This post was first published in 2019, however, it has been updated to include the latest Google My Business benefits for businesses as of December 2021. Google Business Profile is the new name for this service. The analysis provided by the time and effort was replaced. The answer is yes, whether it's local, local, or national. Local search is an essential component of a comprehensive digital plan, and Google My Business is a significant and growing year.

Your free Google business listing (known as your Business Profile) can do more than you think. When properly optimized, it showcases your best features and makes it easy for consumers to discover, learn about, and contact your business. But in order to properly optimize your Business Profile, you need access to it, and in order to access it, you need to verify with Google that you are the rightful owner. While it seems as though it should be as simple as "step one create, step two claim, and step three verify," the process is neither that simple nor that linear--which, if you're reading this post, you have already figured out. That's because it requires three different Google accounts and two different Google platforms, all of which have very similar names.

Hundreds of millions of people contribute over 20 million reviews, ratings, and other pieces of content to Google Maps' over 200 million points of interest daily -- it's how the platform continues to grow so rapidly. But user contributions are intrinsically fraught. That's why increasingly, Google is using AI and machine learning to spot malicious contributions at submission time, ensuring they don't reach the over 1 billion users who regularly use Maps. In a blog post, Google said that it uses automated detection systems, including machine learning models, to scan millions of contributions to detect and remove policy-violating content. In the case of reviews, its systems audit every review before they're published to Maps, looking for signs of fake or misleading content.