Google has taken an action that, in my opinion, is surprising.
business.sites Permanently removed. This action essentially hits the smallest businesses, who are now forced to create their websites on other platforms, which will certainly lead to additional costs. This primarily negatively affects small companies that simply wanted to be visible on the map and did not want to delve deeply into the intricacies of online promotion.
My name is Yaroslav Mendryk, and I am a Platinum Expert for Google Maps and Google Business Profiles. I became aware of this issue related to Google Maps and Business Profiles when I received a “letter of happiness” last night. If you do not want to read the long text, you can watch a video on this topic at the link below.
In the evening I received an email saying that many of the companies I serve will be lost. This applies to companies that we promoted online, and in my opinion, this is a very important aspect of promotion – the presence of points on Google Maps.
Google Maps promotion is a complex matter, and there are far fewer local SEO specialists than general SEO specialists. If you previously created a point on Google Maps, the system automatically suggested that you create a web page on the Google Cart platform, which duplicated the information from the map, but also allowed you to add a detailed description of the company and use keywords, as well as place links and information about services. This was a convenient way to provide customers with information about the company, its reviews, directions and contacts
For promotion companies, such pages were also useful, as they allowed them to improve the company’s ranking in search by adding keywords and useful links. Moreover, the domain of the business website had the highest ranking, which contributed to promotion. But, unfortunately, this option is no longer available.
This is what it looked like.
Google offers several services for building websites, but even the most affordable option, Google Sites, requires you to purchase a domain, which is an additional cost. This seems odd coming from a company that claims to support small businesses and local businesses. It feels like all of these companies below are just sitting in a corner to boost their sales.
As a result, most of the small companies we worked with had only such pages instead of their own websites, and this was a convenient solution for them. Now they will have to look for alternative ways for their online presence, which will complicate their promotion and increase costs.
A bit of an incomprehensible decision from a company that, with its slogan and its message to people about Google Maps, primarily declared its support for local and small businesses.
What is the conversation about? If most of the small companies we worked with asked: “Do you have a website?”, then they said yes, and dropped this page)))
