The Booking Button on a Google Listing

A button beside the phone number

Some business listings on Google now carry a booking button. A searcher taps it, picks a service and a time, and books without leaving Google or opening the business's website.

The button is not a setting anyone can switch on in Google My Business. It comes through scheduling providers, the online booking systems many salons, studios and clinics already use, that have joined Google's booking program.

It started in the United States, in categories such as fitness and beauty, and has been widening gradually since. Whether a business in Canada can show it depends on its provider and its category.

Where it is available, it is only as good as the calendar behind it.

How the button works

• Your provider supplies it, once it has joined Google's program.
• Services and prices come from the provider's settings.
• Free times are read from the provider's calendar.
• Bookings land in that calendar like any other.
• The button appears on the listing in search and on Maps.

The third decides whether the button helps or harms. Google shows whatever times the provider says are free, so a calendar that does not match the shop floor offers real customers slots that do not exist.

Finding out whether you can have it

Ask your scheduling provider directly: whether it works with Google's booking program, whether that covers businesses in Canada, and whether it covers your kind of business.

Some providers connect eligible listings automatically; others need you to opt in from their settings. A listing that qualifies may also show a bookings section in the Google My Business dashboard.

If your provider does not offer it, switching systems just to get the button is rarely worth it. A calendar your staff can keep accurate matters more.

An appointment link in the meantime

Many listings can also carry a plain appointment link, added in the listing's information and pointing to a page you choose.

It does not book inside Google. It sends the searcher straight to your own booking page, which delivers most of the benefit for one extra tap.

Point it at the page where booking actually happens, not the home page. And check what is already there, since scheduling providers sometimes add links of their own to listings, occasionally to an address the business has stopped using.

Times that are real

A booking button turns the provider's calendar into a public promise. Every gap in it becomes a time a stranger can claim.

Phone bookings, walk-ins and appointments written on paper have to go into the same calendar as they happen, or the button will offer times already taken.

Staff holidays, training days and closures belong there too, entered when they are decided rather than the week before.

And require some notice before a booking, so a slot starting in twenty minutes cannot be taken while nobody is watching the screen.

Services and prices as Google shows them

The button lists your services as they are named in the provider. Names that make sense to staff, such as Cut 30 or Senior M, mean nothing to a stranger choosing from a list.

Use the words a new customer would use, with the length and the price, or a starting price, beside each.

Keep the list short. A first-time customer choosing between fourteen similar services will often choose none, or phone to ask.

A worked example

A three-chair barbershop on a busy street takes bookings on weekdays through an online scheduling system and keeps Saturdays for walk-ins.

When the owner asked whether the system could put a booking button on the shop's Google listing, the provider said the feature was not yet available for its Canadian accounts.

Rather than wait, the shop added an appointment link to the listing, pointing at its booking page. Checking the listing turned up an older provider link, still pointing to a page from a previous account.

Then the calendar itself was put right. Saturdays were blocked online with a note about walk-ins, each barber's days off went in for the season, and services became haircut, beard trim, and haircut with beard, each with its price.

When the button does arrive, it will read a calendar that tells the truth.

One calendar behind every button

The listing is rarely the only place to book. The website has a button, the Facebook page may have one, and old confirmation emails carry a link.

All of them should lead to the same provider and the same calendar. A second system, such as a booking plugin left on the website from years ago, splits the bookings and guarantees that one calendar is always wrong.

Once the button appears, book a test appointment through it on your own phone, and read what arrives: the confirmation, the reminder, and what it says about cancelling.

Counting bookings from Google

Most scheduling providers report where each booking came from. Check how bookings through Google, through the appointment link and through your own site are labelled, so each is counted once.

Google My Business Insights also shows how often people asked for directions, visited the website or phoned from the listing.

Compare those figures with what actually happened in the shop, month by month.

The counter-case

A booking button suits appointments of a set length at a set price. Work that needs a quote or a conversation first, as most trades do, is better served by a clear phone number and a quote form.

A business whose calendar cannot be kept accurate should fix that before adding any public way to book, from Google or from its own site.

And where the button is not yet available, an appointment link and a booking page that works well on a phone do most of the job.

Where it is available and fits, connect it, and keep the calendar behind it true.

Before switching it on

1. Ask your provider whether it works with Google.
2. Check it covers Canada and your category.
3. Add an appointment link in the meantime.
4. Put every booking into one calendar.
5. Enter closures and days off as decided.
6. Rename services in customers' words.
7. Check the listing's links point where you expect.

Step four matters most. A button reading a calendar that misses phone and walk-in bookings sells times that do not exist, and the first customer it lets down is standing at your counter.

Other places your name and a link to your site appear around town are covered in local links from sponsorships.

Frequently asked questions

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