Will the End of Google+ Affect my Business Reviews?

Google+ is starting to delete user accounts as part of their consumer-side shutdown of the failed social media platform. What concerned us and many other small businesses, were the consequences of shutting down part of the Google eco-system.

At its best, Google+ was a virtual storefront for many small businesses. At its worst, it was a struggling social network. At the beginning of its lifespan, in an effort to spread awareness, Google integrated Google Maps with Google+ accounts. This created a Google+ page for all business listings and was home to online reviews and other business information.

This made it easy to manage your business locations in one place while responding to all of your reviews online. But now that Google+ is gone, what will happen to business listings and reviews?

Don’t worry, all of your business reviews and information will remain.

Google+ is being replaced with Google My Business. The only part of the platform that had success gave small businesses a tool to manage their online identities within the search engine. It gave owners a place to communicate with their customers and find new ones. This is now a separate service called Google My Business.

There isn’t any reason to worry about your business listing or Google reviews being deleted when the social network goes away. If you log into your Google account and navigate to Google My Business, you will see a star labeled ‘Review’ on the left tab. This will bring you to a page where you can read and reply to any reviews.

We’ll be diving into Google My Business over the next two blogs to give you more information about its features. For now, rest easy knowing the Google+ shutdown won’t affect your business.