Your Daily Dose of Digital - 21/07/22

Google announced a fairly helpful new feature today for Business listings, which aims to answer frequently asked questions quicker and more automatically for users. The FAQs section has been around for a while now, but this brings a more conversational approach to the user experience.

The new feature helps businesses automate some of the responses to questions submitted through their Google Maps and Google Search business listings. This new feature is part of your Google Business Profile and can be managed under the "FAQs" section of the "messaging" section.

Using this feature, you can suggest questions for people to ask when messaging your business via your Google Business Profile - this gives a similar experience to a customer service chatbot on a website. In the style of a chatbot, you can set up automated responses to the questions.

Keen SEO's amongst us may see an opportunity here, as you can create up to 10 commonly asked questions but, more importantly, there's up to 500 characters to play with when it comes to the answers and you're allowed to include links. These could act very similarly to featured snippets in directing users to a quick answer whilst having the added benefit of linking through to a specific page on your website where the user can go on a deeper dive.

The jury's probably out on any positive SEO impacts on this one, but from a user experience point of view, answering questions quickly and automatically could prove beneficial. What do you think? Let me know if you'll be updating your Google Business listing to take advantage of this new feature.