It’s tempting to tweak various settings on your Google business profile page, add “content” to it in any way you can, or try out and perhaps even make the most of new features. They’re hoping this will improve your visibility in Google Maps 3-Pack, and a lot of local SEO advice seems to encourage this. So why not?
Lots of reasons not to do it. My basic advice is simple: touch your GBP side as little as possible. Be sure to fill in your basic information and fix any glaring problems (or, better yet, avoid them). But you probably don’t need to or shouldn’t “manage” it or pay someone else to do it. The busy work I’m referring to includes things like repeatedly optimizing your categories, changing your “service area”, publishing GBP “posts”, posting tons of photos, replying to all or most reviews and so on. The disadvantages of this type of activity outweigh the advantages. Here are the disadvantages of GBP “management” as it is commonly understood:
1. Rankings don’t help in my experience. You have to have If you have a Google business profile (at least for visibility on Maps), you can’t set it up backwards and should probably log in every few months to make sure the basement doesn’t flood. But that’s about the size. Fiddling with your GBP page and posting on it doesn’t add value to the customer or make your business stand out. Google looks at the bigger picture to determine which companies should rank where and for what.
2. Most features are not very visible in search results. “Posts” will be well below the fold, most photos will be several clicks away, videos will still be hidden, most of your review responses will be hidden, and few people will know exactly where your service area is – just to name a few points. Google puts ADS front and center. Not the non-essential GBP features.
3. Increased risk of bans – both hard and soft suspensions. If you make too many changes in quick succession, there’s a good chance you’ll get temporarily banned: you’ll be locked out of your GBP page and have to reconfirm your ownership, probably via video. Meanwhile, your unverified page is more vulnerable to attempts by competitors to delist you. If you’re not careful about making more serious changes, especially to your address, there’s a good chance Google will remove your page from Maps entirely and do a “hard” ban.
If you need to make a big change, such as the address or name, at least update your website and some of your Quotes First, it looks more conscious for Google. If in doubt, avoid further changes to your site. If you need to make changes, at least spread those changes out over a few days or weeks.
4. Higher chance of accidents, especially if you are using new GBP features that may still be buggy. In GBP, the more time you spend optimizing this and publishing that, the more likely it is that sooner or later you’ll edit the wrong field, make fatal typos, or be in the wrong place at the wrong time and find out about the latest GBP error the hard way.
5. Cost of missed opportunities. It can take a lot of time to optimize your GBP page to your liking and round it out with what you really want to post on it. You may even feel like you are never “finished.” That’s time you can’t spend on other things – tasks that have clearer, higher payoffs.
6. Difficult to scale if you have many GBP sites. If you have many locations, departments or practitioners, it will take much longer to get all the GBP pages perfect.
7. Invites special consideration if you need to contact GBP Support. Let’s say you had one hermit crab GBP site using an old address. Perhaps technically They should have closed or merged this GBP page, but it has been ranking well for many years and had no problems, so you kept it because every bit of visibility helps. Then one day you made too many changes to the page, which resulted in a ban. Now you need to check the page again, but the GBP support agent says the page violates “policy”. What now?
8. The optics are not necessarily good. If you’re constantly posting offers on your site, responding to every review, and filling the Questions and Answers box with questions from fictitious customers, it might seem like you have too much time. Even if your marketing isn’t effortless, it should seem that way.
9. Features keep shutting off. Remember tags, helpouts, best ever badges and Google+? Spend some time exploring Google’s new features once you understand the benefits. Otherwise, invest that time somewhere else.
10. Delay time and variables. You’re unlikely to notice an effect, even if there is one. If you make a change and your ranking drops, you’ll reflexively optimize your GBP page again, fill it with more content, or not touch it with a 10-foot pole. On the other hand, if your visibility improves, you probably don’t know whether it’s because of your last change, the change two weeks ago, or something else entirely. It’s a game of “clue” and you have no way of knowing whether your changes to your GBP page came from Colonel Mustard or Professor Plum. The “keep-it-simple” SOP alone justifies abandoning the GBP scribble.
What do I recommend?
A. If you verified your GBP site years ago and especially if the ranking is fine, just leave it alone. Assume that the change you are trying to make will trigger a lock. Is the change still worth it? When in doubt, let the fur grow.
B. If you need to make changes to your GBP page, spread them out over at least a few days or weeks. Suppose you want to update your description, categories, services and service area. Make one of these updates, let it sit for a few days, and then make another one.
C. Update your website first. Do not make any changes to your GBP page that you have not already implemented on your website. Pay particular attention to the address and telephone number on your website is current before changing any of these fields on your GBP page.
D. Try new GBP features and bells and whistles if you want, but don’t invest a lot of time in them or assume they will help your ranking. Assume that Google is spying on you without warning.
