A Google Employee Shares 2 Easy Ways Business Owners Can Get More Traffic — For Free
Your Google Business Profile is probably working harder for your competitors than it is for you. A product manager at Google says two small changes can fix that.
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Key Takeaways
- Connecting information from Business Profile, Google Drive and other tools can help Gemini provide answers and recommendations specific to a restaurant.
- Posting directly to Google Business Profile can help restaurants reach customers on both Search and Maps.
- Google has also added tools that make posting less time-consuming.
Restaurant owners already know they should keep their Google Business Profile updated. The harder question is knowing what actually needs attention.
Michael Gnagy, a product manager at Google, believes AI can help answer that question.
Google is bringing Business Profile into Gemini as a connected app, letting business owners ask questions about their profile using natural language. Instead of manually checking photos, videos, reviews and other parts of a listing, an owner could simply ask: “What should I be doing with my profile?”
“It will tailor the response to your business,” Gnagy says.
Gemini could identify that customers have uploaded dozens of photos while the restaurant itself hasn’t added anything recently. It could then point out what’s underrepresented and why adding that content could improve visibility on Google Search and Maps.
For restaurant owners already creating content for Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, Gnagy says there’s another reason to think about Google separately.
Gnagy’s other suggestion is to post directly on Google Business Profile. A lot of restaurant content posted as Instagram Stories disappears before Google can discover or index it.
“We don’t get stories,” Gnagy says. “A lot of businesses on Instagram are posting things as stories, which are ephemeral and disappearing.”
Social posts that Google pulls from other platforms can appear on Search, but not Maps. Posting directly to a Google Business Profile makes that content available on both. For restaurant owners already posting on social media, this small tweak could unlock more visibility on Google Search and Maps — for free.
“Go look at your business profile and see how much traffic you’re getting from Google Maps,” Gnagy says. “Fresh posts are displayed pretty prominently on Maps.”
Google has also added tools that make posting less time-consuming. Restaurants can schedule content, distribute updates across multiple locations and create recurring events or offers for up to a year.
A restaurant with Wednesday trivia, for example, no longer needs someone to remember to create the same post every week. Posts can also include calls to action for ordering online, booking or calling the restaurant.
For Gnagy, the opportunity is to make Google Business Profile easier to manage while helping restaurant owners get more from something they already have.
Smarter restaurant intelligence
Restaurant operators already have valuable business information scattered across the tools they use every day. Gnagy believes AI could bring that information together and make it more useful.
P&L reports, labor reports, marketing plans and other documents may already live inside Google Drive, while Gmail, Google Calendar and Business Profile provide even more context.
“You can imagine that where we’re heading is a business intelligence that can be unlocked from tools that you’re already using,” Gnagy says.
The idea is to use information a restaurant already has rather than requiring an operator to configure another complicated system.
Google is also building a Business Notebook experience inside Gemini. Operators will be able to add sources such as their website or a Google Drive marketing folder, while Gemini surfaces tasks including unanswered reviews, traffic spikes and patterns within their Business Profile.
“The more context you give, the more you tell Gemini about your brand identity and tone — you can save that into a single thread,” Gnagy says.
That context can also speed up everyday marketing. Gnagy says early testers could brainstorm and schedule roughly a month and a half of posts in just a few minutes. For restaurants preparing for events like the World Cup, an operator could give Gemini a spreadsheet or calendar of games and use that information to help create and schedule posts.
Restaurant owners are also influencing what Google builds. Gnagy says direct feedback from the restaurant community helped inspire Google’s “What’s Happening” feature.
“I love the stripping layers of bureaucracy from me and the actual user of the product,” he says.
And Google doesn’t intend to charge businesses for Business Profile in Gemini as it expands from single-location businesses to larger chains.
For Gnagy, success is much simpler than how many AI features Google can build. It’s more about: “Just removing friction from people’s lives.”
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