“Google is using the new Business Profile to solicit small business support for Google’s opposition to pending anti-trust legislation,” wrote Mike Blumenthal, previous founder of LocalU and GatherUp, for Near Media. After the rebrand from Google My Business to Google Business Profile, many business owners received notification of the name change along with prompts to learn more about “new laws [that] may impact my business.”
Google appeals to SMBs to lobby for the tech giant’s case. While we could not replicate the in-SERP dashboard prompt, Blumenthal included screenshots of his Business Profile where Google tells listing managers, “Proposed legislation could make it harder to find your business online.”
On Twitter, Blumenthal also shared an email sent to Darren Shaw of Whitespark, a Canadian local SEO company, prompting them to “take action” on Google’s behalf to advocate for Google’s position to legislators. The idea is that changes to laws will make it hard for Google to offer the same support to small businesses and therefore will hurt SMBs in the long run.
This is not the first time. When in legislative trouble before, Google has previously tried to appeal to users to make its case when laws change. In 2013, they made the case for cookies by telling searchers in the SERP, “Cookies help us deliver our services.” This was a prompt in response to European privacy laws.
When European laws changed to allow people to request removals from the search index, Google emailed...
Read Full Story: https://searchengineland.com/googles-local-rebrand-prompts-smb-support-amid-antitrust-lawsuits-says-local-seo-expert-375887
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