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A new notification from Google My Business will tell businesses when their local listings go live.

Google My Business (GMB) is rolling out a new feature to notify business owners when their local listings go live in Google Maps and Google Search.

Allyson Wright, community manager, Google My Business, announced this in the forums, saying “We’re in the process [of] launching a new notification that informs you when your business goes live on Google services, like Search and Maps.”

This feature will not work for those who do bulk submissions or have over 100 listings in their account. It’s only available for those who have their user-language preference is set to “en-US.”

Even if you haven’t yet signed up for Google My Business, you’ll receive two separate notifications: a welcome email and another one when the listing is live — assuming GMB has your proper email address.

You can also configure your Google My Business notifications at https://business.google.com/settings.

If you don’t see this feature yet, don’t worry, Google said. “This will be rolling out more broadly soon.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”orange” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-external-link”]This article was originally posted at Search Engine Land by Barry Schwartz on July 18, 2018.[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row][/vc_section]

[vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Google announced both on Twitter and in its forums that it will notify customers or users who leave reviews on Google Local results after owners respond to their reviews.

Reviewers will receive an email notification when a business responds. Google also plans to add mobile push notifications at a later date.

Marissa Nordahl, community manager at Google My Business, said:

When businesses respond to, or update responses to customer reviews, the customer now receives an email notification. The business’s response is published immediately and 5 minutes later, the notification is sent. This 5 minute delay allows time for the merchant to make any corrections to their response after submitting.

The notification email informs the customer of a reply to their review, and contains a link to a page with the full owner response.

Note: The review response is published immediately on Search and Maps.

Here is a screen shot of the email notification:

If businesses are aware their responses to reviews will be seen by those who leave the review, it may impact the type of responses they leave.

Mike Blumenthal, a local SEO expert who covered this news, says that this is Google “positioning itself vis-a-vis Yelp and Facebook to become THE local platform of choice for both businesses AND users.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”orange” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-external-link”]This article was originally posted at Search Engine Land by Barry Schwartz on May 14, 2018.[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row][/vc_section]