The platform Google provides businesses to manage their local presence on the search engine is being renamed from Google My Business to Google Business Profile. The idea behind the rebrand is to take a lot of the functionality out of the Google My Business app and allow businesses to do more of their business profile management straight from Google Search, Maps or their respective apps.

Google has announced the new name is part of an effort to “keep things simple”, and they’re planning on retiring the Google My Business app completely in 2022 sometime.

What Does This Mean For Businesses on Google?

With the name change comes a few changes to the way businesses manage their individual listings on Google. The search engine has made it possible for businesses to manage their listings directly within Google Search results pages or in Google Maps, whether you’re using the mobile app or a web browser. By doing this Google has made their preference for businesses with single listings to manage them straight in Search or Maps.

How does this actually work? You can either search for your business name in Search or Maps or if you’re logged into your Google account you can just search for “my business” in Search and do all management from there.

If you’re a larger business with multiple locations or an agency that manages a number of businesses you can continue to use the existing Google My Business platform to do so, the only difference being the name change to “Business Profile Manager”

Some New Features Being Announced

• Managers and owners of individual businesses can now claim and verify their business listings straight from the Search or Maps.
• The US & Canada are officially getting call history reporting for the business listings.
• You’ll now be able to view and respond to direct messages from Google Search.
• Similar to other messaging platforms there will be read receipts for your Google Business Profile message threads.

Finding your business and sending messages straight through Google Search:

Why do we care?

Local search drives a lot of revenue for local businesses, so staying on top of any changes to Google’s platforms is important. The latest changes aren’t dramatic when it comes to the way local search works, but over the coming months, we’ll start seeing more and more functionality in terms of reporting, direct messaging and management of individual listings straight from Search and Maps.