New Google Maps Feature – Following Businesses via Maps

Shortly after Google announced its dropping of Google+, they announced a new piece of functionality hitting Google Maps. They’ve unveiled the ability to “Follow” businesses directly in Google Maps. Once you’ve followed a business, you’ll begin receiving news and updates from them when the business makes posts or updates to their Google My Business.

The “Follow” button is currently only available for people using Google Maps on Android devices, but it’s sure to be only a matter of time before it’s rolled out to iOS and web versions.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

Along with this new functionality comes the need, now more than ever, for law firms and other businesses to publish regular posts and updates to their own Google My Business pages. Here at Legal InSites, we’ve been regularly posting to all our clients GMB pages for quite some time. With more people relying on Google Maps than ever, it’s crucial to place as much information as possible on the app– consequently placing that info right into the hands of your potential clientbase.

This is only the beginning of what I expect to be many more announcements of new functionality and socializing of the Google Maps platform in the near future. The questions is, will the amount of active followers of your Google My Business profile eventually turn into a ranking factor? It’s a definite possibility. Google wants to reward businesses who deliver the best user experience. Having an up-to-date, accurate, and active Google My Business presence is one piece of delivering a great user experience to current and potential clients.