Google Rebrands Google My Business to Google Business Profile

The history of Google My Business started as Google Places for Business back in 2010 and continues to be a virtual online directory for anyone using the Internet. Google, on November 4, 2021, chose to change the name to Google Business Profiles. We're going to look at the history of Google's business directory page and how the changes will help your business grow.

Google Places for Business

Google Places for Business was a feature where businesses big and small could list their company details that would show up in Google Searches, Maps, and +Local when searching a good or service such as "Pizza Chicago." Having your business verified on Google Places was a quick and easy, and for small businesses, in particular, it is a crucial piece of marketing to ensure your company is in front of consumers.

Google My Business

Launched in June of 2014, Google My Business or GMB once people learned the name was the rebranded name of Google Places for Business. With this update, you had a centralized interface for all of your Google My Business businesses. The update made it easier for those with multiple Google My Business pages for local and national companies to be updated in a single central location. 

Google Business Profiles

Launched in November 2021, Google Business Profiles, also referred to as GBP, is the latest version of the Google Places for Business web application. The most significant change is that the centralized dashboard for all individual locations is gone. If your business has multiple locations, you will still use the same type of interface you did with Google My Business with some updates and tweaks to the interface.

How this change helps small business

For those with a single location, most small businesses are single locations. You will edit your Google Business Profile page through Google Maps or Google Search results. With everything new, you will have to get used to it. Some will dislike this change as "change is bad." After reading everything Google has released as of the writing of this article, this is a very positive change that will help businesses, and those that maintain the business pages, easier. With this change, the information for businesses "should be" more accurate as time goes on.

As part of this update, Google announced that additional tools would be coming with this update to their search engine. These changes will help organic local search results. Currently, businesses will be able to do the following:

• Claim a business listing.
• Verify the listing.
• Send and receive messages to customers.
• Manage reviews and Questions & Answers.
• Track data on inbound calls that came from Google Business Profile (the US and Canada to start with, potentially rolling out to other countries soon).