Back in May, I was very speculative about how Google would potentially further monetize aspects of Google My Business because of surveys that were going out to different agencies, businesses, and individuals about the prospect of further monetization of Google My Business. You can see the article that spurred our inquisitiveness along with a podcast I did here:
Though the list of potential paid features is lengthy and often far-fetched, sure enough, a few are starting to pop up, and we imagine we’ll see a great deal more in the near future if they seem to make sense, or already align with some of the extensions in AdWords.
Google Guarantee
Google Guaranteed offered to residential type services for now like locksmiths, plumbers, movers, etc. See the full list of potential services here: https://ads.google.com/localservices/signup/ (go to step 2). Must have a business license that gets verified.
Screenshots of Guarantee
Google My Business Highlights
Certain factual attributes (e.g. outdoor seating, women-led) are directly editable by you. Subjective attributes (e.g. whether your business is popular with locals) rely on the opinions of Google users who’ve visited your business.
Your business category determines the attributes available for your Business Profile. For example, you might see attributes for acceptable payment types, accessibility options, or whether the business is LGBTQ-friendly. When you edit your business information in Google My Business, you’re shown what attributes your business can enable.
Screenshots of Highlights:
What other ones do I expect from the list?
Google customer support
“Book” button on your business profile
Promote your “Book” button
Verified reviews
Promoted map pin (probably already since it’s in AdWords)
Call reports and recordings
Verified bookings
Automated message responses
Automated response for reviews
Google search results placement
Get leads from competitor profiles
Background check
Instant quote
Request quote
Offers
Featured review
Google Guarantee
Remove ads from your business profile
Verified licenses
Video on your business profile
Frankly, Google can cover any of these capabilities if they just acquire companies that already do it and/or want to push the limits of monetization, but I can’t see some of these things mattering as much for businesses and therefore may roll out later or not at all.
See below for our transcript of this information. As always, being a transcription, please excuse some of the inconsistencies or nonsensicals.
Paul Warren: Hi, I’m Paul Warren.
Ryan Klein: And I’m Ryan Klein.
Paul Warren: And this is another episode of SEO is Dead and Other Lies. Ryan, how are you doing tonight?
Ryan Klein: Hey, not bad. Not bad in the slightest. I’m doing quite well. It’s been a long day, very productive and I’m ready to chat with you about some cool stuff.
Paul Warren: The clock’s ticking down on your move, you’re less than a month away.
Ryan Klein: Where am I going?
Paul Warren: Where are you going or where have you been?
Ryan Klein: It’s a place where people like slinging fish, to the land of Seattle.
Paul Warren: You guessed it, see.
Ryan Klein: It’s where the Supersonics play.
Paul Warren: Are they still there?
Ryan Klein: Oh, you already said it, okay.
Paul Warren: Yeah, so you’re inching on to that move away date, and we’re going to just have to do it through the software full-time. We’re going to have to zoom cast 100% of the time. That’s okay, we’re testing it out. It seems to be working pretty well.
Ryan Klein: I guess it’s okay, I mean especially since my video’s on and you can see me and I’m staring at a giant screen that just says, “Paul Warren” on it.
Paul Warren: Ooh. You know, it’s not ideal, but anyone out there that does a podcast or maybe thinking about it, zoom casting, it’s not bad. Zoom bat U.S. We’re not getting any money out of this either. We don’t have an affiliate link.
Ryan Klein: One day we’ll have it.
Paul Warren: It’s just one of those things, pretty good. At least it’s in real-time. I feel like the first time we did it, there was probably a one or two second delay. Anyway, enough of that.
Paul Warren: We actually have a pretty interesting topic. We do. We have a very interesting topic that’s really relevant to what’s happening right now and what’s about to happen to pretty much anyone that relies on Google My Business for some sort of regeneration of a business. We’re just going to get down straight into it here and that is Google. They recently had a survey about features that they would charge in addition to I think just the standard stuff that you get for Google My Business. There will be some sort of monthly fee associated with Google My Business features going forward probably within the next year.
Ryan Klein: Woo, woo, Paul. Let me get this straight. Are you saying that Google is going to try to monetize all or many aspects of Google My Business?
Paul Warren: I think that they’re going to monetize some features that they want to bring that will enhance the Google My Business experience for the business owner. I think right now all the stuff that you get that’s free, I think it will continue to be free, but then I think there’ll be some stuff in addition to it that you can pay a monthly fee for like call tracking. We’re going to get into all of them, not all of them, but we’re going to get into a bunch of them and tell you what our opinions are and if it’s worth it. [crosstalk 00:03:05] I mean it doesn’t really matter if we think it’s worth it or not because people are going to pay for it. Obviously they did that survey for a reason, but we’re going to go into detail about what they’re offering and what we think about it.
Paul Warren: My first question is, you got an email for it, right, to participate in the survey. I didn’t even get it across my 15 or 20 different Gmail accounts, so you got it.
Ryan Klein: When you’re a big deal.
Paul Warren: No, I didn’t get the email at all. I read about it on …
Ryan Klein: You’re a big bleeb.
Paul Warren: Okay, just to preface a couple of things. This is not the same thing as the ad extension to Google AdWords. It’s not like the ad placement you see on the map listings. This is more so paying a monthly subscription for a profile with enhanced functionality we guess that would be one more thing that you have to pay for.
Ryan Klein: Okay. Gotcha. So it’s not necessarily visibility, it’s unnecessarily like SEO stuff or promoted more, but it will certainly be a way to stand out from other business listings I’d imagine.
Paul Warren: That’s right. Let’s just get right down into it. We’ll read through the list of some of the ones that we think are interesting. [crosstalk 00:04:19]. Your list? Yeah, let’s go through your list and tell you our opinions.
Ryan Klein: Why don’t we alternate, so you’re not talking for four minutes straight?
Paul Warren: Well I was just going to read the list first and then we were going to talk about it.
Ryan Klein: Okay, whatever you want to do.
Paul Warren: All right. Promoted map pins, verified reviews, instant quotes, offers, get leads from competitor profiles, Google customer support.
Ryan Klein: I didn’t read that one before, sorry.
Paul Warren: I like that they have Google customer support because you’ve got to pay for customer support, that’s interesting.
Ryan Klein: I know.
Paul Warren: The Google guarantee, verified bookings, featured reviews and a video on your business profile. There’s actually I think double the amount for these features, but these are the ones we wanted to talk about. Actually these are the ones that we still had the screenshot from the survey when it was still up, so we’re going to talk about these.
Ryan Klein: Oh, all through that on the website, right?
Paul Warren: Yeah.
Ryan Klein: Okay, cool. So let’s start with the top.
Paul Warren: Yeah, let’s just talk about it. I mean promoted map pins. I don’t really know how different this is going to be than you can already do with a paid listing in GMB, which you do through Google. I guess it’s Google ads, right, that you do through that. I don’t know how much it would really matter to have a promoted pin there, you know, versus having it in the pack. Because I honestly click on whatever is in the pack first. I very rarely ever go to maps to search something. I search it in Google, then it leads me to the maps from the map pack.
Paul Warren: I don’t know how useful that would even be or if I’d even bother paying for something like that.
Ryan Klein: I guess it would be the situation I’d have to see what the example of it is and also that kind of already throws everything I just said out the door. I was just saying, “Oh, it’s just enhanced functionality”, and it literally says, “Promoted map pin”, which means you would be paying for your pin to show up more prominently than other pins on Google maps.
Paul Warren: That’s true and it’s interesting that they would run it through this instead of running it through Google ads because they already do the paid local listings through the ads.
Ryan Klein: Yeah.
Paul Warren: It sounds like they’re going to completely break all that stuff away from ads and put it into this.
Ryan Klein: I would say my takeaway from this is, as many people probably know you do search results and, of course, you see the four ads at the top and then some people that are arguably more savvy when it comes to AdWords, you have to do ad extensions and you add locations and that’s how you essentially get on the three pack as an ad and making it a four pack.
Paul Warren: Yeah.
Ryan Klein: So, this pin couldn’t have anything to do with the three pack because there are really no pins involved there. It’s specifically Google maps and that being said, my takeaway from this would mean that Google is going to have to integrate Google maps more prominently itself I suppose.
Paul Warren: Well, do you think that more people have a GMB listing than they have an AdWords account?
Ryan Klein: Yeah, yeah because probably people don’t do AdWords.
Paul Warren: Yeah, they’re confused by it. They’re like, “I don’t know what this is.”
Ryan Klein: Well if do they AdWords … [crosstalk 00:07:35].
Paul Warren: Marketing, it is confusing.
Ryan Klein: Well they do AdWords Express. Oh, my gosh, I couldn’t even tell you how many people I talk to, they’re like, “Oh, I did AdWords” and what they meant was actually AdWords Express.
Paul Warren: Oh, man.
Ryan Klein: Oh, my gosh. Do you know how many small business owners when they say they do AdWords, it’s probably AdWords Express. I’d probably say, ready for it, four out of five.
Paul Warren: Really?
Ryan Klein: That’s 80%.
Paul Warren: I think that probably small business owners for sure.
Ryan Klein: That’s what I said, small business.
Paul Warren: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think also it’s like when you talk to people about Facebook advertising and they’re like, “Oh, I do that”, and I go, “Oh, so you do the post?”, and there’s this whole like business manager thing. Oh, my God, it looks really … And you know what, it is confusing. To do something in there is confusing. Nothing is intuitive [inaudible 00:08:21] with that, but that’s a topic for a different time. I think …
Ryan Klein: I don’t want to get sidetracked, but I do definitely and if you want to listen to other podcasts before we go and tune it up because you’re interested in how AdWords and a little bit about Facebook, it’s probably worth a listen. But, yeah, Facebook really doing Facebook advertising for people that do it every day, it’s not even that easy because it’s not intuitive like Paul said and then second with AdWords, AdWords Express something you want to check. If you’re actually doing AdWords, you want to look into what you have access to and what kind of options you have because AdWords Express is night and day from what AdWords is and AdWords is how you start getting into those extensions like doing the side links.
Paul Warren: Yeah, it’s crazy.
Ryan Klein: AdWords Express is brutal. I don’t even know how anyone could ever get an ROI from that.
Paul Warren: It’s a way to take your money, honestly.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, and I think that that’s actually worth mentioning because this prompted map pin is probably going to be like a really [inaudible 00:09:21] and a very straightforward thing that seems like it’s easy to do, but it’s probably going to be a product that looks cool, and I don’t even know if …
Paul Warren: I imagine it’ll show up. I mean when you search something on your phone, a map shows up on top of it, right, so I imagine there’ll be like a pin, but it’ll have to be a different color than the other pins to let you know that it’s a promoted thing. They’re not just going to … They have to disclose that it’s an advertisement.
Ryan Klein: Yeah.
Paul Warren: I’d imagine it would be magenta.
Ryan Klein: Probably like hot pink.
Paul Warren: Hot pink. Yeah, I was thinking maybe like a fuchsia, something like that. But it’ll be different and people hate clicking on things that are different because they know it’s an ad. Okay, cool.
Ryan Klein: Ew.
Paul Warren: It would be interesting to knowing actually the ROI on the paid map listings.
Ryan Klein: I would too. I actually had that conversation with a bunch of lawyers yesterday and I know that the clicks cost as much as the keyword itself.
Paul Warren: So, it’s not for lawyers. It’s really had to be profitable for lawyers when it comes to the paid search.
Ryan Klein: Yeah. One last thing we should mention before we go through the eight other things probably here is that also I really wouldn’t bother doing the Google promoted ad on … Sorry, not promoted ad, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Just like the Google ads on maps unless you have a crap ton of reviews because it pulls in your reviews and most people …
Paul Warren: Oh, okay.
Ryan Klein: Do while there, you’ll have to have more reviews and a higher review rating than everyone else on the maps for that respective keyword.
Paul Warren: I’ve got to say I would not want to pay for this. I would not do this if I were a business owner or an SEO.
Ryan Klein: Are you going to do the thumbs up and thumbs down for every single thing?
Paul Warren: You know, let’s do it. I’m going to give it a thumbs down.
Ryan Klein: I’m going to give it the middle because I’d like to see what it looks like before anything.
Paul Warren: No, all right. Yeah, I probably wouldn’t do it because I don’t do the paid maps now.
Ryan Klein: Okay.
Paul Warren: All right. We’re at verified reviews.
Ryan Klein: I’ll read this one. Google verifies your reviews and shows an indication to consumers that your reviews are verified to help build trust in your business. I have no idea how that would work.
Paul Warren: I think it would work kind of how Yelp does it where they look at the posting history of the person and if they haven’t had a lot of interactions posting, they hide it and then they contact the person. You can dispute the review and they contact the person and if the person doesn’t respond to the dispute, it will disappear. So I’m assuming it probably works something like that. If they do respond to it, then it’s verified or if they probably algorithmically if they’ve had a lot of posts, like they’re part of the community that posts a lot, which I’m also a part of and I get free perks from it.
Ryan Klein: Oh, wow.
Paul Warren: I think I would definitely pay for that because I get a … A lot of times you get an ad or you get a review that’s really negative and it’s like the person made a burner account to leave that review and if that gets rid of it, I would do that.
Ryan Klein: What do you gather from this exactly? Does that mean that are you paying to feature verified reviews or enable the process of verified reviews to commence on your profile? I’m not exactly sure what it means.
Paul Warren: Yeah, I think it’ll probably be like a check mark next to the review that states it’s verified from a verified Google reviewer I suppose.
Ryan Klein: So, you just like pay money for like, “Okay, I’m paying money to enable verified reviews” meaning that from hereon in only verified reviews are featured for my listing?
Paul Warren: Yeah, that’s interesting because …
Ryan Klein: That’s what I’m thinking.
Paul Warren: Are they grandfathering in the old reviews and then just new reviews are coming up? How does that work? The only way I could see it working is that if it’s a negative review and you’re disputing it and then they’re verifying it with the person and that Gmail account. There’s further interaction and it’s putting more steps on them to leave a review, which they probably won’t do and then the review will be removed. I can’t think of it working any other way than that.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, and then you know what I would pay for, to get my big thumbs up is when if you pay for verified reviews for your competition so they’re 200 reviews goes down to two because they have so many fake reviews. I would pay for that to expose …
Paul Warren: That would be cool. As someone whose worked in some pretty sketchy industries where negative reviews are a pretty regular thing, I would definitely pay for that if it lessened the chances of me getting negative reviews or remove negative reviews.
Ryan Klein: Okay. I’d give it a thumbs up regardless.
Paul Warren: Without seeing really how it’s done; I’m going to give it a thumbs up.
Ryan Klein: Oh, yeah. I mean the way it’s worded, I frankly don’t exactly know what it is.
Paul Warren: It’s worded like a law on a Florida ballot. I’ll tell you that. I don’t know what I’m looking for.
Ryan Klein: As long as it’s a Florida ballot. Okay, so that’s verified reviews.
Ryan Klein: The next one’s instant quote. Paul, go ahead and explain that one.
Paul Warren: All right. Respond to customer quote requests with an automatic quote. You can customize the quote based on the details of the job. Save your attention for more serious customers.
Paul Warren: Interesting. All right. There’s a lot of … I don’t know how much interaction though people really have with their GMB because right how you can message a business and there isn’t a lot of interaction with that function.
Ryan Klein: No.
Paul Warren: Like a lot of interaction with the question and answer function for most businesses, so I think that … I just don’t think that people have that expectation to get a quote straight from Google My Business. Yeah. We set up the text feature for every single one of our clients and I don’t think anyone gets anything.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, you might get a few here and there, but it’s really low. It’s really low volume, so I don’t know. I don’t think it would be worth it.
Paul Warren: I guess I’d have to see how they feature it. I mean they might just redesign stuff [crosstalk 00:15:42] … I’m not saying it’s not … Yeah, I’m not saying it’s not worth it to do it, I’m saying it’s not worth it to pay to do it.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, it should just be like a functionality that you should turn on and off if you want and doesn’t really have anything to do with …
Paul Warren: Yeah, I wouldn’t pay additional for that and also with all my business info, Google can exist. It’s kind of BS when you think about it.
Ryan Klein: Yeah. Think about it, I mean it kind of exists on Facebook already, and it’s certainly not a paid feature.
Paul Warren: Yeah, so I would go ahead … I’m going to give this a thumbs down.
Ryan Klein: I’m going to give it a two out of ten.
Paul Warren: So that’s a thumbs down, right?
Ryan Klein: No, it’s two fingers on both hands. I don’t know what it is. It just means I really don’t like the way …
Paul Warren: Boo. I’m going to give it a one boo on a ten boo scale.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, save your attention for more serious customers. I don’t even know what that line means.
Paul Warren: I know. Don’t even think about.
Ryan Klein: All right, well we’re moving on then. Offers. I’ll read this one.
Ryan Klein: I can’t imagine what offers means. Promote a special offer discount on your business profile. Okay, yeah, you’re just going to have an offer.
Paul Warren: Probably not any different than your posts though.
Ryan Klein: It should go hand in hand with the instant quote. I don’t know.
Paul Warren: I mean I feel like you can just do that now with your Google posts.
Ryan Klein: Can you imagine taking advantage of that? I mean the things that you can say and the way you could feature an offer to get your eyes on it?
Paul Warren: Ooh, special offer. I mean it depends on where the offer’s at I guess. I mean I actually do think that it could make a big difference if it’s showing up in the organic maps and it’s like save 20% right now on your purchase or whatever with this and it’s showing up right there and you’re not having to search someone’s branded name, I think it probably could influence click the rates actually. I think you can influence a lot.
Ryan Klein: Oh, I mean without a doubt. I mean featured snippets and all that kind of stuff.
Paul Warren: It depends on how it’s rolled out, but I wouldn’t … Yeah, if it’s done correctly, then yeah actually I would probably pay for it.
Ryan Klein: Sorry guys, that’s another one yet to be seen. I’d love to see how they come up with that one. Cool.
Ryan Klein: The next one is potentially the most interesting one out of all of them.
Paul Warren: We have to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Ryan Klein: I gave it a thumbs down.
Paul Warren: Follow the cadence.
Ryan Klein: No, I think that I’m going to give it a thumbs down because I’m preemptively going to say that Google is going to do something weird with it and it’s not going to make sense.
Paul Warren: Yeah, just base it on its merit.
Ryan Klein: I don’t like it.
Paul Warren: All right, I’m going to give it a thumbs up. Ryan’s going to give it a thumbs down.
Ryan Klein: Okay, so that means … Yeah, I just felt like going on the …
Paul Warren: I mean because we’re going to talk about the next one, which is the best one.
Ryan Klein: Actually, I’m more interested … I’m just like glossing over the offers now because the next one’s so interesting. Yeah, you have the honor of going over this one.
Paul Warren: Yeah, I kind of butchered this one when I was reading it the last time. Get leads from competitor profiles. Yeah, you know what? Anytime I can get leads from anyone, I can steal them. I’d like to pay for that.
Ryan Klein: You don’t even have to explain it, I’m sold.
Paul Warren: Yeah, there’s some words after that, but you got me at the headline.
Ryan Klein: All right, I guess you can explain what Google’s approach to this is.
Paul Warren: All right, if I have to. When a customer messages a business that offers the same service as you, Google will show your business to the customer so they can message you too. This will help you get more leads from Google. So if you compare this with the offer, the special offer, so they’re like messaging, “Hey, I want blah, blah, blah service”, and then boom, I pop in there and I’m like, “Hey, you can get this service and here’s a 20% off discount on it” right there.
Ryan Klein: You’re cheating.
Paul Warren: You know what? I would absolutely pay for that. No, what you’re basically saying is like you know what I want to pay for? It’s the second someone messages my competitor, I’m going to send an offer and then attempt them with an instant quote and for them to pull a trigger, I’m going to assure them some verified reviews and make sure I have a promoted map to show where I am in the map.
Ryan Klein: You’re stacking it so hard on this customer.
Paul Warren: Backing the chips, man. Yeah, altogether I’d give it a giant two thumbs up. I give this a thumbs up. Two things might get leads from competitor profiles. The first thing is I love that sentence. It just says, “This will help you get more leads from Google.” No, this will help you deter people from making a decision from a competitor. It’s actually like steal it because you’re paying more money.
Ryan Klein: By the way, that is the only one that has a qualifying statement at the end of it like that.
Paul Warren: Like something that will happen? This will help you get more leads from Google. Everything else is very ambiguous and it’s if you do this, you’ll get more leads.
Ryan Klein: It’s like build trust in your business. I don’t know, maybe, but you know what the keyword is in this … We’ve already mentioned it how effective it is. What’s the keyword or phrase in this whole description here?
Paul Warren: Let’s see. I don’t know, leads?
Ryan Klein: No. Well think about it. It’s get leads from your competitor profiles. When a customer messages a business, what we’re saying is that doesn’t really happen in the first place.
Paul Warren: That’s true.
Ryan Klein: Therefore, I don’t even know if the whole thing can come [crosstalk 00:21:04].
Paul Warren: It makes you think like they’re really going to completely redesign Google My Business.
Ryan Klein: They have to. They’re going to …
Paul Warren: I mean they have to.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, like Google Plus, they’re going to bring it back to the old design.
Paul Warren: I’m going to end up working at paid search. That’s what’s going to happen to me because it’s going to be this.
Ryan Klein: I know. I mean …
Paul Warren: Easily paid search.
Ryan Klein: Shoot, man, it’s a titular right here. It’s actually a dud, man. It’s a dud.
Paul Warren: Yeah, I worked really hard to exploit this algorithm and learn all those tricks. Now I don’t have to do this.
Ryan Klein: Believe me, I have this conversation with people more often. Not all the time, but more often than I used to and it’s just like Google just keeps adding this position and this is the first time I saw ads on maps and then I heard your podcast on Google My Business being paid functionality and …
Paul Warren: Oh, it is?
Ryan Klein: Yeah, they already heard this podcast and they were questioning me about it. They’re just really concerned you know. Is this just the direction everything’s going on and technically you would consider that just because of …
Paul Warren: All right. I guess we’ll give it a depressing thumbs up.
Ryan Klein: I mean if you’re telling me … I just wish they’d use more words like pilfer and steal more.
Paul Warren: Yeah, steal competitor’s leads. I like that better. That’s what I want to do. Honestly, I don’t want to be nice about it.
Ryan Klein: Well there’s no doubt in my mind of anything that’s happened right here and a couple of things, I would definitely pay five or ten bucks to steal someone’s lead and then give them a good offer for sure.
Paul Warren: Yeah, I would absolutely do that. Per lead, you’d do that? Oh, yeah, five, ten, a thousand dollars. I’d do it just for the ego, ego, absolutely. Giving the middle finger to my competitor if I didn’t like them.
Ryan Klein: Oh, no I love it. We’ll see how that goes. I love it, I’ll pay for it already.
Paul Warren: All right, you’re up next.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, this one’s probably the funniest one because it’s just like admitting okay, yeah, customer service, great.
Ryan Klein: Google customer support. Google’s customer support team helps you troubleshoot to get the most from your ad and business profile. Yeah, they’re saying you can pay …
Paul Warren: Google has gone the fast pass route for support. This is like the clear of Google.
Ryan Klein: Yeah. I mean they were always pretty transparent about how much they cared, depending on how much, so if you do AdWords, there’s a clear difference in the support you get depending on what your budget is.
Paul Warren: Yeah. Well if I can pay for Google help support global entry, well actually at this point in time there isn’t a lot that they can help me with. I guess if it was rolled into another package, like if it was in addition to some other stuff, yeah, I would have it and use it, but it’s so rare for me now to have to call Google for help with something. I mean not in the past, I’ve had jobs where having a really good Google rep has been vital to getting some stuff done and if no one knows how the process works to contact a Google rep for Google My Business, let’s just walk them through it. Should we tell them about it?
Ryan Klein: Yeah. No, don’t you want to kind of hold onto that knowledge and make sure people listen to other podcasts, or do you just want to lay it out and just … ?
Paul Warren: Yeah, I mean we can just go over it really quick because we’ve never talked about it before, right.
Ryan Klein: Yeah.
Paul Warren: There isn’t a number you can call. You can request a callback from a number and eventually someone calls you back and then hopefully that person is in America and not that there’s anything wrong with people that aren’t in America.
Ryan Klein: Everyone knows we’re the same.
Paul Warren: Yeah, it’s just a lot harder to get some stuff done and the management structure and those other offices are different than the ones in America. If you get a really good U.S. rep, there’s a big office in Michigan and a bunch of other states. If you get one of those you can generally work with someone from there, they can get a lot of the stuff fixed for you like really, really quickly, but what you’ll find is if you’ll call … Well you won’t call, but you’ll have them call you and then you’ll talk to them and they’ll tell you, “no”, and then you’ll request another call and you’ll get another rep and they’ll help you a little bit more and then you’ll be done with that one and then you’ll call again and then that one will help you a little bit more.
Paul Warren: You’ve got to just keep trying and bothering them and eventually they go to higher ups and they get some stuff done, but it’s really like pulling teeth.
Ryan Klein: Wow, that sounds a lot like your own very personal experience. I know that we actually have phone numbers. I don’t know what they are, but if you work with them a lot and have a lot of listings, actually you probably will get a phone number eventually. They still exist.
Paul Warren: I have about 550 and we don’t have a number.
Ryan Klein: Oh, you’ve got to keep on … Paul, you know what the moral of the story is, just keep on calling.
Paul Warren: It doesn’t work like that. Yeah, you put your phone number in and they’re like, “We’ll give you a callback X amount of minutes, 45 minutes approximately”, whatever.
Ryan Klein: Well you just call that number that they called you from, that 911.
Paul Warren: It doesn’t work like that, 911, get a callback. Okay, I gotcha.
Ryan Klein: I don’t know what a tangent that was.
Paul Warren: But that’s how Google Support works.
Ryan Klein: I just like the idea that they’re like just pay us and we’ll talk to you. I’m cool with that. Oh, you know what I was going to say? How much do you think you have to spend … If you spend a million dollars a month on AdWords, what kind of support do you think you’d get at that point?
Paul Warren: Did you say a billion?
Ryan Klein: No, not a billion, a million.
Paul Warren: A million?
Ryan Klein: A million.
Paul Warren: Not much because I mean when you … That’s a big account, but there’s a lot of accounts that spend a whole lot more than that.
Ryan Klein: Yeah.
Paul Warren: I mean that’s nothing for a massive company to spend in AdWords like a car company or … That’s a really small budget compared to a lot of larger companies, but even larger companies collectively when you look at all the other smaller ones, they still do more than what larger ones do on their own. I don’t know, I don’t think they’re … And what are you going to do? Oh, I’m going to go to Bing, you know.
Ryan Klein: No, it’s not only that, but I remember back in the day at least five years ago, I remember if you had a certain ad spend, Google would send you out to their headquarters and meeting in person.
Paul Warren: I’ll tell you right now. I mean when you spend a lot in AdWords, you get an AdWords rep for sure that’ll meet with you, but they’re not going to help you with Google My Business. They don’t have any particular insight. Right now, the industry that I’m in, we spend over 200,000 a month in AdWords spend right, but they’re demonetizing the entire industry. There’s just keywords are disappearing, accounts are getting removed or penalized, I guess, and it’s just happening across the board for the industry. Google’s like totally okay with not getting that money.
Ryan Klein: That’s so lame.
Paul Warren: It’s like millions and millions of dollars. It’s probably like close to 30 million dollars when you add up all the competitors in the space.
Ryan Klein: Millions and millions and millions.
Paul Warren: Millions and millions.
Ryan Klein: Millions and millions and eight minutes later millions and … Okay, that’s … Google guarantees actually, pretty hilarious. Why don’t you go ahead and read that one.
Paul Warren: All right. Oh, we didn’t give it a thumbs up or thumbs down, or did we?
Ryan Klein: I mean it’s ridiculous that you should have to pay money for stuff like that.
Paul Warren: Yeah, thumbs down.
Ryan Klein: Thumbs down. We’re out of here. Okay.
Paul Warren: Google guarantees get a badge of trust on your business profile. If the customer isn’t satisfied, Google will give them their money back. I would like to see how that shit would work.
Ryan Klein: I have no idea because the only time that you see that, you’ll see that like on Thumbtack for like I don’t know, small services. You’ll see that on some other places, but Google’s just like, “Do whatever. Go to a massage parlor.”
Paul Warren: At that point, you’re essentially paying for bad service experience or bad review experience.
Ryan Klein: How is Google in a position to give anyone their money back? I don’t get it.
Paul Warren: Bad review and insurance right there, that’s what you’re paying for. I don’t know. I don’t even know how …
Ryan Klein: Does it depend on the type of service? What if it’s like a really expensive service? What happens if it’s like a lawyer?
Paul Warren: Yeah, how do you pay that back?
Ryan Klein: What if it’s Space Camp?
Paul Warren: I don’t even think they’ve thought that out. [crosstalk 00:30:01]
Ryan Klein: I think that this one is what they have no intention of launching. They’re just like …
Paul Warren: Well we have to have an X amount of questions in this survey. Yeah, I would just say thumbs down to that. I mean I guess maybe it would make people feel better. I just have a hard time seeing Google rolling that out.
Ryan Klein: I don’t know. It’s a big old pipe dream. Yeah, thumbs down. Verified bookings. Let’s see what this says. Google automatically tracks the bookings you’ve received from Google calls and messages and shows the number to customers. This helps them trust your business. What? Did I read that weird, or it’s just …?
Paul Warren: No, that’s how they wrote it. They wrote it really weird.
Ryan Klein: What does that mean? They show customers how many calls and messages you get from other people?
Paul Warren: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like X amount served. You know it’s like McDonald’s one million served.
Ryan Klein: Man, I think it’s like 18.4 quadrillion burgers now.
Paul Warren: It’s like a whole trustworthiness. It’s hey if you see that like … I mean it’s and when you go to WordPress and you want to download a plugin and it says like 800,000 have downloaded the plugin, you’re like, “Oh, I trust that plugin.”
Ryan Klein: Okay, basically if it’s like this person’s only gotten two calls and one message, this person’s “Ooh, gross”, and then it just stays there forever and they’re just kind of screwed?
Paul Warren: Yeah.
Ryan Klein: Okay, cool, I love it. Big thumbs up.
Paul Warren: Yeah, big thumbs up. Okay, you know what that means? Just like reviews, everyone …
Ryan Klein: Just like reviews, you’re [crosstalk 00:31:44]
Paul Warren: However, it doesn’t show past bookings, so everyone starts at zero.
Ryan Klein: Right so you just have to get your friends and family to book a bunch of crap with you.
Paul Warren: No, if someone pays for the service and they show it publicly and you don’t, you’re going to be at a disadvantage I suppose.
Ryan Klein: Right. Well, what’s better, showing that you’ve had no verified bookings because that’s what every business will probably look like, or show that you’ve had one verified call?
Paul Warren: Yeah, but what if you pay for it and you get whatever it is that works and you have 50 verified and it says that, but no one else is paying for it, which would you go with?
Ryan Klein: I would … Yeah, I mean I would really in this situation literally only do it if I work on something that’s high volume.
Paul Warren: Yeah. I mean for me in the industry that I’m at now, it actually probably could work.
Ryan Klein: Oh yeah, it could work for you.
Paul Warren: I think people could book through what I’m doing now for sure.
Ryan Klein: Well for you, I mean you could easily have … Just because you’re already optimized and set up and you already get a lot of traffic, you could within days, not even weeks, get hundreds of verified calls and messages and feature them easily.
Paul Warren: Yeah.
Ryan Klein: For a lot of other people, it would take them months to have anything impressive.
Paul Warren: Yeah, I think it depends on the industry, so maybe thumb middle?
Ryan Klein: Thumb middle.
Paul Warren: Thumb middle. All right.
Ryan Klein: Your turn. Go for it.
Paul Warren: All right. Featured review. Choose review display at the top of your business profile. Well, they kind of already do that now because the reviews are not filtered by the time that they come in, right. I don’t really know how they structure that, what the algorithm is because it’s not like a most helpful review. There’s only a thumbs up I think on it, so I don’t really know how they’d do that, but … Yeah, I mean that’s something that a lot of companies do like Glassdoor’s done for a long time and companies pay for that and it just puts your best foot forward there, so I’d probably pay for that.
Ryan Klein: I’d pay for it if a celebrity did so like Pink or Obama was just “I’m in, that was awesome.”
Paul Warren: Well yeah if they left you a review, you could do that.
Ryan Klein: I would just feature that at the top. I’d be like, “Check that out.” That would be insane.
Paul Warren: Just make a fake Pink or Obama profile and leave it and then you’re good.
Ryan Klein: That’s literally what I was saying.
Paul Warren: Yeah, done.
Ryan Klein: That’s what I meant.
Paul Warren: If I had a problem with reviews, I’d do it. If I didn’t have a problem with reviews, then I wouldn’t care about it.
Ryan Klein: I would do it if a celebrity went to my restaurant or store or business.
Ryan Klein: Bam, delicious. And the last one, video on your business profile. Show a video of your choice. Oh, thank goodness. That one that they picked for you on your business profile that helps customers learn more about your business. That kind of seems like a no-brainer and actually now, that they point it out, I’m surprised you can’t already.
Paul Warren: Yeah, I would probably do that. Yeah, I’m surprised it’s not a free feature now.
Ryan Klein: And now that I mention, I’m like “what the heck were you waiting for?”
Paul Warren: Yeah, show a video of your choice. That’s BS. Yeah, they should just do that already. They should just give it to us. Okay.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, I don’t want to pay for that. It’s all about content here, come on.
Paul Warren: Yeah, we’re giving you content to index, they can show up in other things, Google, get on your game.
Ryan Klein: Put more in. All right. Some other things that I saw. I’m on search engine Journal. They mentioned something about automated message responses, so that’s really popular nowadays of course.
Paul Warren: If you get messages, which you usually don’t.
Ryan Klein: I don’t know what background check means. It just says that somewhere. And then I don’t know what verified licenses means.
Paul Warren: If your business has a license, I guess it shows that you’re verified.
Ryan Klein: Oh, like driver’s license?
Paul Warren: If you’re like with Avvo, it shows that you are in good standing with the bar.
Ryan Klein: Nah, I’m joking, I know. Well, no, that makes sense. One thing I want to point out that I think is pretty interesting is that they show four options and the options are not relative to other marketing ventures are not a lot of money. They show four options and the prices are 25, 45, 50 and 70 a month. If this is rolled out, it seems like that’s going to kind of be the range.
Paul Warren: Yeah, I agree.
Ryan Klein: You might be able to get a lot of functionality on your profile that we mentioned for 70 bucks. I can’t imagine the whole steal your competitor’s profile leads or messages being like 70 bucks. I mean that seems kind of crazy. Promoting a pin also for 70, I mean I guess we’ll see, but …
Paul Warren: I don’t think any of that stuff in there is worth 70 dollars.
Ryan Klein: Well it just depends what …
Paul Warren: Unless you have a real bad problem with reviews, then maybe and you make a lot of money off the customer. Like the rehab industry I was in would definitely pay for that.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, yeah, I mean it seems like a lot of this stuff is going to be a no-brainer and Google’s going to make craps ton more money. Would I like to see some of these things rolled out? For sure. Are they going to be rolled out? More than likely. Which ones are going to be rolled out? I have no idea. That’s where I’m at.
Paul Warren: Is it going to be worth paying for it? Probably not.
Ryan Klein: Some of the replies are just going to be bogus and Google’s going to be, “Oh, it was worth a shot?”
Paul Warren: I mean we read through a lot of them and a lot of them were completely bogus.
Ryan Klein: I mean the ones that are bogus without a doubt are … I mean the promoted map pin can 100% just be nonsense easily. Verified reviews can go either way. Instant quote depends how they do it. I don’t want to go through it again. It’s just some of these are … Like what are you doing? You’re about to reread all of them. No, but it’s just … I think the two takeaways for me for this are a) that Google’s still freaking on a terror of monetizing everything and then second, is that is more than likely going to happen in some form.
Paul Warren: I would say it’s 100% going to happen in I would say the next year. Some form of monetization probably at a very low level, I would say like the lower pricing level will happen.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, and then what’s the … Corey was telling me, he probably told me about this forever ago, but he’s like, “Have you seen the results for a San Francisco plumber?”
Paul Warren: Oh, man, they always test stuff for a San Francisco plumber. If you’re a plumber in San Francisco, Google’s constantly f…ing you. It’s real …
Ryan Klein: Yeah, there’s a couple of searches. It’s kind of funny and it’s known within the SEO and paid community that there’s a couple of specific searches that Google specifically only like tinkers and messes with those searches and San Francisco plumbers is one of them.
Paul Warren: I feel like someone that lived in San Francisco that worked for Google got screwed by a plumber. I mean it was like, “All right, I’ll show you.”
Ryan Klein: More like not only do you not exist anymore, but you have to pay 50 dollars to show up. I mean you do that search and there’s already like extremely unique ads at the top that you don’t see every day.
Paul Warren: That’s crazy, so always check out there to see what’s going to happen.
Ryan Klein: I know that’s kind of the like go-to to see how like the composition of searchers will change. That’s kind of funny.
Paul Warren: Yeah, look how crazy it looks right now. It’s got those cards, sponsored cards.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, sponsored cards and then it says 40-plus plumbers nearby. Wow, oh my gosh.
Ryan Klein: Absolutely. Yeah, I think we covered a lot. I think that we talked for roughly 40 minutes already, so we can kind of wrap that up.
Ryan Klein: Hey, everyone, listen. Hey you, seoisdeadcast.com has been launched. It’s not the fanciest website just yet. It doesn’t have the most cool information, but you can also get in there and actually message us or leave us …
Paul Warren: Yeah, and also, we have other things we’re doing with our lives. We have jobs.
Ryan Klein: You don’t have to say the reason why we’re not doing …
Paul Warren: What website have you been built? Huh?
Ryan Klein: A lot, a bunch of websites. I finally got down to taking that theme. It probably still has the themes like the original logo still in it, which is pretty funny, but …
Paul Warren: Yeah, but if you guys want to get a hold of us, hit us up at SEO Said and Other Lies at gmail.com, or you can reach us through the site, or you can ask us questions through Facebook or even YouTube. We respond really, really quickly usually to everyone that asks us questions.
Ryan Klein: Yeah.
Paul Warren: And if you know if you have a really interesting niche that you’re in or some insight into SEO that you want to offer us, we’d be happy to have you on the podcast, so let us know.
Ryan Klein: Yeah, absolutely and if you ever want to meet us in person, just go to any UCF home game and we’ll be hanging around.
Paul Warren: Yeah, we’ll be there.
Ryan Klein: Or whatever. Cool. Is there anything else you want to talk about on this subject matter?
Paul Warren: No, just if you get a chance to give us a positive rating on whatever podcast thing that you listen to, that’ll really help us out so we can get higher from those rankings and we can produce more content for you guys.
Ryan Klein: Yeah and if you guys stop listening, I’m just going to stop doing this.
Paul Warren: Anyways, but we appreciate all our listeners. Thanks for tuning in and I hope you got something good out of this podcast tonight and just remember I’m Paul Warren.
Ryan Klein: And I’m Ryan Klein.
Paul Warren: And this has been another episode SEO is Dead and Other Lies.
Ryan Klein: Bye.
Paul Warren: Take care, bye.
Ryan Klein: Bye.
Could your business benefit from these new Google My Business features? When you need to develop a local strategy to drive more traffic through your doors or online, chat about new possibilities with your SEO company. At Market My Market, we place a big emphasis on local optimization and can help you create valuable content that will make your business stand out. Contact us for a free marketing quote.
