134: Is Google Business Profile Social Media? (And Why the Answer Matters for Your Business)

In this episode, Jules White tackles a question that came up at a recent in-person event - is Google Business Profile just another form of social media? The answer is a firm no, and Jules explains exactly why it's one of the most powerful (and most overlooked) tools for getting your business found online.

Jules breaks down how Google Business Profile works as a search tool rather than a social platform, why it connects you with people who are actively looking for what you offer, and how even small optimisations can produce results almost overnight.

Key Takeaways:

• Google Business Profile vs Social Media: Understand the fundamental difference between a search tool that connects you with ready buyers and a social platform designed to keep people scrolling.
• Quick Wins for Your Profile: Discover the simple steps - from filling in accessibility details to setting your primary category correctly - that help Google understand and surface your business.
• Linking Your Profile and Website: Learn how to create strong signals between your Google Business Profile and your website, including how to use review snippets as trust-building links.
• Posting Strategy: Find out why posting just once a week (or even once a month) to your Google Business Profile can make a meaningful difference to your visibility.
• Fast Results: Hear how one client secured a booking for her online course the very week after optimising her profile.

If you've been pouring energy into social media while your Google Business Profile sits neglected, this episode will show you exactly where to focus first.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 111: Why Your Competitors Are Beating You in Google Search (and How to Catch Up)
• Episode 105: Why Your Brain (and Business) Deserves a Break from Harmful Social Media
• Google Business Profile optimisation session with Jules - get your profile and website working together

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast for more practical tips on getting found online - without relying on social media!

Transcript

Introduction

Jules White: Hi, welcome back to the Website Success Show. It is Jules here and I might sound a bit different today.

Who knows? I'm in my car.

It might sound better than usual, you never know, but if it sounds a bit tinny then I'm really sorry but I'm really just embracing the idea that done is better than perfect. So it's better for me to be here recording this episode of the podcast even if it doesn't sound quite as clear as usual.

The Question: Is Google Business Profile Social Media?

Jules White: So today I wanna talk about something that was a conversation that came up last week. I quite often, these days I'm getting inspired by conversations I'm having with people.

If there's any questions that you have for me and you'd like me to cover those in a podcast episode, then do let me know. So I was at an in-person event last week, and I was talking about my philosophy that social media is optional and that we don't have to use social media to market our business and that there are a lot better ways to market our business.

And I was talking about Google Business Profiles, which is something that I'm really passionate about. If you've ever had a conversation with me, if you've listened to the episode, lots of episodes of the podcast, then you probably know that I'm really passionate about Google Profiles.

And somebody said to me, is Google Business Profile not social media then? And it really surprised me and it made me think, oh, maybe I need to address this on the podcast then, because if one person thinks it, the chances are quite a few other people may think it as well.

Which might explain why a lot of business owners don't realise the importance of it and how much of a difference it can make. Because when we're talking about social media, we're always told to go where our clients hang out and that we should be posting across different platforms.

You know, you hear different things. Some, some people will say, you need to get really good on one platform and then introduce that into other platforms.

Some people will say, yeah, just post us the same thing across different platforms. But...

GBP Is a Search Engine Tool, Not Social Media

Jules White: Google Business Profile, it's definitely not social media. It is a search engine tool.

I dunno what's the best way to describe it really. It's something that helps you to show up in search.

So it's just part of the search results. It shows up in Google Maps and it connects with people when they're actually searching for businesses like yours, which is one of the fundamental things about search in general.

Showing up in search is all about somebody's out there looking for what you do or looking for a solution to their problem. And if your business shows up as that solution, then those people are much more likely then to buy from you.

Rather than social media where we're just trying to interrupt people's scroll, and maybe if they do find us and they're next minute, they're off scrolling cat videos. And so it's one of those things that I think is so much more powerful.

I often speak to business owners who are struggling for clients or they, they need a constant stream of clients coming into their business, but they're posting on social all the time and then ignoring their Google Business Profile. And it's always, it's sometimes it's a bit of a frustration for me when I have these conversations with people and realise how much time and energy and effort they're putting into their social media.

Even if they did nothing else but optimised their profile, maybe took an hour or so just to make sure that they'd filled in all the little bits that are available that are really easy to do. Once you've logged in and either you do it on your phone or do it on your desktop, I actually suggest trying both because some of the features you will see more clearly on your phone, some of them you'll see more clearly on desktop.

But either way, just going through, even filling in things like whether you are wheelchair-accessible, whether you are women-owned, those kind of things. Having that, all that sort of information complete on your profile is all the steps that helps Google to understand more about your business and then show your business as the one that people should find when they're actually searching for places like yours.

A local businesses to help them solve their problems or help, help provide a solution or help them to find a service that they're looking for. So...

How to Optimise Your GBP: The Basics

Jules White: Filling in the basics, that's definitely, you know, it, it's not difficult with all of this. If you are using social media platforms, then Google Business Profile isn't difficult.

Probably the most difficult part of Google Business Profiles are if you have issues with getting them verified or if your account gets suspended. But even that is solvable.

And that's not what happens to the majority of businesses, especially if you've got a pin in the map, it's a lot easier than if you are a service area business. So if you go out to clients, or if you're somebody like a photographer that doesn't have a studio and you need to show yourself as working in a particular area rather than you've got a location where clients come to you.

But either way, that part of it's usually the most difficult part of Google Business Profile. And once people log in and see how easy it is to use it, then hopefully that encourages them to use it regularly.

But I think it gets forgotten about, I think, because a lot of what we hear from coaches and from, um, you know, from influencers is that we should be posting to social media, but actually it's not as demanding, your Google Business Profile. So even if you took your best performing post, if you are posting to social media, if you took your best performing post of the week or of the month and added that to your Google Business Profile as a post, as an update, that would be fine.

Like even if you're just posting to your Google Business Profile once a week, you can make a massive difference to your visibility on Google. Now, there are other things that you can do to optimise your profile.

Primary Category & Website Linking

Jules White: One of the biggest ones is making sure that you've got your primary category set correctly. So set that to the most relevant category to your business.

I'll link to an episode where I talk about how you can spy on your competitors and find out what categories they've used and make it easier to find the best category for your business. So your primary category should really tie in with what you've got set as your H1 heading on your homepage of your website.

So, for example, if coming back to the photography example, if you are a photographer based in a particular location, then your primary category on Google Business Profile should be photographer. And your H1 heading on your homepage is, should be something along the lines of, you know, brand photographer in Bedfordshire, for example.

So that then sends really strong signals to Google that you do this particular thing. So your thing is photography and you are based in Bedfordshire.

So your, you, your business exists in this area and it is ties to this website and you link your website to your Google Business Profile and vice versa. So in your Google Business Profile, you can set your website address and that will show up as a button that people can then directly go and visit your website directly.

They can just click and it will take them to your website from your Google Business Profile. And then linking back the other way as well.

So if you take a snippet of a review from your Google profile, so say somebody has said five star service or something like that, and then they'd written a longer review, but you just literally take that snippet of five star service, put that onto your website as text, and then link, make that text itself, link back to your Google Business Profile reviews. That way it just helps to cement these links between the two.

It means that people who are looking at your profile can then see that they are real reviews as well. So it adds a level of, um, trust to that as well.

And this can make a difference if AI bots are crawling through your website then it all shows that you are a legitimate business. You can also, if you are using social media, you can link to your social media profiles from your Google Business Profile as well.

And it just all helps these different places on the internet that shows you are an authority in what you do and shows that you are a genuine business in your location. So you could do that definitely.

Posting Strategy for GBP

Jules White: Posting about once a week on your Google Business Profile. You don't need to post any more than that.

So maybe 52 posts a year. Even if you posted once a month to your Google Business Profile, just add a post about one of the services that you offer or about if you've got an event coming up in your business.

If you're trying to develop your thought leadership and get yourself known as an expert in what you do and you've created a blog post, for example, on your website, then linking to that as a post on your Google Business Profile can be really helpful as well. So every time I release a podcast episode, I always add it as a post in my Google Business Profile and it just helps to send these signals out there.

Helps Google to understand and show more about what you do. But also when we are thinking about the search results page, if you've got your profile well filled out, so if you've added in the services that you offer, the products you sell, and you can actually, sounds a bit convoluted, but you can add your services in as products on your Google Business Profile and that will allow you then to take up a little bit more room on the search results page basically.

The More You Fill Out, The Better

Jules White: The more you've got filled out of your Google Business Profile, the more that Google can understand it. And coming back to the, the sort of main topic about whether Google Business Profile is a form of social media, it, I definitely don't feel it is.

I think with social media, there's a thing about the algorithm showing you more content. That's definitely a big part like the, the feed part of it, the newsfeed part of it is definitely a part of how they keep you hooked to these platforms.

I'll link to the episode where I talk about why our brains need a break from social media because of the damaging algorithms that they use. And it's the same sort of algorithms they use when they're developing gaming apps, so gambling apps, because, um, it keeps us hooked.

It keeps us there and keeps us scrolling. And that doesn't happen with Google Business Profiles.

So it is not like you just keep seeing more and more profiles. They show you the best results.

And it might be that you are seeing just one business. If somebody has Googled your business, they might just see your profile.

If for example, somebody's looking for a photographer in Bedfordshire, and they've typed in photographer near me, then you might see three Google Business Profiles that we'll see linked just underneath the, the main search results. So it's very different to the social media algorithms where they, they are trying to deliberately keep us there.

Google has always been about getting people as fast as possible to the place where they want to go. And things are changing a little bit now with AI and with, there's a lot of questions being answered in the overview, but if somebody's looking for a service near them, then Google still wants to take them to be able to understand that service.

And it might be that actually people don't visit your website if they just want directions to your business or if they just want to see your menu or book an appointment even. They may be able to do that directly from your Google Business Profile, which is okay, as long as they're coming through to your business, then that's fine and it's not then taking them off down some random rabbit hole and then they're off scrolling cat videos on Instagram.

So I definitely don't think it's social media from that point of view. So it's not encouraging us to keep scrolling.

She said about the fact that you can post and people can add comments to your pictures and things on Google Business Profile, which they can, there's definitely that option there. People used to be able to add Q&As to your business as well, so they could ask questions to your business, which has now been phased out by Google.

And people obviously can leave reviews as well. But it's very different to a kind of a thread on social media where people are back and forth with comments and you can end up with trolls and all sorts of things going on.

But it's, it's not just, not like that on Google Business Profile. It is like an advert for your business.

And if you can get that set up properly, it can make a massive, massive difference as I say. So...

Platforms in the Grey Zone: Pinterest, YouTube, Reddit

Jules White: There are some platforms that I think do have a little bit of crossover. So like Pinterest, YouTube are often ones that there is the question out there, whether it is social media; forums is another one as well, which is slightly a little bit grey and in between because they tend to be more set up to keep you on the forum.

So things like Reddit and Quora where there's always that, the next thing that you should be looking at, and I definitely think YouTube is like that as well, where it tries to keep you on there. I use a, um, newsfeed eradicator, which then gets rid of all the, all the suggested videos and things on YouTube.

And that does make a big difference. YouTube wants to keep you there on the platform.

So it could be potentially considered, you know, it, it's more of a, it's, it's definitely not social media in terms of getting lots and back and forth in the comments. You do get a, you know, you can get a fair amount of comments on YouTube, but it's, I think even that is different.

And the big thing as well that I think makes it different and makes it more useful for businesses is the fact that it's so searchable and it's owned by Google and it's is that it's long-form content so that content stays there, it's available to anybody. So you don't need to be logged into that particular platform to interact with that content.

So...

Final Verdict: GBP Is Not Social Media

Jules White: All that to say, I definitely don't feel that Google Business Profiles are social media. They aren't fundamentally, they're not, they are a tool that you can use for your business to help you to show up when people are looking for businesses like yours in your area.

They are so incredibly powerful. I can't say this strongly enough that how powerful they are.

And if you haven't optimised your, your Google Business Profile and you need more clients in your business, that is the first place to start. It truly is.

You can make changes to your profile today and that can start showing up tomorrow. So it's not so much like our website, where we have to wait for Google to crawl through and understand the changes we've made.

So you can, you can literally, it can have an effect on your business overnight. I had a client where we did a Google profile optimisation session together.

We went through and did all of the optimisation that we could on her profile. And then she, the next week messaged me and said she'd had a, had somebody find her online course directly through her Google Business Profile, which is just fantastic.

And that's why I love it so much because it can be just so much faster results than just hoping the algorithm, the, um social media algorithm, shows you in the searches, hoping that it shows your posts to your audience, hoping that those people then actually do get the scroll interrupted long enough to take notice and to then come across to your website and buy from you. It's just so much easier than that.

It's so much more of a low-lift way to market your business.

Call to Action & Closing

Jules White: So I hope this has inspired you to think of Google Business Profile not just as another platform. Until I had this conversation last week, I didn't even, it didn't even occur to me that people might be thinking of it that way.

It's not just another place to be, it's just not just another place that you need to spend time creating content for. You don't even have to really do that for Google Profile.

It's so simple and it can keep working for your business for years to come. And if you want some help with this, if you need some help making sure that you're making the most of your profile or making sure that you are actually tying your website in with your profile and just giving that strongest representation of what your business does, where it exists, and why people and Google should trust you, then reach out to me.

Send me a message, you can text the show. Let me know where you're feeling stuck with this, and that I can help you to make the most of your profile, and be able to actually escape social media because social media is optional and your Google Business Profile isn't.

So I hope that's been helpful and I'll see you again soon. Bye.