2020 has been a busy year for Google My Business (GMB). Since January, Google has launched new features, fixed bugs, and had to adapt to the global pandemic.
At Sterling Sky, we think it’s important to keep track of all the changes that happen in the local search space in general, and that impact GMB specifically. So far in 2020 we are up to 54 changes.
As you can tell, changes that impact Google My Business came at a fast pace — and at high volume — in 2020. In this post, I highlight the changes I think were most important in each month of this year, so far. For an exhaustive list of all the updates that have been made, check out this timeline[1].
January: Google posts borked — hello, 2020!
Foreshadowing things to come, GMB started off the year with a major issue in their Google Posts feature[2]. Google Posts were getting rejected left, right, and center.
At first, it appeared to be a bug in the system. We were further confused when Google stated that everything was “working as intended”, but the Google My Business Forum was still flooded with users complaining that their Google Posts were being rejected, and not just for a single reason:
And then Google announced that they resolved the issue[3]. Was it truly “Working as intended”? Likely not, but the issues have, indeed, been resolved.
This hiccup made it tough for SEOs who offer Google Posts as part of their service offerings to do their work, and it would have been even more difficult for software companies that connect to Google’s API and offer multi-location Google Posts.
When one of GMB’s products fail, it’s on us as SEOs