Customers Can Now Follow Businesses on Google Maps

A Follow button on the listing

Google Maps has recently started showing a Follow button on business listings. Anyone who taps it can see that business's posts in a section of the app called For you.

It is arriving gradually, starting with the Maps app on Android phones, and availability varies by country and by phone. Many people, including iPhone users, will not see it yet.

A business does not have to do anything to be followed; any place on Maps can be. What a follower actually receives, though, depends entirely on the listing's owner.

Which makes the posts on a Google My Business listing a little more important than they were last month.

What followers receive

A follower sees the posts a business publishes on its listing, gathered with posts from other places they follow and Google's own suggestions.

• Updates, short news with a photograph, shown for seven days.
• Events, with a start and an end, shown until they finish.
• Offers, with dates, an optional code and terms.
• Products, a photograph and a few lines about something you sell.
• Nothing at all, if the listing never posts.

The last describes most listings today. A customer who follows a business with no posts has followed an empty noticeboard, and the button does nothing for either of them.

From noticeboard to delivery

Until now, a post on a listing was seen by people who happened to look the business up that week. It was a notice by the door.

Following changes the direction. The people most likely to tap Follow are regulars, and posts now go to where they are instead of waiting for them to search.

Regulars are also the people most likely to act on a post: to come in for the offer, book the class or try the new item.

Google has not said whether followers affect where a listing ranks, so treat the feature as a way to reach existing customers, not a ranking tactic.

Offers with real dates

Offers have had a post type of their own since June. Each needs a title and start and end dates, and can carry a code, terms and a button to view the offer.

The dates do the work. An offer stays on the listing until it ends, so a weekly special posted with that week's dates runs for exactly its own life.

Say plainly what the offer is, who can have it and when it stops, and brief the staff before it goes live, so the counter honours what the listing promises.

Events for the month ahead

December is full of dated things: late opening nights, a tasting, a workshop, a gift-wrapping weekend.

Post each as an event as soon as it is decided, not the week before. It stays visible until it ends, so it works for followers and searchers alike for its whole run.

Closures and changed hours belong in the listing's special hours instead, which is what Google uses to tell people whether you are open.

A worked example

A bulk food store in a suburban strip mall changes its specials every Monday: nuts one week, dried fruit the next, and baking supplies through November and December.

The specials went on a board by the door and on the store's Facebook page. The Google listing had a single post from the spring, and photographs from the year the store opened.

Plenty of regulars use Maps to check the hours or find the entrance from the parking lot. Some of them could now follow the store, and they would have received nothing.

Now whoever writes the board on Monday also posts the week's specials as an offer, dated Monday to Sunday, with a photograph of the bins.

The holiday baking demonstration went up as an event in early November, December's hours went into special hours, and new photographs of the aisles replaced the old ones.

The rest of the listing still counts

A follower who taps through from a post lands on the full listing, and it has to hold up: correct hours, a working phone number, recent photographs, answered questions.

Hours need the most care in December. Special hours set in advance for each holiday stop the listing showing the regular schedule on a day you are closed.

And the listing should agree with the website, since customers check one against the other.

A listing before the doors open

Google has also begun letting a business create its listing up to three months before opening, with the opening date shown on it.

For a second location, a move or a new business, people can find it, save it and follow it while the fit-out is still under way.

Post the progress and the opening date there as they firm up, so the first followers hear about the first day.

Attach it to something weekly

Posting lasts when it is tied to a job the business already does each week: writing the specials board, setting the schedule, placing the stock order.

Give it to one person at one time, with the Google My Business app on their phone. Updates need replacing every week; offers and events can be posted well ahead.

After a month or two, look at the views each post received, and do more of the kinds people looked at.

The counter-case

For now this is a small feature: arriving gradually, largely on Android, and followed mostly by customers who already know you.

A business that serves each customer once, such as a home inspector, will collect few followers and may reasonably post less, spending the time on reviews and photographs.

And a busy listing does nothing if its hours are wrong or its phone goes unanswered.

For a business with regulars and anything dated to tell them, though, a weekly post is now worth its fifteen minutes.

This week

1. Open your listing in the Maps app.
2. Post this week's news as an update.
3. Add any current offer with its real dates.
4. Post December's events as soon as they are set.
5. Set special hours for every holiday.
6. Replace old photographs with recent ones.
7. Give one person a weekly time to post.

Step seven decides whether any of this outlasts the winter. A burst of posts in November followed by nothing leaves followers facing the same empty noticeboard.

Keeping the hours on that listing right is covered in when Google shows the wrong hours.

Frequently asked questions

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