In this week’s video, I share some fun examples of Google My Business Questions and Answers from real world businesses. There’s no better way to illustrate the absolute necessity of monitoring your Q&A than seeing how bad some questions and answers can get… So enjoy!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, I’m talking about Google My Business Questions and Answers again, and most importantly, sharing some fun examples of Q&A gone wild in the real world

A few weeks ago, I talked about GMB Questions and Answers and explained how it works and why it’s important. One of the best practices I shared was that you should monitor your Q&A section to make sure you’re answering new questions and upvoting your answers so that they appear as the primary answers.

There’s no better way to drive that home than to share some examples of real questions and answers to show just how wacky things can get.

Check this one out. Like I mentioned in the last video about Q&A, people think that it’s a messaging system. This guy had an overheating engine, and asked what the dealership’s phone number was so he could call about it.

Even though the dealership’s phone number is like an inch away from the button you have to click to type in your question. And even though the guy could have clicked the website link and gotten the phone number off of the website.

He thought it was messaging, so he just asked his question. And notice, the dealership didn’t answer. So that’s a customer that they could have easily captured… That they instead lost.

Or this one, that just says “your website sucks” – and someone answered “yeah, not a fan of it either”. Clearly, that’s not good for your business if people are talking about how much your site sucks ON YOUR GMB PROFILE.

Important note here – since this isn’t even a question, the business could have gotten this one removed. If you see something like this on your profile, click the three dots that appear to the right and select report.

With this one, I was doing a presentation for FCA dealers in Austin, and tried to pull up local results to share. I found this one to use as an example. The question asks if they have a body shop and has multiple answers. At the time, the primary answer was this bad one, telling you how they’re awful and they lie. But then the dealership answered, and it’s a much better answer.

The bad answer had a single thumbs up, so it showed as primary. After the presentation, a guy approached me and told me he actually worked at that dealership and wanted to know what he could do to fix it. We grabbed the three closest people, had them go to Google, find his dealership’s GMB listing, and click thumbs up on the dealership answer… and immediately, the dealership answer showed up as the primary answer.

I was speaking at a conference in Boston and found this one on the GMB listing for my hotel. Someone asked how the room numbers are ordered, and this jackwagon answered alphabetically. And look at his smug face, he’s super happy to be so sarcastic. Clearly, not a great answer for potential customers of the hotel.

And finally, my favorite example of all time. This is for the London Eye, the giant ferris wheel on the Thames River in London. The answer has been changed at this point, because the guy is trying to be a comedian, but the original example is too funny not to share.

Notice, the question has been upvoted because of the funny answer, so it shows natively in their GMB panel instead of just showing the standard Questions & Answers link. It asks if you have to wear a helmet, and this guy answered “You don’t have to, but you can if you wish. I believe Viking helmets are a popular choice”

Obviously, it’s funny… but I guarantee you the Coca-Cola branded London Eye isn’t paying attention, because that’s not a great first impression. In fact, did you notice the theme for all of these? In each case, the business simply wasn’t paying attention.

If you do pay attention, and you upload your own common questions, answer those questions, and keep your answers upvoted so they display as primary answers, you’ll see something like this:

It’s clearly a much better customer experience and a much better first impression for new customers.

So get out there and start paying attention to your Q&A section on your Google My Business listing!

But that’s all I’ve got time for this week, which means it’s that time…

Put your hand on the screen right here:
We totally just high-fived ‘cause you learned something awesome.

Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays.