Businesses, It’s Time to Go APE Over Google My Business’ New API!

Google’s omnipresent HAL9000-esque eye is trained on all things mobile these days, and when it noticed that local search on mobile devices is growing faster than mobile search overall, well, you better believe gears started turning. In response to the remarkable 50 per-cent annual growth in mobile search Google’s been adding new features to its SERP Knowledge Panel and Google My Business (GMB).

And then, an announcement! Google is introducing a new GMB Application Programming Interface (API). In tandem with this release, Google also revealed a new agency analytics dashboard and a new agency partner program. The API is designed to give agencies the ability to manage additional, diverse categories of business information, including merchant descriptions and Posts. For multilocational brands and small outfits alike, this new functionality promises greater control over a wide range of content.

The new agency dashboard was developed in collaboration with some of Google’s agency partners, and the new interface promises to offer a speedy and seamless user experience, with expanded capabilities that include:

• The requirement of only one, single account on GMB to manage an unlimited number of digital properties
• The introduction of User Groups designed to enhance management of internal teams and control over access to digital properties
• Simpler product workflows to manage a business’ digital listings

Partner agencies (like Strathcom — just sayin’) are also going to be given exclusive early access to new GMB applications and features, which include a dedicated partner manager, a new partner directory, and other benefits about which Google has seen fit to be more tight-lipped. The new dashboard is geared to toward agencies that are growing and is being presented as a toolset designed to facilitate a richer and more granular marketing analytics and management experience.

The new, shiny things that Google puts at the disposal of partner agencies means that the clients of those agencies (potentially YOU) will reap some serious residual benefits, with the advantage of deeper and more accurate analysis and simpler maintenance of a business’ digital properties. Google says that the new dashboard will become available sometime in the next three weeks, and we wait with baited breath for the chance to break this pony in. Stay tuned.