Many small and medium-sized businesses have faced challenges due to the effects of the pandemic to the economy. Amidst this difficult time, however, consumers all over the world have begun to seek out ways to support their favourite companies and establishments, especially in places like New Zealand, where restrictions have begun to lift.
Recent statements by Google have highlighted just Photo Editing Services how much web traffic is dedicated to this. According to them, searches for “how to help small businesses” saw a huge increase over March, by more than 700%.
In response to the rapidly changing currents of online interest, Google has started making changes to Google My Business (GMB), a service which has always played a huge role in the visibility of SMBs in their local area. The changes consist of both updates and expansions to existing features as well as the addition of new features, which we explain in-depth below.
Support Links
The first major change is the global expansion of support links. In early May, Google released support links as an option for Business Profiles, explaining that “merchants will be able to add a donation link, gift card link or both to their profile. They can also share a personal message in their post to inform customers how funds will be put to use.”
These were initially rolled out to English-speaking countries including the US, U.K, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Google has made clear that they are now rolling out to 18 more markets, including Japan and Italy.
The donations are currently made possible via PayPal or GoFundMe through a partnership with Google. While Google has not made clear whether or not these have seen widespread use thus far, it is true that they provided the links in response to seeing an enormous wave of demand for such options.