It appears that Google has expanded and enhanced the display of “Business Profile Answers” on mobile search results. And in doing so, now wraps even mundane details like the answer to a phone number query within a mini Business Profile highlighting a business’s reputation via their online reviews.
In short, your reputation is becoming the most visible data about your business.
Google has long provided answers to queries about local business to questions like “Allstate – Joe Schnieder hours” or “Barbara Oliver Jewelry Hours” in the form of Answer Boxes. They extracted the data from the local Knowledge Graph and offered up simple displays with the answers. Which they still do on the desktop
Sometime recently, for mobile searches, Google added material design elements similar to the Business profile (aka Knowledge Panel) and apparently started answering more questions.
You can now find answers to queries for “business name + phone”, “business name + address”, “business name + reviews”, “business name + hours”, “business name + menu” queries that are all embedded in the new mini-Business Profile display.
Focused Answers Wrapped In Reviews And Reputation
These displays not only answer the direct customers question but are embellished with a high level reputation view including both Google reviews and reviews from websites showing rich snippet stars.
The “business name + reviews” search and mobile results below show the Google review data, but also their 1st-party reviews (using GatherUp’s Review Widget) on their pages as well as Yelp and Facebook review profiles.
While this development is neither earth shattering nor unexpected, it is a good example of how Google is trying to answer more and more questions about a business and how they view broad reputation strokes as enhancing that information.
Ultimately, it is important for businesses to understand that their reputation from online reviews across the internet is now on prominent display even when someone just wants simple information about that business like phone number, hours or street address.
Who would have thought that a simple query for your phone number or address could potentially sour a new, prospective customer relationship or even possibly an existing one? It is now possible with these new Business Profile Answers.
