Good morning, search marketers, the rumblings are coming true.
After a test more than a year ago, Google is starting to offer a paid option for Google My Business listings that include a Google Guaranteed badge. What we know so far is the price is $50/month and businesses will need to meet Google Guaranteed's eligibility rules and pass background and licensing checks.
"Google's market opportunity here is in the millions of potential customers. For example, if Google were to successfully upsell two million businesses that had claimed their listings, it would represent $1.2 billion in annual revenues," says Greg Sterling. It may be a hard proposition for SMBs to ignore — particularly if their competitors jump on it. What do you think? Will you be willing to pay for an "upgraded Business Profile"?
With low interest rates and economic uncertainty, Google says mortgage queries hit an all time high in May. Google's long had a mortgage calculator at the top of relevant SERPs, now on mobile, it's showing a "Mortgage loan" box featuring multiple tabs, including one for Calculator, on mortgage-related queries. Some of the tabs surface related organic results, but businesses in this sector should monitor their mobile organic traffic for potential impact from this new feature.
Thank you to the hundreds of SEOs and developers who joined day one of our live SEO for Developers session yesterday. Today at 1:00 p.m. ET, tune in for day two to hear John Murch, CEO of Nomad Thinking, discuss how JavaScript developers are able to use headless chrome to do almost anything a browser can do. Sign up here.
Keep reading about Google Ads Editor bugs and more.
Ginny Marvin,
Editor-In-Chief
