Google has been spotted testing a new feature which allows Google My Business pages to publish offers directly to search results.
This feature is built into Google Posts, which has been available to all businesses with a verified GMB profile since last summer. Google Posts lets businesses publish short messages, which appear in Maps and search results when the business name is searched for.
Until now Posts were limited to plain text, multimedia, or events. In the example below you can see Google is testing a new type of post for offers.
Google Posts "Offers" are rolling out. pic.twitter.com/NkT7BoDEOr
— Colan Nielsen (@ColanNielsen) March 27, 2018
An offer includes the following components:
- A photo
- Up to 300 words of text
- Post title
- Start date/time and end date/time
- Optional coupon code
- A link to the offer
What businesses may appreciate most of all is that it doesn’t appear to cost anything to post offers. Of course, they will not be shown as widely as paid ads, but they still give businesses the opportunity to push sales in search results without having to pay Google for it.
Not everyone is able to replicate this feature, which indicates it’s still in the testing stages.