Changes in Google My Business due to COVID19

UPDATE 06/15/2020: New Reviews are returning and showing on both the customer and business side of GMB. Support is still slow or unresponsive to critical issues like account suspensions and temporary closing changes. Phone support is still not available.

To implement social distancing in response to COVID19, Google My Business (GMB) has made changes to its platform.

We have assembled a quick guide to help field service companies understand the current change. We will be sure to update this post as GMB makes more changes.

You can also read more specifics at Google My Business’s support page by clicking here.

What features have been removed?

New Reviews

During this period no new reviews will be published to Google My Business profiles. Users will still be able to post and see their own reviews at this time, but they will not be publicly visible.

It is not yet known whether these reviews will be made visible once Google lifts the restrictions.

Review Replies

Review replies have also been disabled. With no new reviews appearing, there’s obviously less need for businesses to be able to respond right now. However, businesses will be unable to respond to existing reviews on their profile. This also applies to editing the content of existing review replies

Q&A

Q&As have been completely removed from profiles. This means all existing Q&As will not be visible and users will be unable to post new questions

In Google’s post about the change, they only made reference to ‘new Q&As’ but having checked a number of businesses, Q&As appear to have vanished.

What features are limited?

Adding, claiming and verifying listings

While no functionality is being removed, Google’s listing review process is being prioritized for health-related businesses. Businesses that aren’t health-related can expect delays when adding and claiming listings and receiving listing verifications. The length of the delay has not been stated.