The Dusty Google Listing Sending Customers Elsewhere

Most of the small business owners in India have created a Google Business account, fill in the necessary details and forget to open it ever again. Name, phone number and address which is great. But what they don't know is that their listing remains out there, it's still being seen by potential customers and it's continuing to make an impact. But a reverse impact.

Domino Effect of incomplete listing

An incomplete or neglected listing does not sit quietly in the background. It actively costs the business customers — not dramatically, not all at once, but steadily, every day, to competitors who took the time to do it properly.

An incomplete or neglected listing does not sit quietly in the background. Its becomes a double edged sword affecting crowd inflow not instantly but slowly over time. to competitors. Why those competitors? Because they actually put time into properly optimising and polishing their listing.

Prior to a customer calling, prior to them coming to see the listing, prior to them deciding to make a call, they check out the listing. They scrutinise the pictures. They read the reviews and they can be quite impressed or disappointed. But to even have those 2 options they need reviews dont they? They check to see if the hours are up-to-date. They verify whether or not any answers have been provided to the questions asked by others. They do all this in less than sixty seconds, and make a decision that it's hard to change their mind on.

Reviews that are fuzzy, No store description and hours not updated since business launch do not imply "this business is fine. It states that this business is not bothered with the way it appears. This logic is carried over to the product, the service and what the customer will experience when they buy it. And thats why most of them opt for another substitute in a quiet manner.

A polished listing will say otherwise. The fact that there are current pictures, a clear description, and updated hours and a business that responds to the reviews is a good indication that the people behind the business are listening & adaptive . And customers reciprocate their trust because of it.

The Traffic Difference isn't Small

The difference between a full and a partial google business profile is quantifiable and remarkable. Transformations with 10 or more photos get significantly more direction requests, and clicks to websites, than listings without any photos. A business description with the words ‘service' and ‘location' in the listing will pop up in searches that don't have a description. Structured data is fed to Google's AI through a product or service section that has precise information that would be unlikely to show up on a Google search without the section.

Higher No of Reviews= Higher Traffic

If you have a listing that has 40 reviews and a 4.2 rating compared to a listing with 5 reviews and a 5.0 rating, the listing with 40 reviews and 4.2 rating will always out rank the 5 review, 5.0 rating listing in local search. Google has volume as an indicator of activity and trust; and it ranks accordingly. Each and every reviewee who doesn't respond, each and every missing photo, each and every out-of-date detail is a little bit of trust that's being taken away.

List Business on Vyaparify

More than 2,50,000 merchants in India have made it a habit of listing their businesses on Vyaparify and all other platforms they were listed on, witnessed constant increment in their profile views, direction requests and customer calls in 60-90 days. How did they do it? Some new technology? It was never anything new but something that was just in front of them half complete.

Google is watching the activity in the listing, indicating how active the listing is. A google business listing is not a 'one and done post'. Google views it as a pulse on the health of business and its activity in today's environment: is the business open, active and worthy of being found by people searching? A regular update of the listing with new photos, weekly posts and answers to their reviews are marked active and given a higher rank. An untouched listing for months is gradually dropped in favour of other listings that are being maintained.

That is why it is important to be polishing a listing, and it's not done once and for all. The companies that are getting regular top ranking local search results, aren't getting them because they've done something extra special when they created the website. They're here because they continued to appear, shop reviews, product postings, etc. when the product changed. The algorithm is able to detect consistency, just as customers do.