Why your Google Maps profile matters so much

You decide to take a trip round London. How do you find a hotel? Or a nice restaurant? What are the local gyms like? People ask these questions everyday and for many businesses these are purchasing decisions that drive business. 40% of your clients will use mapping products to find this information. What percentage of clients will be using mapping products in 10 years time?

A few years ago I noticed that how I found businesses had changed. I relied solely on Google Maps to find local restaurants when I wanted to go out. I found that it was often easier to see if a place was good, what the closing times were and the address straight from Google maps rather than the restaurants website. I also noticed that a lot of businesses had very poor, or client submitted photos.

Report

A 2014 report by Oxera on The Benefits of Complete Business Listings gives some good insight into some the benefits of Google Maps for Business. A few of the benefits include;

Consumers have higher confidence in verified maps business listings. Businesses are considered to be ‘reputable’ twice as often if they are verified.

79% of users report that having business information on the search engine results page would allow them to find a business that better matches what they are looking for.

Our analysis shows that additional information is associated with at least a 30% increase in homepage clickthroughs

Entries for firms with more information about themselves are associated with additional online activity.