Google My Business: Adding support links to merchants’ dashboards
Google is offering a handful of new features and tools to help businesses transition from the physical to the virtual world. The launch comes at a time when companies and industries have had to adopt the Internet because of social distance measures to implement the COVID-19 crisis.
Merchants registered with Wiggle My Business, a free service that helps businesses manage their online information as seen in Google Search and Maps.
They will soon be able to indicate whether they are offering online equivalents of their usual services. It will begin appearing on business profiles in Google Search and Maps “in the coming weeks,” according to a company statement.
Google is expanding its existing reserves with the Google service to support bookings for online services.
Early partners include booking services such as Buxi, Valence Living, Zoti, and Rajas, which offer a range of beauty and health services.
So merchants working with any of these platforms will now be able to submit online appointments from within Google and provide details such as how to pay and which video platform to use.
A few weeks ago, Google introduced a new feature that allows businesses to add “support links” to their profiles – so they can solicit donations from loyal customers or encourage people to buy gift cards. ۔
At launch, support links were only available in six countries, including the United States, Canada, and the United States, but today the feature is available in 18 more markets, including Japan, Spain, and Italy.
Yelp partnered with GoFundMe in March for a similar donation tool, although the two had already automatically selected all businesses in fundraising campaigns. Google’s new feature is based entirely on opt-in, and merchants can enable it through the Google My Business Dashboard.
Over the past year, Google has partnered with third-party providers such as PostMate and DoorDash to allow people to order food for delivery through Google Maps, Search and Google Assistant. Going forward, Google said it would work with additional providers,
About 25,000 more restaurants will be available through Google. Restaurants will also be able to point to their favorite online ordering platforms in their profiles, perhaps highlighting those who receive the lowest commissions.
After all, while “delivery only” virtual kitchens were already a huge trend, they have not been able to confirm themselves on Google My Business. That is changing from today.
Adapt
Google has launched a bunch of new tools and features in response to the epidemic, such as allowing advertisers to promote carbide pickups in their online listings and showing Covid 19 test centers in search results. Last week, Google also began highlighting hotels that cater specifically to COVID-19 respondents with discounts and special deals.
The company says the last few months have seen a reversal of trends in a number of services, with March seeing a sharp rise in things like “online yoga” and “yoga near me” which has fallen. Google also said that businesses in mid-February and mid-May made more than 200 million edits to their profiles, more than double the number of changes in the same period last year.
Eventually, the entire spectrum of businesses had to adapt to what is called the “new routine.” With large-scale intermittent ride-hailing services, Ober is investing heavily in its food delivery business while also betting on micro-mobility services. And institutional investors are backing a platform that allows local pizzeria to sell online, software that makes brick and mortar stores easier to accept e-commerce, and cloud-based. Tools that help speed up distributed tasks.
