NEW Openness Update: Navigating the Recent Google Algo Shift in Local Search Ep. 594

Howdy, welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Matt Bertram and today we're going to be discussing the new Openness Update and this is pretty exciting because, well, Google has not come out with a new update for the Maps for quite a long time and as a lot of people might not know, Universal Search is wrapped together with the second largest search engine of YouTube, the Maps, and then the National Search or the main Google algorithm which they spend most of the time on. And this is the first update that they've had in almost two years. So it's a pretty big deal, it's caused some pretty big fluctuations, there's a lot of debate in the SEO community around it. So I thought I would give you the skinny on it and save you some time and let you kind of give you the facts, I guess, give you the gossip as well, and then let you make your own decision. Now before we get into it, one of the things that trying to follow the standard format that we do, typically we read a review. So I'm going to jump into a quick review. This is from Jessica Koch, Matt and the EWR team are absolutely fantastic to work with. They have increased my web traffic through SEO and have helped me navigate an increasingly complex online advertising system to ensure that my business stays on top of the search results and up to speed with current trends. They have truly have great character and have you and your team's best interest at heart. Punch in the face to Jessica, it's a loving term. Thank you, we appreciate it. I can tell you that the complexity of online marketing, whether you're an internal marketer or a small business owner trying to figure out how to generate new leads, even big businesses with digital transformation, you're having to become an expert in it and it's exceedingly complicated. A lot of these platforms are built by engineers and so

they're not overly intuitive just yet. But I think once you start to kind of understand how they're structured and how to set them up, it becomes a lot easier to comprehend adding new platforms and new strategies to that once you understand how the overall infrastructure works as well as the market landscape. But certainly incorporating advertising and SEO is quite powerful. We have a lot of information on that and supporting that and we can save that for another podcast. I do have two other interviews that I did that we're going to be releasing. So I'm going to try to kind of stagger the type of podcast we have. I actually have a podcast by Jeff, one of our senior account managers and paid media managers up in Canada. We have a lot more listeners in Canada. So hey, hey to everyone and we do have Chris back on and then I have some other exciting guests for you as well. I thought everybody might want to get an update on what Chris is up to. All right. So let me go ahead and jump into this update. So I'm going to do this in kind of a two part kind of breakdown. I'm going to break down what the openness update is, kind of what people are saying about it. And then as I was doing my research, I found a really great article that had a ton of fantastic ton of fantastic statistics that I think you'll really appreciate if you're listening now. Also caveat in the sales or kind of knowledge transfer process. The recommendation is to leave somebody with one statistic so they can focus on that. And when you hit people with more statistics, you kind of lose the emphasis of what you're trying to create. So I'm just going to hit you with a bunch of statistics and you can go back and listen to this podcast later. But there and I'll send the link, I'll put the link in the show notes as well. But just some fantastic statistics on

how important Google, my business or Google business profile is. It represents about a third of all traffic. So you know, you got the ads, you got the maps, you got organic search. There certainly they have kind of the not infinite scroll. I forget what exactly Google calls it, but where you keep scrolling, where they can keep adding more ads and it's not like a specific page that's to enhance the ad clicks. And also it's really important to understand that different type of people click on ads versus click on SEO. The organic search is typically a richer, more depth of a search where people are really digging to find and do research on information, statistic 85 or something like that percent of people are going through that sales process or the selection process on their own before they raise the hand and you get involved. So it's really important to put more of that stuff online and well, okay, people are doing that research so you can definitely drive them into a squeeze page. You can capture their information, you can follow up with them. That is absolutely effective strategy and it should be combined with organic SEO, which you know, there's an argument for every place in the funnel, but typically people that click on ads are coupon hunters. They're looking for a deal. That's why in AdWords, you always got to have a deal or emergency services, right? Emergency plumber, emergency air conditioner, or if it's, if you're in the South and it's really hot you know, DWI lawyer, stuff like that right now it's interesting protected classes too, because well tomorrow when you're hearing this, it will be crypto will be completely approved and people are going to start pushing that the Bitcoin ETFs pretty, pretty big. It's interesting that they're, they're making the pivot, just telling everybody to be careful. There's a lot of stuff going on in the market in that regards, but jumping back into this. So maps are hugely important, hugely, hugely, hugely important a third of the organic

traffic and a lot of, and you only got three spots, right? And actually three spots is okay because well, if you look at other data in national search, most of the searches are the top three sprouts as well. So them showing, you know, three spots, four spots with ads, sometimes five spots. That's all okay. But, you know, there's things that you need to do to be in the top three spots. And certainly this openness update is affecting it. So, all right, the openness update, what is it? Well, you know, this happened in November of 2023 I think it was like November 1st or something like that is when it went into effect. It was part of maybe a larger update, but it was specific to the, the maps algorithm, which they don't work on as much. And it's like a whole different team at Google. And essentially what they said is, well, if you're open, right, openness, open 24 seven, right, maybe versus being closed, that is a stronger signal because, well, you might want to be able to contact them. However, a lot of people raised awareness to say, Hey, I, if I want to go search for a restaurant tomorrow, I want to know the restaurants that have good reviews that are close to me, not necessarily the ones that are open tonight. Right? Like there's all these caveats. And so there's been a lot of talk on the forums and a lot of information has been pushed back to Google to consider it, especially when they roll out these updates. Sometimes they roll them back. Sometimes they change the dials on a strength of it, but certainly we're seeing a lot stronger signal for businesses that are open 24 hours. Now here's a caveat. I have seen that. Okay. I've not only heard it and certainly seen data on it, but we're seeing that in our own accounts also on the flip side. So again, everything's on a bell curve. We do have some businesses that were open 24 hour and we're

just not showing in the maps anymore at all. I kind of thought that had to do with, well, there's no holidays. It's open 24 seven providing a little bit more context that you are actually open longer. And we have always seen that you know, the longer you're open, well, the longer you're open, the potentially like better you would rank. That was always kind of the thought. But now it's really quite impactful and you can, you can see kind of night or day with a lot of searches. So if you were getting a lot of GMB traffic and you're no longer getting that traffic, it could be the fact that, you know, you say you're closed at five or whatever, whatever time. And then there's other businesses that are saying they're open longer and before you would rank after hours, but now somebody else's. So they're, they're getting that traffic in the research phase. So what are a lot of businesses doing? Well, there's been an uptick in overnight answering services, right? So forward it to a overnight answering service and now you're open 24 hours and you're not going to get maybe suspended. So the reality is if you say you're open 24 seven, you never take any holidays. You know, one, it raises kind of a red flag and then two, if they verify it, you could get dinged for that. They have not been dinging people as much, but GMBs have been suspended. And also recently we've had to recover, let's say in the last three, four months, something like that, we've recovered two GMBs. So they are still getting suspended and there is a process to undo that. So if you're having that kind of issue or transferring or something like that we do have a consulting that you can just buy on the website and we can get you all taken care of there. Not everything is online, unfortunately, right? We actually with the first suspension actually, no, no, no. Okay. So well, we have somebody that, that used to work

at Google on the team. So we have a little bit of insight, but we had to deal with the situation on the paid ad side that we could not find anywhere, anywhere online what would happen based on the situation. And I will actually save this for one of the paid podcast, like talking about paid and SEO or something like that, that I do. But I should probably publish a case study on it because we did not know how Google was going to react. And we were actually surprised that there's, you know, we knew that there was set policy, but we couldn't find out what it was anyways. You know, a lot of this stuff you can dig around and find forums. And also there's older posts that are out there that have some of this information that maybe Google's modified it, but it's not really covered very well. And, and, you know, the manual penalties on the Google side have slowed down, but on the GMB side, look, you know, you can, you can get popped for that and, and it could be quite a bit of your traffic. And if you're certainly doing things that are not following the Google guidelines you at some point will probably get investigated and there is a lot of spam still associated with that. And then with these updates, there's just, you know, a lot of ranking movement, but they typically kind of figure it out. So let me look at this article. So local file can put out an article, how to test for open hours as a local ranking factor. So if you do local SEO, you're probably aware how often Google changes his algorithms. If not, we'll give you an idea. It's about a thousand times a year. The frequent changes often affect when factors go into determining local rankings, as well as how heavily each of these factors contribute to rankings at any time. Now, again, I think that maps and the, the, the universal algorithm or national search are a little bit different.

Well, Google implement one of the core updates back in November, 2020, 23 around the local SEO professional starting to know something pretty big, whether or not a business is currently open, definitely affects how visible it is in many local searches. And this has always made sense, right? So we've always recommended to kind of extend your hours a little bit. A lot of people search early in the morning, you know, Sunday afternoon. You know, it depends on your business, right? Not a lot of people are searching Friday afternoon. Again, it depends what your business is. We had a client, um, get, uh, well, uh, a DWI lawyer got a two deals on Saturday night last week. So, um, well anyways, while we always know that business hours have impacted local rankings, Google emphasizes, uh, emphasis has mainly been on the accuracy of the business listings, right? The accuracy of it rather than whether or not it's been open when someone performs a local search. And as of our update, Google has confirmed that business openness, uh, has become a strong ranking factor. So they've turned up the dial on that and it determines the local rank factor for non-navigational searches or more general searches that don't include a business name. Does openness as a ranking factor mean your local SEO and how can you test for it? So, okay, so I'm reading, right? Um, so what does this mean for local SEO in 24? Well, for starters, it means it's a good idea for anyone doing local SEO to test open hours as a rank factor. See how heavily it actually impacts their positions and local search results, right? So different industries could be affected differently and how people are searching for those industries based on your customer journey target persona are certainly important to do so. Uh, you can run two baseline reports using the same scan one when your business is open and one when your business is closed. Compare them side by side, whether you're probably going to see when, Oh, what you're

probably going to see when you do this is that your business ranks much lower when hours are closed compared to when hours are open. Now what can you do with this information? Well, you shouldn't go change your business hours to try to outrank your competition. In fact, listing faults business hours would likely hurt your Google business profile in the local pack as Google still weighs the accuracy of business hours in the rankings. I would tell you that they're starting to incorporate AI and they can see how people are interacting with your, your G and B so they can kind of get an idea of what's really happening and where the signals are anyways. In other cases, intentionally listing business hours could lead to getting your Google business profile suspended. So don't go changing 24 hours and try to cheat the algorithm. I know a lot of people are going to do that. Uh, if you see openness, it indeed affects your local rank factors. You should make sure to run most of your local tracking scans during business hours. When you do this, you want to be able to appear in the local near me type searches. It's all really interesting near me strategy the other day, um, running scans when the business is open and when most competitors are open can help you make the most valuable optimizations and improve your local SERP positions, uh, searches and ranking position. For you new listeners and when it matters most, this is in particularly true for local businesses that rely heavily on walk-ins such as restaurants, retail stores, and other brick and mortar businesses. If your business allows customers to schedule appointments outside of business hours, you might run after our scans to make sure different sets of optimizations to try to outrank competition then to, especially the value of doing so will depend on the type of business you're doing local SEO for and your specific goals. In short, Google confirmed that openness hours are new to, are now a stronger ranking factor, which means

they're now two very different sets of data. You can look at when, uh, looking at ranking power, allowing you to further tailor your approach to local SEO around business. Sorry, I got to take a drink of water here. How to test for openness as rank. Okay. So, um, this is a article again, I'll post it from local Falcon. Uh, it's one of the, it actually spun out, uh, from what's it called? Um, I forget the platform, but they, they spun it out. It's on its own. And then there's local Viking and you can see some really great maps of what's going on. And, um, a lot of tools now, uh, you can get positions based on the GPS and it'll tie it to the closest data center because for a long time when we were doing multi-location SEO, people would say, how are we ranking for this keyword? And if there was no location modifier on there, we didn't know, um, because there was kind of one search, but based on your location, uh, you can pull from different data centers and actually get that data. And that was super helpful for, um, you know, multi location businesses to get accurate data. Um, so these, you know, SEM rush, uh, ha has a local ranking factor tool and, and looking at these maps is super important. And if your business is affected by local SEO, you want to start looking at these maps. All right. So I'm going to also put an article in here by bird's eye. They're a review site there. They manage a multi-capacity there. Um, you know, enterprise by their definition is something like 1500 locations and there are more of an enterprise level solution. Uh, certainly I have some seen some smaller businesses utilize it, but if you're going to utilize it just like HubSpot and, uh, some of the other platforms, you want to make sure that you're not doing the minimum and paying kind of top dollar for it. You want to make sure you're maximizing, uh, the

tool and you want to make sure it makes sense. Um, but okay. So they have an article called state of Google business profiles, 2024 top findings and insights. And I think that this, that there's just some really awesome data in here. So I'm going to, um, kind of highlight some bullet points for you. I might say I'm a little bit slower if you're listening, or I know a lot of people listen on like one and a half X, whatever speed. I know I listened to everything at like 1.75, so I get it. Um, Google business profile verification, kind of interesting, 64% of businesses have verified their Google business profiles. So 64 have, you know, do the math on what hasn't, uh, property management, hospitality and healthcares, uh, lead in verification rates. So right. Property, hospitality, and healthcare. That's good. Over 50% though of home services and contractor businesses are still unverified. So well, if you're one of those businesses out there, you really need to get verified because there's a lot of cool things that you can do in your Google business profile. And also if you're a freelancer out there, that might be a good target of businesses to go after, uh, where you can add instant value of saying, Hey, your business is unverified. I can help you get it verified and that could get you a foot in the door. All right. Um, Google messaging adoption. I can tell you me personally, I use LinkedIn as like my AOL instant messenger. I'm like dating myself, but like, uh, whatever chat tool you use. Um, I, I, I message everybody on that. That's not at the company. It's easy to keep up. It's, it's pretty, it's pretty nice, um, to be able to message people versus texting them or calling them or emailing because if you want that instant feedback, well, Google has a messaging platform where you can connect directly with customers. And there's another data point out there of, uh, if someone's in the buying mode, you want to move them

through the funnel as fast as possible because once they come out of that mode, um, you got to wait for them to get back into it. And that could be in a day, it could be in a week, it could be in a month, it could be longer. Um, but if they're not ready to look at that and they're not in that mindset, they're not a potential prospect until they are again. Right. Uh, but 30 so, so messaging somebody, you can keep that going. Uh, I can tell you, um, inbound calls. We have probably, oh, let's say a lot of spam calls, but 20 something percent of inbound calls have actually converted into clients and it's somebody just, you know, seeing us seeing some stuff, want to pick up the phone, want to talk to somebody. So there's people that still want to do that and you want to make sure you have somebody that answers the phone, can actually answer those questions. Um, and you got to sift through, through, through all that. But when there's a real prospect and you can connect with them and you can answer their questions, it's gold, right? Because they've connected with other people, they've left messages, they've, you know, sending emails, they've scheduled something, whatever, but you're talking to them right then. And typically the first person that's going to solve their problem, um, that's who they go with. Right. And about 33% of Google verified profiles use this messaging. So that means out of the ones that are verified, a third of them are already using this high usage in legal customer goods and automotive make total sense, right? Retail and healthcare show lower usages, but proving out right there in the right location from the message before high visibility searches, uh, verified businesses average 1800 monthly views. So if you haven't verified, that's a ton and 84% uh, are from discovery searches. So there are new people finding you super, super powerful. Um, also you can typically rank in the maps faster than you can

rank in national search because you're only competing with people in your geographic area. It's um, it's easier, right? Like there's less people to compete with. Um, I can, I'll, I'll go into the end that some, some, some caveats on how, how do you expand that? That search volume. All right. 40% of businesses exceed a thousand searches per month. I mean, Hey, send me that traffic, right? Hospitality followed by automotive retail lead in Google search views for Google business profile interactions. The interaction rate on Google business profile emphasize the platform's effectiveness and driving winning customer engagement strategies for businesses. On average, a verified Google business profile receives about 200 clicks per month. 48% of these interactions are website clicks. Wow. That's pretty good. Each of each view of a verified Google business profile can generate up to 10 interactions with the business. That's pretty powerful. Website business from verified viewers or sorry, verified profiles. Google business profiles are a pivotal source of website traffic underlying their role in the digital customer journey. Local businesses average 105 monthly website visits from verified Google business profiles. So if somebody, um, is coming through there and that's your referral source to your website, Oh, also a big update to, um, before I forget, uh, there is also a lot of debate out there. About the Google, my business or, uh, GBP Google business profile websites. And I had been asked this a lot. I had been, you know, one way or another about it. I ended up never really building out those because I thought that was another website which you could build out and you could drive traffic to, to your website. But if you're using a lot of the same content, it creates duplicate content and then it kind of fights for rankings. Um, I was just a big fan of driving all the traffic to your, your main website, but this was an option for a lot of businesses that maybe don't, don't have a way to build out a website. Um, well that option is

no longer there. Um, so they're, they're, they're getting rid of that. And so if you spend a lot of time, uh, building out those profiles and, and they're driving a lot of, uh, traffic for you or they're your main source of traffic heads up, you need to go ahead and build another website. Um, and there's a lot of, uh, great easy builders that you can use. And I will also dispel the rumor that like Squarespace, uh, Wix, um, you know, I don't know too much about like, uh, what is it a go daddy builder or anything like that. But I can tell you Squarespace and Wix, we can rank those websites. Um, it's not a problem. The reason people prefer WordPress, well, there's a deal between Google and WordPress that they get indexed faster and, um, maybe it can read more code as a, uh, headless browser or whatever. Um, but man, you know, there's some advantages of Squarespace and Wix. And if, you know, you need a visual builder, um, it's, I, I don't want to, uh, suggest that you, you, you have to move away from that. Um, even, uh, Shopify, uh, you can do some pretty good SEO with it. Uh, and then there are strategies to incorporate with subdomains, like multiple CRM or what is it? Um, you know, CMS is sorry, content management systems, but, um, yeah, just heads up. All right. So Google business profiles are pivotal source of website traffic, underlying the role in the digital customer journey, local businesses are okay. So I think we read that, sorry. Um, then there's just kind of this image here showing automotive hospitality and recreation off the charts, everything a little bit lower beauty and wellness, consumer goods, uh, retail property management, kind of that next tier direction requests. This is something, you know, that might be worthwhile to implement. Uh, if you do have employees that are still driving to the office, uh, or you're trying to get them back. I saw something about bank of America sending out

education letters to get people coming back into the office, uh, the other day, but, um, you know, encourage them to use driving directions on Google. Um, that is a ranking factor, right? Uh, and customers, uh, having it, uh, easy for them to use, um, driving directions, right? And the more time it's used, the more interactions with the site, the more signals it sends that your business is a legit business and it's a brand. Uh, so the frequency of direct requests highlights Google business profiles, utility, and guiding uh, potential customers to physical locations, verified businesses receive about 66 monthly direction requests. I can tell you that a lot of this data is coming from bots and I, I don't know when Google is going to, um, update it, but, um, you know, I've just seen some businesses that are not really in-person businesses with hundreds of driving directions per month. Um, even businesses that since COVID have, have people working from home and there's, there's all these driving directions, um, it's bots, right? Um, anyways, recreation, hospitality businesses receive highest number of direct requests, number of direct requests per verified Google based on industry, hospitality, recreation, automotive and retail kind of second tier with consumer goods, everything else kind of lower. So, I mean, just think about the business calls from verified profiles. I, I do see this being helpful. Um, also LSA ads, which we certainly recommend for businesses as the first way to start because you can get your money back if you qualify. Um, but, uh, you know, it's Google tracked, right? And if the referral source is good to your website or the call, um, usually the, the, the quality is better and it also sends really positive signals for you with Google. So businesses receive about 595 calls annually. So roughly 50 a month from Google verified businesses. Certainly this varies per industry, 24% of businesses with verified Google business profiles get more than 50 calls per month. So 25% of them get more than 50 calls per month. Just reasons

to do this. Um, photos, photos are super important on verified profiles. It says average of photos per verified location is 26. So you know, understanding what the bell curve is, um, have more than 26, uh, home services profiles have mostly pictures averaging 70 per verified profile. So per industry, it's a little bit different finance healthcare with six to 12 respectively. Here's the pro tip. It is a GPS platform like first and foremost. So if you're going to be putting pictures, you know, in Google, my business or Google business profiles taking this away, uh, they said, Hey, we want pictures of the inside. We want pictures of the outside. We want pictures with clients. We want to pictures with team. We want pictures of your brand. Um, they had these categories. Now they just say, Hey, you can upload pictures, follow that format. I would also tell you if you're going to take pictures from the outside or inside, have verifiable landmarks from the street. Okay. And it's, it's looking for landmarks. It's looking for topography. It's a GPS system. So there's your pro tip there, uh, post post publish it on Google business profile. This is part of, uh, our Google business profile or local SEO offering. Remember it's a whole different search engine. So posting, uh, on GMB and, and understanding how you're pushing around that link equity is super important. Also what you're talking about, um, 40% of business said 40% of businesses I've never posted on their Google business profile indicating a significant area of potential engagement and visibility that is currently underutilized. What I can tell you about this is when this first came out, I can't remember when it was, we started posting on it for clients almost immediately. Anytime something new comes out, the algorithms juice it. They want you to do it and they want to, uh, give benefit to businesses that are first movers in this and, and this generated a substantial bout of business for our clients. And I think it still does. Um, I think

it's a really, really great way to, uh, have little mini posts, uh, talking about stuff, uh, engaging with clients, people look at this stuff, uh, and it also helps with SEO. So it should be part of your larger strategy, which I'll do another podcast. I think I'm kind of running up here on time, uh, on this one. All right. Google reviews, the volume of Google reviews received, um, yeah, yeah, yeah. Online reputation, customer trust businesses received on average 66% new Google reviews per location in 2023. So if you're not getting 66 reviews per year, build a online record, reputation management process to develop these. And again, Berto, I guess, could be a great solution for you. Um, if it makes sense financially, uh, what I would tell you is responding to the reviews appropriately is super important. Also, if you're freaking out, you got a bad review, I mean, it happens. They Google actually looks at your response. If you, if you do a not so good response or emotional response or whatever, or you don't fully answer what they're saying, uh, Google will say it's relevant. Now if you answer it, well, you address the issue. Um, it will actually be, um, it will start dropping in, in relevancy. Uh, also if you're using the, the, you know, you know, keywords that are useful to, to, to your services, uh, certainly positive keywords, um, positive intent keywords in that area. These are all things. Remember, it's a different search engine, a different platform. It's pulling from different signals. This will help you. Um, so online reputation management, super important, uh, not just on Google, but on the other web 2.0, um, again, this could be a whole nother podcast reviews are key to converting business. Once you start ranking somebody in SEO, which again, this could be a SEO ranking factor, but then it moves into CRO conversion rate optimization and getting people to take action. Um, the number one thing that, that helps people take action is they read the reviews and they

kind of, you know, they kind of, um, take it almost as a referral from a personal friend. If there's enough of them on whether they should move forward or not, I forget what the terminology of that's called, but, uh, reviews are super important. So if you don't have a reputation program, you really, really should have on the same automotive hospitality and recreation are most important. Um, and then the rest of the article goes to just, uh, important things, you know, breaking it down, website visits, uh, direction requests, calls to business, other interactions, again, some more data, website business account for 48% of all interactions on Google, my business, right? So, uh, getting your profile going, uh, and, and getting a ranking super important and yeah, just more, more data, more data, more data, more data. Um, but really you got the gist of this article, um, please leave me a review on the platform you're listening to it on. Um, we'll put links to being able to leave it, uh, on some of our, uh, platforms that, that we control and manage. Uh, certainly we have a lot of, uh, uh, audits and workshops and, uh, one-on-one consulting and you know, we, we are a execution firm, so, you know, not just a strategy, but execution. If you need help, uh, if you found this helpful, um, let us know, uh, hopefully you're, you're sticking around to this point and I want to certainly let you know that we appreciate you and there will be some really good podcasts coming here soon and, uh, until the next time, if you want to grow your business with the largest, most powerful tool on the planet, the internet, um, reach out to EWR for more revenue in your business. Just go to our website and, uh, up in the upper right-hand corner, you can set a time to talk with one of our, uh, digital marketing representatives until the next time. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.