In this week’s video, I explain how to get around the frustrating GBP bug that doesn’t let manager accounts answer questions in the Q&A section and be labeled as the business. It’s incredibly important for answers coming from the business to be labeled correctly, so watch this week’s episode to see how to do it.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, I’m sharing the details about a frustrating bug with Google Business Profile Questions and Answers.
If you’ve been watching this series for long at all, you know how big I am on optimizing the heck out of your Google Business Profile. I even did an entire episode about optimizing the Questions and Answers section back in November of 2020. One of the most important things you can do to help attract potential customers is to answer all of the questions that are asked.
In the past, any Google account that has access to your Google Business Profile could answer a question and it would show that the answer came from the business. It would even add “owner” in parenthesis to drive home the fact that the business answered the question.
Since early last year, there’s been a bug in the system that breaks that specific bit. Now, if a manager account answers a question, the answer is displayed as coming from that personal account – it doesn’t show the business name or owner on the reply.
This is incredibly frustrating for anyone – but especially for agencies and businesses that work with agencies. You should never give ownership of your Google Business Profile to anyone else, but because of this bug, that means ONLY the owner of the Google Business Profile can answer the question as the business and be labeled correctly.
Obviously, this throws a wrench in things.
There’s no word as to when or even if Google will fix this bug. In the meantime, the best option is to use a third-party tool to answer Q&A questions. Third-party tools use the GBP API, and answers posted with the API will still be labeled correctly. In other words, your team or your agency can use a third-party tool with an account that has manager access to your Google Business Profile and those answers will appear to come from your business.
That’s all the time we’ve got left for this week’s episode, so you know what that means.
Put your hand on the screen right here:
We totally just high-fived ‘cause you learned something aweseome.
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays.
