Google My Business has been a very efficient tool for local businesses to improve their online and local presence. As a part of widening its features, Google has decided to rename it as Google Business Profile. Google aims to bring out business management from the My Business app to Google search, Maps, and other apps.
The Name
Google Business Profile will be the name for Google My Business from now on, with its features extending to other areas. According to Google, the idea of the new name is to ‘keep things simple’ and by sometime in 2022, the Google My Business app will be fully shut down.
But this has not been the first name change for the platform. Before Google My Business, there had been names like Google Places, Google+ Local, Google Local, and much more.
What About Google My Business?
Google has enabled businesses to manage their individual listings directly in Google search or Google Maps, from the web interface or mobile apps. Now, it is encouraging businesses to manage their single listings only in the search results and maps, and not through the old Google My Business Console.
But the existing Google My Business will be renamed to ‘Business Profile Manager’, a feature to support larger businesses with multiple locations. By 2022, Google will rebrand and redirect the Google My Business interface.
If there are multiple locations for your business or you are a local SEO that manages many businesses, you will be using Business Profile Manager, which has a similar interface to that of Google My Business. The Business Profile Manager will undergo many changes in the upcoming months before it will be the best of its kind.
The New Features
With the new feature, you will be able to claim and verify your Google Business Profile directly in Google search and maps. Call history will be launched soon in the US and Canada, and there will be a provision for direct messaging from Google search. Business owners will be able to control these message read receipts from Google search and maps.
You may either search your business name in Google search or Google maps or search ‘my business’ in Google search to see and manage the business that you have already claimed and verified.
Google Ads will enable you to plan and execute your local ad campaigns through a ‘performance planner’. This allows you to determine budgets, make changes to the campaigns, and analyze how these changes affect the overall performance and results.
The business profiles that are claimed and verified on Google guides and power the Google local search. Apart from the rebrand, the web interface will not change much now. But in the coming months, you will see that more and more features in the Google My Business interface will be available directly in the google search, maps, and other related platforms. This will make it easy for both businesses and internet users to control and access the listings.
