I’ve told many business owners about adding their business to the Google Local Business Center.
Now Google LBC will be offering more features for anyone who adds their business.
Why does Google want businesses to add themselves?
Google wants more small businesses to claim their listing profiles on Google Local (which is basically listings that pop up in Google Maps and local search results).
What do you get when you add your business?
Starting tomorrow it will give local businesses in the real world with physical addresses a free dashboard akin to what Websites get for free with Google Analytics (see screenshot below). Except that it will show stats such as how many times their business comes up as a search result, how often people click through, as well as how many times people generate driving directions to their business son Google Maps and where those people come from.
How much time does it take?
It takes about as much time as setting up a new email account, maybe a little more. Google gets clean data (and, thus, better results), businesses get free analytics and an opportunity to train Google’s search engine. Right now only a few hundred thousand businesses in the U.S. have been claimed out of approximately 20 million.
What are the Benefits?
The benefit to Google is that the more that small businesses can measure the impact of search, the more likely they will be to buy search ads.
The benefit to Business Owners is the dashboard shows the top search queries that result in a business’ listing showing up. And of course your business get’s added to the local search results on a map.
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Loren,
Thank you for sharing this valuable information. It helps to have access to the many online tools, and this reminds us to keep on top of those offered!
Keep up the good work!