Google My Business in 2020: posts, attributes and messaging

The profile you set up in 2018 does not have the fields customers now look for. Here is what is new or newly important.

Google also paused new reviews, replies and Q&A publishing in March as it reduced support operations, and has been restoring them gradually since April. Expect lag, not loss.

The single most damaging thing a local business can do right now is leave hours that are wrong. Customers who drive to a closed door leave one-star reviews, and Google's own "confirm your hours" prompts to users will surface the discrepancy.

• Update primary hours every time they change, even for a week. Use the special hours feature for holidays and one-off closures rather than editing the main schedule.
• Add secondary hours where they apply. A restaurant open for takeout from 11 to 8 but dine-in only from 5 to 8 should say so; a pharmacy with senior hours should list them.
• Use "temporarily closed" sparingly. It is the right setting for a gym or theater that genuinely cannot serve anyone. It is the wrong setting for a restaurant doing delivery or a boutique shipping online orders. Reopen the listing the day you resume any form of service.
• Check the website link. Many businesses swapped their homepage for a "we're closed" page in March and never changed it back.

Attributes appear directly in the local pack and on Maps, and Google is actively filtering on them. A searcher who taps "curbside pickup" sees only businesses that have claimed the attribute.

For retail and restaurants, set curbside pickup, in-store pickup, delivery, no-contact delivery, takeout and dine-in accurately. For services, set online appointments, online estimates and online classes where you genuinely offer them. Health and safety attributes, such as mask requirement, temperature checks and staff wearing masks, are rolling out in some categories and are worth claiming where accurate.

Two new identity attributes also arrived this year. Black-owned, announced in July, and women-led, which has existed since 2018, are opt-in and display as a badge. Claim them only if they describe the business; the point is accuracy, not a ranking lever.

The COVID-19 post type sits above regular posts and does not expire after seven days like a standard update. Use it for the facts: current hours, how to order, safety measures, what has changed. Keep it under 300 words, lead with the most important sentence, and update it rather than stacking several.

Regular posts still matter. Offers, events, product posts and updates each remain live for about a week, with offers running to an end date. A workable cadence for a small business is one COVID-19 post kept current plus one or two regular posts a week. Photos with people in them perform better than product-only shots, and posts with a clear button, Order online, Call now, Book, get measurably more taps than text alone.

The message button is now appearing in Search and Maps, not just inside the Google Maps app, which means more people will use it. Enable it in the Google My Business app, set a welcome message that states your response time, and route notifications to someone who will actually see them. Google's stated expectation is a reply within 24 hours; businesses that fall behind can have the button removed. Common questions this year are predictable, open hours, is curbside available, do you have item X, so a short list of saved replies covers most volume.

If nobody can own it, leave it off. An unanswered message channel is worse than none.

Review publishing has been unreliable since March, and it is tempting to stop asking. Do not. Reviews left during the pause are being published in batches, and review volume and recency remain among the strongest local ranking signals.

1. Ask at the moment of delivery or pickup, with a short link to your review form. The Google My Business dashboard generates one.
2. Reply to every review you can, including the ones that appear weeks late. Mention the specific thing the customer praised or complained about.
3. For the inevitable complaint about new procedures, reply once, factually, and move the conversation offline.
4. Watch Q&A once it resumes in your area. Seed it with the five questions you are asked most and answer them yourself.

The Insights tab has become more useful this year. Watch direction requests, calls and website clicks week over week rather than impressions, which move with search demand you do not control. Track the split between discovery searches, people who found you by category, and direct searches, people who typed your name. A rising discovery share means the attributes and posts are surfacing you to new customers.

Add UTM parameters to the website link in your profile so Google Analytics attributes the traffic to the profile rather than lumping it into organic or direct. A simple utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gmb is enough.

Multiple locations with one set of hours. Each listing needs its own hours, attributes and posts. Bulk upload via spreadsheet exists for a reason.

Keywords stuffed into the business name. Google is suspending listings for this more aggressively, and a suspension during a period when customers are checking the profile daily is costly.

Ignoring the app. Most of the time-sensitive controls, including messaging and quick post updates, are easiest from the mobile app. Install it on the phone of whoever opens the shop.

A profile that disagrees with the website. If the profile says curbside available and the website says closed, the customer believes neither.

Local visibility is part of the connected brand, growth, web and technology work rather than a listing chore. Discover audits every location's profile against the website, the phone system, the ordering flow and what customers are actually asking by phone and message. Plan sets the attribute and hours standard for every location, a posting calendar, a review request process tied to the point of sale, and the UTM and reporting structure. Build implements it, including bulk updates for multi-location businesses, saved message replies and the website changes needed so the profile and the site tell one story. Improve is the monthly rhythm: Insights review, post refresh, review response and a check that nothing Google added this month is sitting unclaimed.

The digital transformation engagement is a representative pattern. A multi-location service business had profiles that had been claimed years earlier and never maintained; hours, categories and phone numbers varied by location and none reflected the new ways customers could book. We standardized every profile, added the service and safety attributes, connected online booking, introduced a review request step after each appointment and set up location-level reporting. Direction requests and calls from the profiles rose steadily over the following quarter, and the booking share from Google surpassed the paid directories the business had been paying for.