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Is Google My Business Stealing Your Local Leads?

Google My Business

Earlier this year, Google launched a new Google My Business feature to allow businesses to add services menus to their profiles. Some businesses were seeing this option, but others were not.

Several of my clients are in the home services arena. Now, suddenly, Google has started inserting links on my clients’ GMB profiles to a third-party website called singleplatform.com.

Clicking on the link takes you to a lead generation form to “Request a Quote,” but – surprise! – unless you have an account set up with this company, the leads aren’t being passed onto the actual company

Instead, the leads are being sent to service.com.

Example of GMB 3rd party link issue

If your customers are submitting service requests through this option, they may think you’re ignoring them. Or a competitor could sweep in and steal your hard-earned business.

If you’d like to start receiving the leads your customers are submitting, you must “claim this business” and choose either a $99, $149 or $199 per month package.

In other words: Pay us money, or we will sell your leads to your competitors.

From my investigations, if you were able to set up a services menu before this implementation, these links won’t appear on your listing.

Google’s announcement of the services menus states that the option to add or edit these menus will only be available if you haven’t already connected to a third-party supplier.

Of course, in this instance, these companies never chose to use this third-party supplier, and Google doesn’t give you the option to remove these links via GMB.

Instead, Google is telling us our only option is to contact the third-party supplier and ask them to remove the link from your account.

If you run a local business, or have clients that do, make sure to check and make sure this isn’t happening to you.

Category News Local Search
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Shelly Fagin Founder at Highly Searched

I have been working in digital marketing since 2002, starting in Web Development and SEO. I specialize in Technical SEO ...

Is Google My Business Stealing Your Local Leads?

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