Google My Business (GMB) has become an essential tool for companies looking to strengthen their local presence and attract new customers. It’s a free and powerful listing that connects users with businesses through Google Search and Maps. Still, a lot of businesses don’t use it to its full potential. Poor GMB management can lead to lost visibility, decreased trust, and ultimately, lost revenue. Below, we explore the top mistakes businesses make with their GMB listings and how to avoid them.
1. Incomplete or Inaccurate Business Information
One of the most common—and damaging—mistakes is failing to provide complete and accurate business details. Businesses often overlook critical fields like hours of operation, phone numbers, website URLs, or address updates. Inaccurate information can confuse customers and cause them to lose trust or choose competitors instead.
How to Avoid It: Regularly audit your GMB listing and ensure every section is filled out accurately. Pay special attention to seasonal hours, holiday closures, and service area details.
2. Neglecting Reviews and Customer Interaction
Reviews are not just social proof—they directly influence rankings in local search results. Ignoring customer reviews, especially negative ones, sends a message that your business doesn’t care about feedback.
How to Avoid It: Make responding to reviews a part of your weekly routine. Thank customers for good reviews and respond to their worries in bad ones. Thoughtful engagement boosts credibility and shows commitment to customer service, key components of strong GMB management.
3. Failing to Add Photos or Videos
Visual content is essential in today’s internet marketing landscape. GMB profiles with quality photos receive significantly more clicks, calls, and direction requests than those without. Yet many businesses upload low-quality images or none at all.
How to Avoid It: Regularly update your profile with high-resolution photos of your business interior, exterior, team members, and products or services. Use short videos for additional engagement.
4. Not Using GMB Posts
Google allows businesses to post updates, special offers, events, and more directly to their GMB listing. But a lot of people don’t use this function, so they miss out on good search results.
How to Avoid It: Treat GMB posts like mini social media updates. Share promotions, blog posts, seasonal offers, or behind-the-scenes content. It’s a subtle but effective form of internet marketing that keeps your listing dynamic and current.
5. Ignoring Performance Insights
Google provides valuable insights into how customers find and interact with your listing—how many calls you received, how often your listing appeared in search, and what actions were taken. Ignoring these insights means missing out on optimization opportunities.
How to Avoid It: Look over your GMB success metrics on a regular basis. You can use this information to improve your plan, pay more attention to services that work well, and change your content to better match what your audience wants.
6. Using Outdated Categories or Overlooking Attributes
Selecting the wrong primary category or failing to include relevant attributes (like “wheelchair accessible” or “free Wi-Fi”) can reduce your visibility in local search results.
How to Avoid It: Choose the most accurate primary category for your business and review all available secondary categories and attributes. This ensures your business shows up in the most relevant search queries.
Final Thoughts
It’s not enough to just claim your listing on Google My Business (GMB); it needs constant care, optimization, and smart updates. If you use your Google My Business profile the right way, it can be a strong extension of your brand and a key part of your online marketing. Your business will get more customers, stand out in local searches, and build a good online image if you don’t do the things above.
If it seems too much to handle, you might want to work with people who are experts in handling GMBs. Your business can get the most out of this powerful tool if you show it how to do it.
