Google Empowers Users, Creates New Headaches for Businesses

• Google is encouraging users to add more content to Google My Business listings, especially photos, and gamifying the process.
• But the content that appears may not be the high-quality imagery and content that businesses actually want. Spam is challenging to remove from GMB profiles.
• Enterprises should develop a direct relationship with Google, get employees to monitor profiles and actively solicit customers to post reviews, to counter low quality content and spam.

More is not always better with Google. On March 11, Google announced it is making it easier for people to upload photos of places on Google Maps. In addition, Google launched a "Local Love challenge" to encourage people to add ratings, reviews, and confirm information to support local businesses they’ve visited, from their go-to bakery to the neighborhood hardware store.

On the surface this news is about Google helping local businesses by building up their visibility in the Google universe through user-generated content. In theory, more content, more reviews, and more visual imagery should make a business’s Google My Business (GMB) listing more robust; and we know that GMB listings are the most important signal for local search. But there is a downside, too: businesses need to be mindful that more content appearing on their profiles does not always mean more high-quality content.

What Google Announced