It’s been a busy year for local marketers, as consumers become more comfortable with in-person shopping and industries across the board begin to see a recovery across all their local metrics. As consumer needs continue to shift given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent vaccine rollout, so too does search technology and user interface improvements. 

Over the past year alone, Google made significant updates for businesses to better showcase changes to their services. We don’t foresee these updates slowing down any time soon, which is why we continue to evolve and expand our product offerings to help businesses streamline their local marketing efforts.

In our latest release, we had a number of noteworthy updates to our platform to simplify our solutions and enhance your local presence. Let’s dive into what’s new and what you need to know.

Ability to delete insurance networks

Google My Business (GMB) recently introduced the inclusion of insurance networks to the GMB knowledge card for those with a healthcare-focused primary category selected. This enables healthcare brands to better communicate the insurance providers they accept, a common question many consumers have prior to visiting a healthcare facility. 

However, with over 4,600+ insurance networks available to choose from and customers suggesting the wrong edits be made to your business listing at times, we’ve now made it easier for businesses to simply remove all insurance networks. Healthcare clients can then add the correct insurance providers available at each of their individual locations as this likely varies by location, allowing for more accurate information to be displayed across all your business listings.

User Interface Improvements

This release introduces several UI improvements to streamline the user experience and present data in an easier-to-digest format. These improvements include:

View Insights at a Granular level

In your locations tab, when you select an individual location and navigate to reporting, you will now see an insights tab for more granular reporting.

View Google Reviews on a granular level

For your individual locations that have Google Reviews, you can now see those reviews in the insights tab (mentioned above) for each of those locations. With this granular view, you can see how the individual location is performing, rather than viewing in aggregate.

Star rating distribution, average star rating, and total reviews for Google are now integrated into Google Insights reporting on both the aggregate and granular reporting screens.

Define Monetary Values for Your Conversions

Local Manager end-users have the ability to enable our Google Insights calculator to assign a dollar value to each insight. Once this feature is enabled, a “$” symbol will display at the top right of the views and clicks sections. Select the “$” symbol to display the calculated conversion values.

Add More Hours in Google My Business

The recent GMB API v4.9 update introduced the addition of more hours for some categories. More hours allow businesses to share an additional set of hours for services that may operate within a different timeframe from their main hours. Such may be the case for restaurants that offer different brunch hours on the weekend or grocery stores that offer senior hours for higher-risk customers. 

For businesses with more hours available to them, you will navigate to your “Locations” tab and then will select hours under entity details. You’ll find more hours in the dropdown under “Primary Hours”. Select the hours and then apply the hours to all your locations or select locations. Upon saving, your information will be automatically syndicated to Google.

Add Unique CTAs in Google Posts by Location

Google Posts are rising in popularity, proving to be a powerful addition to any local strategy. Posts display prominently on listings and can be used to share special offers, events, and even COVID-19 information many consumers are actively seeking. As more businesses take advantage of this GMB feature, the need for improved functionality when managing locations at scale is a must. 

In this release, businesses can now add unique Call to Action (CTA) links by location. To use this functionality to add unique CTA links for each of your locations, navigate to Posts, then select “Create Posts”. From there select the date and time you’d like the post to publish, add post details, select the CTA button, then drop your CSV file in the “CTA Links” section. Your CSV files will include your store codes as well as the individual CTA link by location (you can add these details using our template). 

You can then navigate to the Assign Locations tab to select the stores that will be participating in this campaign.

We have more exciting features and functionality planned for the near future to elevate your local marketing efforts. Stay tuned and read our previous product release announcements to ensure you never miss a single update. As always, if you have any questions about any of these updates or want to learn more about how to leverage them, reach out to your Account Director. Not an existing client but interested in Rio SEO’s services? We’re always here to support your brand!