What is Google Business Profile | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• How Google Business Profile works
• Where Google Business Profile syncs
• Google Business Profile integration features
• Additional resources to learn more about Google Business Profile

Overview of Google Business Profile

If you’ve ever used the internet, you’ve used Google! But, how familiar are you with how it works behind the scenes? This module will teach you more about how Google works and how they enable brands to manage their data.

Google has many different places where consumers can find information about a brand. The information on the results, often referred to as a Knowledge Card for locations, or Knowledge panel for brands, companies, or people, can be categorized as:

• Factual Information: This includes things like address, hours, whether you have wheelchair accessibility, and so on. In almost all cases, this kind of data can be updated by the brand via Google Business Profile. There are some exceptions where the Google team will scrape this data from your website instead before they start allowing you to update it via Google Business Profile.

• Subjective Information: This includes things about how people “feel” while they’re there, like are you cozy or trendy or even popular times analytics. Brands cannot control this information and instead Google will crowdsource this data from end users.

• Interactive Information: This includes things like reviews and Q&A where customers and brands can go back and forth and engage.

• Auxiliary Information: Things like “People also search for”.

For example, you can see some examples of the Google properties below:

Google Search

Google Maps

Google Business Profile is Google’s portal to allow business owners to manage their Listings on Google properties. Business owners or technology partners like Yext can update information in Google Business Profile. Once a Listing is “verified” (more information about that later), Google will then handle the delivery of that information from Google Business Profile onto each consumer-facing surface like Maps, Search, Home, Assistant, AdWords and so on.

Even if you sync your listings via Yext, we believe it is important for you, the business owner or brand representative, to fully own and manage your Google Business Profile account. If you do not already have a Google Business Profile account, we will recommend that you create one as part of the Listings launch process.

Google Business Profile Integration Features

Yext’s integration with Google supports the following features:

• Listings Sync
• Duplicate Suppression for large brands
• Review Monitoring and Response
• Listing Impression and Click Analytics
• Suggestions for User Suggested Edits
• User Photo Monitoring
• Posting for brands with less than 10 locations (restricted by Google)
• Question & Answer Monitoring and Response
• FAQ Sync
• Menu Sync
• Google Local Posting

We are constantly updating the Yext platform to reflect new features in the Google Business Profile API. Some notable features that are not currently supported are:

• Google Messaging - we can recommend CRM partners to assist with this

Additional Resources

Understanding Google Business Profile is a critical part of becoming an industry expert on Listings. Google has provided ample resources around how Google works and their guidelines that we highly recommend you familiarize yourself with.

• Google Guidelines - this is especially important in terms of understanding Google’s best practices and requirements around data quality. This will help to contribute to the steps you take in data cleansing as outlined in The Importance of Data Cleansing .
• Google Announcements - includes Google product updates and other important updates.
• Google Places API - steps to locate the desired Google Place ID.
• Resolve Ownership conflicts article - steps to resolve ownership conflicts.
• How Google sources and displays business information article - to understand how Google sources information.