Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google Pushes Full Release of New Location Dashboard & Improved Q & A Notifications
Google has broadly pushed the new location dashboard to almost all accounts. And in doing so seems to have finally provided a near real time notification for (the long missing) Questions and Answers.
The new location dashboard, using a card approach to highlight important activities and calls to action for a given listing, was first seen last December. In the past few days it has been noted on Twitter as being seen more broadly (h/t Jeffrey Magner).
More importantly Google seems to have updated their notifications capability and are now send alerts to new questions and answers appearing on a business’s Knowledge Panel. The email allows for instant reporting of the question if it is inappropriate.
When a question has been answered, a notification is also sent in real time.
These notifications will make managing Q & A much, much easier for single & several location businesses.
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Comments
7 Comments
see the ‘Descriptions’ field today (in Edmonton, Canada)
In the UK I have the new dashboard – and also the option to add descriptions – for all clients.
I have had the dashboard and layout since approx just after the holidays. . . however, I just received my first Q&A email today! Hooray!
Thanks for the mention Mike. I’m seeing descriptions now in all listings, and also for opening dates. I’ve never encountered Questions & Answers for any business, nor have I ever witnessed this function as a user on Google. It’s as if all your posts about it are some April Fools thing. I keep watching out for it.
@Jeffrey
Frequency of Q and A is very category specific.
Frequency is as high as 90% in big box retail like Hone Depot and Walmart. The typical Walmart has 15 questions – see this Walmart.
Car dealers are at about 60% down to insurance agents at about 5%.
The best way to see them is to go into the local finder and click through 6 or 7 listings.
I noticed that the notifications now tell you who left the question. Until now, they left all questions as anonymous, no name. Also, the public can now see who asked which question. Sometime to keep in mind if a business owner is about to ask themselves several questions. 😎 Still unsure if a keyword optimized answer will help the business at all.
We continue to receive notifications only when someone (Local Guides) replied to a submitted question for our business locations. We are bulk upload, non agency, I suspect this has something to do with it. But I wanted to point out our concern for this is that Local Guides are incentivized to answer questions through a “ranking up” system and are eager to do so, yet they are not an authority on our business policies or practices. I have found answers submitted to a question that are unhelpful, ie “I don’t know, call the business” as well as answers suggesting our competitors would be a better solution. I hope Google can address this in the future, giving verified business owners priority over Local Guides.
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