Google My Business

Better Together: How We Supported SMEs During the Crisis with Google My Business

The Corona Crisis hit SMEs especially hard. Businesses and offices had to shut down temporarily, restaurants had to limit their offers to take-away and delivery services, and some had to adjust their opening hours.

Because of these limitations and changes, we at Amazee Metrics decided to help weather this crisis together. Since April 2020 we have been supporting retailers in adjusting their Google My Business entries – free of charge.

“With this campaign, we wanted to help local retailers keep sales losses as low as possible. Even though our contribution is relatively small, we hope that we were able to support the economic situation in Switzerland” says Dr. Evelyn Thar, CEO at Amazee Metrics.

What Were the Google My Business Obstacles?

As our two examples show, adjusting opening hours and changing addresses were the biggest challenges for retailers.

Adjusting Opening Hours in Google My Business

A flower shop wanted to indicate on Google My Business, that they had reopened. In addition, the status “temporarily closed” should be revoked. However, even though the Google My Business entry was adjusted, the store was still displayed as “temporarily closed”. The reason was the delayed response time by the Google team, due to the Corona Crisis.

Google My Business Edit Page

As a work around, the shop wrote a CoVid-19 post, informing the clients that the store had reopened. According to Google, contributions and updates around the Corona situation are highlighted in the company profiles so that they are immediately noticed by potential customers.

Edit Address in Google My Business

After the street name was changed by the municipality, a butcher’s shop wanted to adjust their address in Google My Business accordingly. Unfortunately, despite several attempts, they did not succeed.

The issue here was, that the name change had not yet been implemented in Google Maps. In this case, the only option is to contact Google directly. Unfortunately, adding new street names to Google Maps can take Google a few months. To bridge the waiting period, we suggest writing a post on Google My Business, informing the clients regarding the change of address.

Conclusion

It’s encouraging the see that SMEs are using Google My Business as a platform to inform their clients. The past few weeks, and the enquiries we have received, have shown however, that Google My Business is not necessarily intuitive or easy to navigate and implement. We see room for improvement for Google.

In the meantime, we’d be happy to help!

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