By Lydia Barley
On the 1st of May Google announced the introduction of their new agency GMB dashboard. The announcement received an overwhelmingly positive response from SEO agencies around the world. The dashboard was motivated by the continued growth of location-based searches, with more than one-third of all mobile searches being related to location. From these statistics Google said that they were committed to helping local businesses put their best foot forward with Google My Business. Which explains all of the recent updates to Google My Business, including the expansion of menu editor to support service menus, the ability for users to add a business description, and the acceptance of videos on Google posts.
The new agency dashboard is accessible by registered agencies once they have signed up and registered for a Google My Business account. Which you can do here: https://business.google.com/agencysignup
Note: You can only sign up using an account that is part of your domain e.g. john@companyname.com. Public emails like john@gmail.com are not allowed. Also, the email must not have any existing Google My Business accounts to attached to it as well.
Google explained the new dashboard to include the following features:
- Single organization accounts to manage all locations. Meaning that users are no longer limited to 100 locations
- User groups to manage internal teams and control access to locations
- Improved search functionality enabling users to efficiently search for locations within an account and across location groups
- Easier workflows to send and receive invitations to manage listings
So now without further ado lets jump into the Google My Business agency dashboard. Explaining each of the individual sections within it.
Overview
The overview section is where the user is initially brought to. This section shows 3 boxes. One of these ‘sort your locations into groups’ provides users with an overview of their location groups and allows agencies to create a location group. The next box provides instructions on how to transfer single or multiple locations from other Google accounts into the new Google My Business agency dashboard. The final box provides users with an overview of their user groups and allows users to manage additional users and create user groups, simplifying the management of users and access to locations.
Manage Locations
Within this section users can create and organize location groups (which were previously known as business accounts). Location groups are a group of listings that are collectively managed by an organization or user group. Having theses listing in groups allows users to apply changes and share access to multiple listings at once. In addition to just creating a location group in this section user can; add a new location to an existing location group, add an existing location to multiple location groups, transfer locations to a location group, view location group ID, and delete a location group.
Manage Users
In this section the user can manage additional users of the organization and can manage or create user groups. Creating a user group includes grouping together individuals that you want to have the same level of access to a specific location or location group. This section of the dashboard allows the user to create and manage those teams of people who will manage individual locations or location groups. In addition to creating user groups agencies can; add owners and members to groups, remove owners and members, transfer primary ownership of a user group and delete a user group.
Manage Invitations
In this section agencies can easily see both the invitations they have received from clients to manage their locations or the requests they have sent to be provided access to a location. From this section an agency can also go about requesting access to a location by clicking on ‘request access’.
Overall the new dashboard shows significant potential in easing and simplifying the process of managing multiple client business listings by agencies.
