Google My Business Functionality Is Affected By COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes within many businesses. Google My Business (GMB) has also made changes and now has limited functionality. Due to social distancing and the encouragement for staff to stay home, you may see some delays in service. Their current focus is on Google Maps and Google Search and giving users access to essential business information.

Business Listing Edits

The GMB is shifting focus to make critical health-related businesses a priority. This means that when you do any edits to your business listing, you may see it stay in a pending status. There are some pieces of information that will still receive priority attention, like special hour, open/closed status, or temporary closings. 

If you see some of these delays please don’t hesitate to reach out to support. Just remember that GMB is going to be working with a limited team so even responses from support are going to be delayed. The best thing to do would be to show your updated information in business attributes and posts. 

Just be patient. They are reprocessing any posts that were rejected before. Some businesses may have found that their posts were disabled but that has been fixed. If you are trying to post business updates involving COVID-19, create it with the title “COVID-19 update” which will get more prominence in your profile.

New listings, verifications, etc.

GMB is now manually checking all new listings, verifications, and claims to see if they are for critical health-related businesses. Other businesses are going to experience a delay in getting posted in Google Search and Maps. Also, any new reviews, replies, and the Q&A sections are all disabled at this time. 

Check the GMB news for more information about these changes.

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