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We’ve had a relatively quiet quarter for reviews, a rather loud one for Google Business Profiles, and a stereo blast of AI studies. Today’s roundup will help you feel confident that you’re caught up on the major local search marketing developments of the past quarter, with plenty of actionable takeaways from some of the best minds in our industry. Let’s roll!
Darren Shaw posted on Linkedin to draw attention to an important document published by Google titled “What’s new in Google Business Profile: March 2025” in which they show this screenshot of what they consider an optimized vs. an unoptimized GBP Services menu.
As you can see, the preferred example has written a description of every service including providing a time estimate and booking functionality. It’s great to see Google offering this type of guidance, and this would be a great week to take your own service menus from simple list format to full descriptions.
Claudia Tomina shared a very hot tip on how you can prompt Google’s AI overviews to describe what it “understands” about your GBP photos. She offers this process:
Claudia explains that, though Google lens doesn’t analyze faces, it will pick up on objects. Why not give this a try to see whether your owner-uploaded photos are being parsed by AI as representative of the objects you intend them to highlight? You may get some surprises that lead you to retake some shots so that it’s clearer to Google what your photos represent.
Google’s Lisa Landsman announced a new feature that lets you review your video verification recordings prior to submitting them. This should hopefully cut down on the need to resubmit videos that don’t pass muster. You can read more about this announcement here. Anything that makes the GBP video verification process even a little less arduous is certainly welcome!
Also announced by Lisa Landsman this quarter, a new engagement-driving feature for restaurants in the US, UK, AU, CA, and NZ. This feature is driven by Google Updates and by connecting your Facebook, Instagram, or X profiles to your GBP. Landsman suggests focusing on content like “Today’s Special” or “Live Music on Saturday”. Note that this is a mobile-only feature at present.
Speaking of posts, I want to quickly call out a test caught by Annabel L. of what appears to be a very different Google Posts dashboard. She said she saw it and then it was gone. Worth checking out.
There is a lot of buzz right now about whether Google Updates (formerly known as Posts) may go away at some point, and a bug in May (since resolved) likely contributed to this worry. As reported by Amy Toman, Updates were not publishing on GBPs for a while, but she does not see this as an indication that Google plans to remove this feature. It’s a good indicator of how uncertain local business owners and their marketers feel about the stability of GBP, but every bug tends to make us worry that Google is about to sunset something we count on. It’s always important to remember that Google is constantly tinkering with listing features. Never count too much on any single one of them in your marketing. And speaking of that…
This Linkedin post from Darren Shaw and the many comments it has received capture the uncertainty many local SEOs are feeling about the future of the GBP Products feature. Many of us have used this feature in the past to list services as products, but there are signs that this is going away. Confusingly, though, actual products appear to be getting rejected, as well. Multiple mentions were made of vehicles not being accepted as products. If they aren’t products, what are they? Amy Toman’s comment provides a good summary of what many of us would like to see from Google:
The Q&A button keeps playing hide-and-seek on GBPs, causing much speculation about whether this feature is doomed to be removed. Claudia Tomina amplified a screenshot from Tushar Pardeshi of the Q&A button reappearing, though it did not appear to open anything when clicked on. Lots of people are trying to figure out how Google may be resculpting this GBP functionality to be part of their overall AI-first trend.
Mike Blumenthal caught a test of an experimental AI-generated GBP feature called “Know before you go” that commenters on his post didn’t seem able to reproduce but which is definitely worth noting. Mike says,
“Unlike Learn Something Specific, which invites users to ask questions (sometimes pre-populated), Know Before You Go pushes statements and summaries directly to the user. Both features are part of Google Local’s generative AI experiments, their rollout is erratic, category-specific, and mobile-only.”
It’s good to be keeping an eye out for these experiments in the wild, but also to keep in mind that a random sighting won’t always roll out into an established feature. Frankly, I’m rather nervous about error-prone AI describing legally-binding business policies like product returns guarantees. If AI gets it wrong, who can be held to account?
When Joy Hawkins first spotted this in early June, commenters could not replicate with their own searches, but I am now able to see this interface across multiple GBPs. When clicking on the “Order pickup” button for a Domino’s Pizza near me, I get this popup, guiding me to the business’ own website:
However, when I click on the “Delivery” button, the popup features multiple third-party delivery services, including DoorDash, UberEats, and Postmates.
It’s a useful feature for consumers, and I’m glad that the “Delivery” button at least includes the business as an option. Those third-party delivery charges can be outrageously high.
Amy Toman’s role in Google’s forum makes her advice well-worth listening to when she advises local businesses and their marketers not to put full business details directly in your GBP Help Forum posts. As she says, these details can get indexed and may not be what you want out there on the web when folks are searching for your brand. Instead, you can put this information in a Google drive folder or doc for more private viewing.
Darren Shaw did a deep dive into the most recent Trust & Safety Report from Google and wrote a useful Bluesky thread on notable takeaways from the document, including:
Read the whole thread for all the takeaways. Unfortunately, your own top takeaway will likely be that the GBP environment is not very trustworthy or safe.
Vinay Toshwinal posted Google’s notice that, as of April 30, 2025, they would be removing reviews and ratings for schools. About a month in, I posted to Linkedin that I was still seeing reviews on school listings:
But as of the writing today’s report, my sample searches indicate that reviews truly are gone now in these categories:
Thus endeth the strange scenario Google created when it stopped allowing the publication of fresh reviews for schools, meaning that educational institutions were stuck with outdated ratings that couldn’t be updated. With all reviews gone, the playing field should be more level again.
Mike Blumenthal shared screenshots on Linkedin of the kinds of results he is seeing for queries that combine a brand name with the modifier “reviews”. He is skeptical that this display adds value, given that it pushes all reviews other than Google-based reviews off the page.
Darren Shaw doesn’t believe that local packs and maps are doomed. In fact, if you watch the above video, you’ll see why he thinks our little corner of the web is one that will continue to grow in the era of AI behemoths. Check out Darren’s screen captures of how Google’s new AI mode contains something like a 4-pack of local results that points to…you guessed it…Google Business Profiles. So, please don’t stop managing your listings. They still very much matter.
Joe Youngblood offers a valuable early study of possible ChatGPT local business ranking factors, based on his team analyzing the results of 250+ queries that generated local business-type results with a map a list of companies. Whitespark turned Joe’s takeaways into the above graphic for easy scanning. Take special note of the new prominence this list gives to Bing Places and to first-party testimonials.
I had the pleasure of partnering up with the Whitespark team for this original study of AI Overview prominence in local search. We ran a total of 540 queries across six US cities and made some key observations, including:
We have multiple shareable stats for your team in the report, so please check it out.
Will Do SEO published a very good study of 1,000 restaurant-related queries and found that, overall, businesses who have earned a top three spot in local packs have a 25.9% likelihood of being shown in Gemini responses. While this correlation is interesting, it’s the fact that about ¾ of the top-ranked businesses don’t experience this preferential treatment that grabs my attention. We’ve got a lot of studying to do.
Organic traffic, overall, is dropping but Seige Media published a must-read study on a 10.7% uptick to homepage traffic, due to LLMs, and Darren Shaw confirmed this trend with Whitespark’s own analytics. My takeaway here is that local brands may need to begin rethinking homepage components. Small-to-enterprise level brands often use homepages as a kind of succinct summary of the business; a jumping-off point for website exploration. We could see a trend shaping up of websites needing to offer both a deeper dive into local business content and more emphasis on homepage conversion factors.
I have a couple of final recommended pieces to share:
If you own or market an independent local business, Google’s possible dissatisfaction with how its algos have evolved to favor big business could be good news to you…if the company takes action.
I got to publish an interesting study here with Whitespark on how you may be able to avoid some of these charges for searches with particular intents.
I’ve been listening to Rand for 20+ years and it has always been worth it. In particular, I highly recommend watching his explanation of how our concept of attribution and what constitutes vanity metrics needs to change. If you cut your teeth in the early days of SEO, like I did, our days of learning together are far from over!
Please, join us again in Q3 for our next installment of this quarterly local SEO roundup. All of us at Whitespark love having you here!
Miriam Ellis is a local SEO columnist and consultant. She has been cited as one of the top five most prolific women writers in the SEO industry. Miriam is also an award-winning fine artist and her work can be seen at MiriamEllis.com.
