Would you pay for Google My Business listings?

A monthly subscription for Google My Business?

The smell of monthly fee is in the air and its not the ever present pending transaction for your budget gym membership waiting to leave your account. This time it is business, Google My business.

What is Google My Business? Google my business is a service provided by Google that allows a business to create a profile and lists them on Google Maps and Google search, for free. It provides you with a profile editing space where you can add and update all the relevant information about business, such as, opening hours and location.

Google makes a large chunk of its revenue through its paid ads service, the one that can place you at the top of the rankings, dependent on relevancy and keywords. Throw a monthly fee for organic listings in and Google may find users opting out of paid ads and focusing on organic. I mean, why pay out a monthly fee if you’re not going to capitalise on the almost certain possibility that some of your competitors wont opt in.

This also throws up major SEO issues for agencies that specialise in this area of digital marketing. Some businesses may now look to take their SEO budget and use it to increase their success in paid ad campaigns. Is this part of Googles thinking?

Whatever the reasoning behind such a potentially dramatic overhaul, there is sure to be some voices of disapproval should it come about. We’ve seen many paid directories struggle to compete because of Googles sheer size, ease of use and free listings service. Could that all be about to change?

Drop us an email – info@clabacreative.co.uk. If and when these changes happen, we’ll let you know how to best approach it.