The complete guide to your Google My Business Dashboard and managing your Google Business Pages. The Google My Business (GMB) Dashboard should be the entry point for all businesses managing from 1 – 100 business pages in a single account.
Ownership Best Practices
Only business owners or authorised representatives may verify and manage their business information on Google My Business.
Any individual or company that manages business information on Google My Business for a business that they don’t own is considered to be an authorised representative. For example: a third-party SEO/SEM company; a friend of the business owner; an online ordering, scheduling or booking provider and an affiliate network provider.
The best practice would be for the Owner to add your account as a manager. Once you accept the invitation, the business page will then appear within your Google My Business Dashboard.
The Google My Business Dashboard
Log into your Google My Business Dahboard: https://business.google.com/manage/
Google My Business Dashboard Index
- Locations or Business Pages
- Adwords Accounts linked to a Business Page
- Account Summary Info Blocks
- To Do Info Blocks
- Upcoming Holidays
- Info Block Shows Amount of all Locations in Account
- Download Insights
- List View
- Map View
- Unverified (Not Showing Published)
- Showing as Published
- Click to Manage Location
- View Business Page as it Appears in Search
1: Locations
Your GMB dashboard will always open up in the locations page. The locations section will display both Published (verified) and Unpublished (still to be verified).
You can then segment accounts based on “Account Summary” (3) to not Published, Pending etc.
2: Linked Accounts to AdWords
You need to have an AdWords account linked or be using the same account for both Google Business Page and AdWords account.
4: Account Summary – Info Blocks
You can filter locations by Published and Non Verified. Other typical Info blocks list formatting errors, and duplicate addresses.
5: To Do – Info Blocks
You can filter by formatting errors, report permanently closed, google updates and download not enabled.
Google Updates
Google uses information from a variety of sources – including user reports and licensed content – to make sure that locations stay as accurate as possible. Sometimes the information that business owners provide is reported as incorrect or outdated. If your locations are updated by Google, then you’ll see them listed with a “Google updates” status.
This also includes business attributes which can change quite regularly with Google asking map users about what your businesses offers.
Locations can be updated by Google at any time, and Google-updated information appears live on Maps, Search and other Google services. By reviewing these updates, you help to ensure that this information is accurate for your customers.
To accept, discard or edit Google updates for a listing:
- When you click through to the business listing you’ll see a large yellow notification at the top of each page, pretty hard to miss.
- Review your Google updates listed in yellow next to your original business information.
- If the updates look correct, you can select Apply Updates.
- If some look incorrect, you can click the pencil icon and correct the supposed update, or in the case of an attribute, de-select it.
5: Upcoming Holidays
These are simple reminders as to what major holidays are coming up. You can click the blue link for All Holidays and select the country. Handy if managing listings from different countries.
Locations that are not published or currently unverified will not display the green published text. Selecting manage location will take you to that pages admin page, where you will again be prompted to verify the location.
6: All Locations
This info block is automatically open when you enter the Google My Business Dashboard. As you select other info blocks from Account Summary (3) or the To Do (4) these info blocks / filters will be displayed to keep you abreast of which business listings are being displayed.
7: Download Insights
Depending on what Info Blocks you have open, you will download the insights pertaining to published business pages. Once you have clicked to download insights you will be prompted to select which insights you would like to download: Discovery, Photos & Phone Calls.
This certainly makes a big improvement when you had to manually export insights, which you can still do.
8: List View
List view shows business pages in a compact list view. This was primarily for bulk location management initially and I used to recommend that Non bulk users do not use this because a vast majority was in html and urls, however when clicking on or selecting the listing now, it simply takes you to the listing within the normal dashboard now. So pick whichever view you feel comfortable with now
You will also notice missing store codes and labels in the list view dashboard. Individual business listings do not need to provide this and you are not missing this.
9: Map View
Map View is intended to give the user, especially bulk locations, a birds eye map view of all the locations in the account and is very useful to check where exactly your PIN marker is placed.
Map View feature is still technically in Beta.
10 – 11: Published (Verified) Location
A published or verified location will have the green published text displayed in the Google My Business Dashboard.
A Published page will be live in Maps and Search results.
12: Manage Location
Selecting manage location will take you into that locations or businesses admin page.
You can select additional areas to manage in Menu:
- Posts (Google Posts)
- Info (Business Information)
- Insights (Business Insights)
- Reviews (View & Reply)
- Photos (Manage Images)
- Users (Change Owners & Managers Access)
- Support
Info Section contains all the important business details:
- Business Name
- Busines Category
- Business Address
- Business Hours
- Special Hours
- Telephone Numbers
- Website URL
- Photos
13: View on Search
Selecting the View Location takes you to a display of the business page Knowledge Panel in search.
You will also notice that you Direct Edit your Business Details in the Knowledge Panel and in future a quick way to access your listing without going in via the main Google My Business Dashboard.
By clicking on any of the tabs, you will be directed to the correct section in the dashboard. NB: you must obviously be logged into your account to see this info panel access.