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Major Google Plus Update

Google+ separated from small business listings.

Posted on 2/9/2017 by Bryce Admin

Google is always shuffling around and re-prioritizing its various web properties based on how useful they are to internet users and their advertising customers. Two of the most important properties for small businesses on the internet are Google+ and Google My Business. Between these two Google properties, there has been a lot of crossover in functionality. Up until fairly recently, the two platforms where very closely integrated. So much so that a dentists' Google+ page was their Google My Business listing.

Google has recently completely separated business listings from the Google+ platform. If you want to make updates to your business information on your listing or have a place to direct people to leave reviews, you can no longer do that with Google+.

For a time, Google was going "all in" on Google+ being their social media network to pit against Facebook. They integrated all their properties with Google+ to make it as easy as possible to share and comment on your internet experience. Despite a good launch, Google+ never lived up to expectations and eventually has been demoted to a position of much less importance. As such, Google has made adoption of Google+ not mandatory to new Google accounts and has de-integrated previously integrated systems.

One of the most important properties separated from Google+ was the small business listings known now as "Google My Business". These listings used to live as Google+ pages where users could learn more about small businesses, read their content, share, and submit reviews. The integration with Google+ make it a very easy place for small businesses to direct people to to leave a review. Now business must edit business information exclusively on the Google My Business platform, and internet users have to leave reviews through Google Maps or through Google Search.

Google+ now remains as a separate entity exclusively for social sharing within the platform. It will most likely suffer in obscurity along with the rest of Google's failed social media experiments.

The important thing for Dentists and other small businesses to do, is make sure you aren't sending your patients/customers to your Google+ page to leave reviews anymore. Find your listing in Google search, click on "leave a review" and copy that url to use as a link to direct people to. For example, here is a link for one of our clients.

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