What is Google My Business?

The latest offering from Google is directly relevant to small and local business. Google My Business is a one-stop page for merchants to manage their presence on various Google products, from search, maps and Google+, Google Analytics, and even Hangouts. This is Google’s attempt to swipe some of Facebook’s thunder, by allowing its users to post and share news, events and images once, and have them populate through the entirety of their Google services.

Businesses that have been using Google+ or Places for Business will find themselves soon being transitioned to the new platform. There is an Android app right now, and we suspect an iOS release is right around the corner.

How does this all work together?

One clear advantage this platform will have is that all of your information will be centrally located, and can be populated to your Google properties with no effort from you. In fact the first thing you see when you log into Google My Business is your company’s information that’s been taken from Google+, Places and Maps. You can easily edit to update or change any information you find there.

Then you come to the dashboard if you will. This page contains all your important Google services, such as:

• Google+ Shares
• Google Insights
• Customer Reviews
• Google Analytics
• Google Hangouts

You can get to those functions from this screen and add content, manage review and even start a Hangout. The mobile version of Google My Business is sleek and very easy to navigate.

Is this the end of Google+?

It may be too soon to tell what this means for Google+. For right now, just think of this as a change of address. At this time there doesn’t seem to be any loss of functions for Google+ and it may actually benefit from the automated atmosphere and better organization this affords.