Google Updates

Use Google Posts to Advertise Dealer Lease Offers & Specials

I may sound like a severely broken record here, but not a month goes by without Google changing the way the game’s played. This month’s offering? The inclusion of a new “Offer” category within Google Posts.

You may be asking yourself, “Why should I care about Google Posts?”

Just hear me out, would ya?

Once a virtually dead feature for car dealers, Google Posts has finally come full circle, evolving into a powerful tool that adds supplemental value to branded paid search campaigns. With the most recent updates in the Google My Business platform, dealerships far and wide can now utilize the revitalized Google Posts to highlight daily, weekly, or monthly vehicle lease offers and finance deals. What an exciting time to be alive!

Google Offers Dealership

The Lowdown on Google Offers for Dealers

Before the implementation of an official “Offers” category, Google limited users to publish “What’s New” and “Events” posts. As a dealer, you likely saw limited benefits from either of these types of posts. After all, your potential leads want easy access to concrete data when researching vehicles—prices, savings, percentages, interest rates—not just information about a monthly sales event. The new Offers category opens many additional doors for those leads to walk through.

Here’s how it works:

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Answers to All Your Google Q&A Questions

Ah, Google: Always on the cutting edge of, well, everything. Now, with the implementation of Google My Business Q&A, they’re attempting to answer commonly asked questions right from the Knowledge Panel. Some may see this update as yet another way Google is stripping power from business owners, but this new feature offers a lot of potential for brand growth—if handled properly.

 

Google Q and A

Photo: smallbusiness.googleblog.com

What is Google Q&A?

In the fall of 2017, Google pushed “Questions & Answers” out on their Google Maps app (Android). In December, this feature rolled out to mobile and desktops. “Great,” you say. “But what does it do?”

As the name suggests, users can ask a business owner specific questions related to their services, products, or policies. Owners of that Google My Business listing can then respond to these questions.

How Does Google Q&A Affect My Business?

Customers ask questions; owners answer said questions. Easy-peasy, right?

Not quite, as anyone with a Google account can also answer these questions without having a direct connection to the business property. Even competitors can ask and answer questions on your Google property, which should be alarming to anyone whose rivals are snarky weasels.

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Project Loon is Becoming the Hero Puerto Rico Needs

In 2013, Google (as Google X) had lift-off on Project Loon, their too-crazy-to-be-real venture to provide internet to everyone, regardless of creed, class, or ability. We wrote about it early in 2016—read our “Top 10 Google Projects to Change the World post—but hadn’t heard more than a whisper since. (To their credit, they’ve posted a few times over the last 600 days.)

Now, that whisper has risen to a roar, as Project Loon is up and running in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

Project Loon Info

Photo: x.company/loon

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Yext Rolls Out New Local Listing Feature: Google Post Scheduler

With great power comes great responsibility, and there’s perhaps no more powerful being in the “local listings” scene than Yext. (Of course, Google is up there, too.) And what do you know? They’re now unabashedly NSYNC with each other thanks to the Yext Google Post Scheduler tool.

See? It’s almost like peering into a mirror and seeing that beautiful J.Timberlake face staring back at you.

Google Post Scheduler Tool

photo: yext.com

What’s the Dealio?

As you know—or maybe you don’t, in which case, you should speak to our local SEO connoisseurs—copy and images from Google Posts can pop up in Knowledge Cards at the top of search result pages. For high-value brand searches, a quality Google Post can change games, set trends, melt faces—what have you. You’re incorporating up-to-date information, which would otherwise be difficult to find, in a vital and prominent position.

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What’s Google Up To? (News, Updates & Changes)

“What are we going to do tonight, Google?”
“The same thing we do every night, Man in Boxers Eating Ice Cream: try and take over the world.”

Since June, we’ve seen a whole lot of movement from Google. We’ve all heard about the $2.7B fine the EU spanked Google with, but what else is new with the still-flourishing company that’s seemingly become the Brain to our Pinky?

GMB Messaging

Photo: support.google.com

Google My Business Mobile Messaging

Our auto dealers rely on the leads they acquire online, and now Google has given them yet another way to connect to potential customers. With the new messaging feature in Google My Business, companies can chat directly with customers who access their business listing page. But how does it work?

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