Any tips on spam patrol?  Any war stories?  Leave a comment!