G + update

Google shutting down unverified G+ business pages. prepared by toinfinity

Š 2infinity Limited 2015

Google shutting down unverified G+ business pages.

From today, Google will unverify and remove all business accounts that have not been logged into “in a significant length of time” or who have not responded to Googles requests regarding authentication.

The purpose of this is to aid user experience when searching for local businesses. Firstly, a lot of pages have become unused and unresponsive to requests, thereby useless to users and second, there have been a large number of fake business profiles set up diverting customers to different websites than the ones they were intending to visit.

It is a good idea for business owners to keep an eye on the inbox associated with their “Google My Business” account and to regularly log in to “Google My Business” and confirm that all company information is up to date and active. It definitely doesn’t hurt to become livelier on the social platform and although Google states it doesn’t take social signals into consideration when ranking websites, that view is not completely shared by those in the industry.

Overall, this is just Google doing some minor housekeeping (after a very busy few days), but it should be welcomed by companies, users and marketers alike.

If you are interested in finding out more about how local SEO works and how you can use Googles tools to aid you in ranking as highly as possible, check out Mike Blumenthal’s blog which we highly recommend and you can also get in touch with James or Matt at toinfinity, who can guide you through some of the pitfalls.