Communicating with Clients: Google My Business Messenger

In case you haven’t heard the news, Google just launched a live messenger service for its US-based Google My Business users.

This is a great new feature that will allow you to communicate directly with your customers from your Google local panel or maps listing using text messaging.

Why does this matter to you?

Well, for starters it allows potential customers to ask you questions about your business,

The merger might not be as good for Home Service Providers as you might think

On Monday this week, it was announced that IAC (parent company of HomeAdvisor, Tinder, Match, and other websites) purchased Angie’s List for $500 million. More importantly for home contractors, it was announced that, as part of this deal, both HomeAdvisor and Angie’s List would merge together to create one larger entity.

While Wall Street seems to be happy with the deal as both IAC and Angie’s List stocks are up on the news,

In an recent update to its seller rating system, Google, has upped the minimum amount of reviews required in order to qualify for seller ratings to 150 from 30 reviews. While this comes as a surprise to many, the importance of reviews has grown in the past few months and this should come as no surprise.

New Google Seller Ratings Requirements

The new thresholds are as follows:

• 150 unique reviews in the last 12 months
• Have an average rating of 3.5 stars or greater

Remember this threshold is important if you are running paid search campaigns so that the reviews extension can display.

No Longer Wait For Verification

Anyone who has gone through the process of verifying a Google My Business listing knows the pain and frustration it can cause. While it sometimes is seamless many times to requires a patience and telling all of your employees not to throw away junk mail for a few weeks.

However, for those who haven’t yet verified their business, have had issues in the past, or have new locations to add to GMB can rest easy.

Were you working on your business or with a customer yesterday at between 12 and 1 yesterday afternoon? Well you are not alone.

Despite being small business friendly, Google’s Adwords feature presentation probably wasn’t a huge priority for many service professionals yesterday. And nor should it, much of the time was dedicated to features that service based business will never need.

Luckily we were able to catch most of the presentation and are excited about a few new things that Google is working on.

Back on March 28th of this year, Google Adwords first showing previews of a new interface that was set to be to released –  original blog post seen here.

Since then you have probably have had a few emails from Google regarding the big reveal of the new interface coming out May 24th. While a new design and layout is a welcome change what does this mean for you as an advertiser?

In a post by Search Engine Land, Googler Matt Lawson wrote about the new changes to the side ads and how he views the change.

1. In aggregate, this change is neutral for small advertisers.

Some people have expressed concerns that this change will adversely impact small advertisers. Their thesis is that a reduction in ad slots means that smaller companies are priced out of what’s left.

If you haven’t heard by now, Google has decided to remove side paid ads from all search results. According to sources at Google they have been testing removing the side ads for quite sometime.

Last week they finally did and it has caused quite in the stir in the paid search community. Since inception in 2000 side ads have been apart of Adwords and now in an instant they are gone.

What Happened?

Those on Adwords know that Google does not mess around when it comes to Ad violations. In their latest report they review how the 1000 plus employee ad team blocked over 780 million ads just last year. The type of ads that they blocked revolves around the following:

• Counterfeiters
• Pharmaceuticals
• Weight loss scams
• Phishing
• Unwanted software

Whats This Mean For You?