Every month dbaPlatform holds a live “ask the expert” webinar. Local SEOs (both pro and amateur) present their queries. And the same questions pop up time after time. Chances are that these distinctions have crossed your mind too.
Managing a Google My Business listing is not difficult but here are the nuances that lead to common questions.
Why Does my GMB Listing Information Keep Changing by Itself?
There are two ways that listing information can be updated without a listing owner or manager making changes:
Suggested user edits
Automatic edits
Anyone with a Google account can suggest edits to a GMB listing. When this occurs, three things can happen. The edit gets automatically accepted, the edit gets automatically denied, the edit goes into ‘pending’ and it is checked by a human person.
Automatic edits occur when Google gets information about your business that is consistent with what Google already knows, has reason to believe is accurate and will enhance your listing. Usually, Google will display edits in orange color and you will see a banner at the top of the dashboard to review the changes.
If you deny the edits (or inadvertently accept the edits that the algorithm has added and change the information back), your denial signals to Google that it should no longer make changes to those fields.
Do Google Posts Help Increase Rankings?
Yes, but probably not the way you think it does. Google Posts do help ranking but not directly. Posts add user engagement signals which are a ranking factor. Every time someone clicks on a Google Post, that action is recorded. More clicks tell Google that your profile is more interesting to users and Google is more likely to serve your listing higher than the competitor.
To make it clear, rankings are not increased from adding specific keywords in the Post content.
Does Adding Images to the GMB Increase Rankings?
Similar to the Google Posts answer, adding more images does not directly help increase rankings but can serve to add areas for user engagement signals.
Important to add, however, is that Google scans the image and can identify objects within the image. Google sometimes returns related images alongside the GMB listing, if the image matches the query.
