The power of your Google listing

By Jim Marshall, President of Bluefoot Digital Marketing

With the first month of 2020 already behind us, I take a minute to reflect on how much things have changed. In the 1990s when we talked about 2020, we assumed there would be flying cars and our world would resemble an episode of “The Jetsons” cartoon.

Well our sky is currently clear of any cars, but we do have robots cleaning our floors and we’re giving verbal commands to Siri and Alexa.

But one little start-up founded in 1998 has impacted our world far more than robots and vacuum cleaners—Google.

If we needed to find a phone number for a friend in the 1990s, we would sift through the white pages then “dial” a phone. Today, simply Google someone’s name and you can discover their phone number, criminal record, and photos from their last vacation.

In the same way Google has replaced the white pages, they have also replaced the yellow pages. Need to find a place to eat? Google “restaurants near me” and you’ll be greeted with Google’s business directory, commonly known as GMB (Google My Business) Listings. At your fingertips are reviews, user-submitted photos, menus, special offers, and more. Virtually everything my wife and I need to now to answer the “where-should-we-eat” question is there—anytime we are brave enough to take our four kids out to dinner.

Last year, local consumers made a restaurant-related search an average of over 810,000 times each month. That’s just one month and that’s only in Cleveland.

If you’re a business owner, you have a listing on Google even if you never asked for one. That simple presence—along with listings on Yelp and other online directories—are essential to the success or failure of your business, and if you aren’t managing those listings, someone else is.

We’ve spent years developing Mimi’s new Local Search and Reputation Management solutions, which help local businesses look good in this all-important online arena. We help businesses look good and get found.

Let us help your business, too.

For more information about Mimi’s Local Search and Review Management tools, please contact her offices at 330-220-8610 or email Mimi@MimiVanderhaven.com.