How to get there
First connect your Google Business Profile and choose the listing in Connections (the steps are in Connect social networks and publish from ōrbita, in Spanish). With the connection active, the View and edit your Google profile button appears under its row. The same button is at the top of the Google Business Profile tab in Metrics (Spanish).
The screen is called Your Google profile and what you save there changes your Google listing, the one people see when they look you up on Google and Maps. ōrbita keeps no copy: it reads the listing from Google every time you open the screen.
Who can do what:
- See the listing: anyone with access to the company.
- Change details, hours, attributes, opening date and photos: Admin level or higher. With a lower level, Google does not receive the change and ōrbita says “Your access level in this company does not allow changing the Google profile”.
- Mark catalogue services for the listing: Editor level or higher (the same that edits the catalogue).
- Edit or withdraw a published post: Editor level or higher (the one that publishes and schedules).
If the listing is not verified, Google does not show your changes until it is: how to verify it.
The header
At the top you see the name, the main category, the VERIFIED or NOT VERIFIED label, your average rating with the number of reviews and two links, View on Google and View on Maps. If Google is reviewing a change of name, address or main category, a notice says so, and meanwhile Google keeps showing the previous value.
Listing details
The Profile details tab is split into blocks. Each block is saved separately with its own Save button; if you leave with unsaved changes, ōrbita warns you that they will not be sent to Google.
Basic details
- Name: the one you use at your premises, on your sign and on your invoices. If you change it, Google may ask you to verify the listing again.
- Description: what you do and what makes you different, up to 750 characters and no links. The Write it with your agent button creates a task for your agent with the instructions: it reads your strategy, your Brand Kit and your listing, proposes the description and only sends it to Google if you say OK. If you do not have an agent connected yet, ōrbita leaves you two tasks, connecting it and this one.
- Main category and additional categories: search for your activity and choose. Google uses the main one to decide which searches you appear in.
- Main phone and up to 2 more phones, for example a mobile.
- Web.
- Address (street and number, postcode, city and province) and, if you also go to your customers’ homes, the service area. New areas are added on Google.
Hours
- Business status: Open, Temporarily closed or Permanently closed. With a temporary closure your hours stay saved for when you reopen. Marking a permanent closure asks you to confirm and you can undo it by marking the business as open again.
- Regular hours: each day open or closed, with one or several time slots (in steps of 30 minutes) or the 24 hours option. Copy Monday to Tuesday through Friday saves time.
- Special hours: holidays and days with different hours. That day takes precedence over the regular one.
Google shows the hours on your listing next to “Open” or “Closed”.
Attributes and opening date
- Attributes: yes or no details that Google shows on your listing. Which ones appear depends on your category; if Google offers none for it, the block does not appear.
- Opening date: when you opened. If you have not opened yet, the planned date.
Products and services
This block only shows what already appears on your listing from your ōrbita catalogue. It is managed in the catalogue (Manage in the catalog button).
Catalogue services on your listing
On each product or service in the catalogue (Spanish), in the Visibility block, there is a Show on your Google Business Profile switch (it only appears with the listing connected).
- When you turn it on, ōrbita saves it and sends it to your listing as a service, with its name, description and price. It takes a few seconds and may take a while to show on Google.
- Only active items are sent: if you pause one, it stops appearing on the listing. When you turn the switch off, it is removed.
- ōrbita respects the services you added by hand on Google: it only touches the ones it sent.
- If Google rejects the change, the switch goes back to how it was. Some categories do not accept services: ōrbita says so (“Google does not allow services for your profile’s category”).
- Google shows services and menus on the listing; products as such go through Merchant Center, which ōrbita does not use.
Photos
The Photos tab shows your listing’s photos, read from Google on every visit. Start with the logo and the cover: the logo goes with your name on Google and Maps, and the cover appears right at the top. After that, photos of the outside, the inside and the team, by category (logo, cover, exterior, interior, products, at work, food and drink, menu, common areas, rooms, team and additional; only the ones that fit your business appear).
- Format: JPG or PNG, from 10 KB to 5 MB and at least 250 px on the short side. According to Google, 720 × 720 px is recommended. ōrbita lets you crop the photo before uploading it and warns you if it does not comply.
- Cover: Google may replace it with a customer’s photo if it considers yours to be low quality.
- Delete removes a photo from your listing; to get it back you have to upload it again.
- Your customers’ photos: they upload them and Google manages them. You see them here, but they cannot be deleted or uploaded from ōrbita.
- Each photo shows its views, counted since it was uploaded.
Photo to the listing, from a post
Besides the Photos tab, you can upload a photo to your listing’s gallery from a post. In the editor, on the Google Business Profile destination, choose the type Photo to profile:
- It does not create a post: it has no text or button, and it stays on your listing until you delete it.
- It asks for one image (JPG or PNG) and a photo category, which Google uses to organise it.
- Once published, it is managed from Your Google profile, not from the post.
Anywhere in the editor where you upload an image there is also a Photos from your Google profile button (Google profile on narrow screens) to bring into a post photos that are already on your listing, including your customers’ ones. ōrbita does not keep those photos: it only copies into the draft the ones you choose. Customers’ photos are theirs, so before publishing one it is a good idea to ask permission from whoever uploaded it; you can add their name to the text (“Photo: name”). A Google post accepts a single photo.
Edit or withdraw a published post
When a post is already published on Google Business Profile, its card has two buttons:
- Edit on Google: changes the text, the post type, the action button and the dates of the event or the offer. The photo or video cannot be changed. The changes show on your listing within a few minutes. Google rejects posts with phone numbers in the text: remove it and use the Call button.
- Withdraw from Google: the post stops being visible on your listing. It cannot be undone: to show it again you have to publish it again. In ōrbita the post stays as a record.
This applies to posts, not to photos sent to the listing.
Video in posts
In the editor of a Google post you can choose image or video as the format. The video has to be MP4, up to 30 seconds and up to 75 MB, and a post accepts a single file. If the file does not comply, the editor tells you what is wrong before you publish. Images in a post must weigh between 10 KB and 5 MB.
How your agent uses it
If you have connected your agent, the base Google listing permission lets it read your listing. With the optional permission to change it, it can modify the description, the phones, the website, the hours and the catalogue services that appear on it, only when you ask and if you have Admin level. The name, categories, address, attributes, photos and opening status you change yourself here.
Who it is for
Included in the Satellite, Star and Galaxy plans, for companies with a Google Business Profile connected. Google posts, photo to the listing and video are in those same plans.