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Google Business Profile will be the new name going forward for Google My Business. Google said the reason for the new name is to “keep things simple” and sometime in 2022, Google will retire the Google My Business app completely.

before that it was named Google My Business, before that, Google Places, and before that it was Google+ Local, before that it was also Google Places and then prior to that I think it was just Google Local

Google lets businesses manage their individual listings directly in the search results or directly in Google Maps, now Google is saying it prefers businesses with single listings manage their businesses in Search or Maps and not in the old Google My Business console.

Link Redirect Trace — Uncovers all URLs in a redirect chain including 301’s, 302’s, etc. Very useful for finding (and regaining) lost “link juice,” amongst other things.Other similar extensions: Redirect Path

Scraper — Scrape data from any web page using XPath or jQuery. Integrates with Google Sheets for one-click export to a spreadsheet. Or you can copy to clipboard and paste into Excel.Other similar extensions: Data Scraper — Easy Web Scraping, XPather

Tag Assistant (by Google) — Check for the correct installation of Google tags (e.g. Google Analytics, Tag Manager, etc) on any website. Also, record typical user flows on your website to diagnose and fix implementation errors.

Google said in September 2018 that neural matching impacts about 30 percent of all queries. We asked Google if that has increased, but have not received an update.What is RankBrain? Isn’t it similar? Google told us in 2016 that RankBrain (see our RankBrain FAQ) is also an AI, machine learning-based system that helps Google understand queries.Google said a good way to think about RankBrain is as an AI-based system it began using in 2016 primarily to understand how words are related to concepts.So what’s the difference between Neural matching and RankBrain? Google put it this way:RankBrain helps Google better relate pages to concepts.Neural matching helps Google better relate words to searches

Why it matters. The truth is, there isn’t much a search marketer can do to better optimize for RankBrain, as we said in 2016. The same seems to apply for neural matching, there doesn’t seem like you can do anything special to do better here. This is more about Google understanding queries and content on a page better than it currently does right now.That said, it seems to indicate that search marketers need to worry a bit less about making sure specific keywords are on their pages because Google is getting smarter at figuring out the words you use naturally on your pages and matching them to queries.We asked Google if it has additional recommendations around neural matching and RankBrain and were told its advice has not changed: Simply “create useful, high quality content.”

Google’s neural matching versus RankBrain: How Google uses each in searchNeural matching helps Google better relate words to searches, while RankBrain helps Google better relate pages to concepts.

How to influence the organic product carouselIn Google’s blog post, they detailed three factors that are key inputs: Structured Data on your website, providing real-time product information via Merchant Center, along with providing additional information through Manufacturer Center.This section of the article will explore Google’s guidance, along with some commentary of what I’ve noticed based on my own experiences.

Make sure your product markup is validatedThe key here is to make sure Product Markup with Structured Data on your page adheres to Google’s guidelines and is validated.

Submit your product feed to Google via Merchant CenterThis is where it starts to get interesting. By using Google’s Merchant Center, U.S. product feeds are now given the option to submit data via a new destination.The difference here for Google is that retailers are able to provide more up-to-date information about their products, rather than waiting for Google to crawl your site (what happens in step 1).Checking the box for “Surfaces across Google” gives you the ability to grant access to your websites product feed, allowing your products to be eligible in areas such as Search and Google Images.For the purpose of this study we are most interested in Search, with the Organic Product Carousel in mind. “Relevance” of information is the deciding factor of this feature.Google states that in order for this feature of Search to operate, you are not required to have a Google Ads campaign. Just create an account, then upload a product data feed.Commentary by PPC Expert Kirk Williams:“Setting up a feed in Google Merchant Center has become even more simple over time since Google wants to guarantee that they have the right access, and that retailers can get products into ads! You do need to make sure you add all the business information and shipping/tax info at the account level, and then you can set up a feed fairly easily with your dev team, a third party provider like Feedonomics, or with Google Sheets. As I note in my “Beginner’s Guide to Shopping Ads”, be aware that the feed can take up to 72 hours to process, and even longer to begin showing in SERPs. Patience is the key here if just creating a new Merchant Center… and make sure to stay up on those disapprovals as Google prefers a clean GMC account and will apply more aggressive product disapproval filters to accounts with more disapprovals. ”– Kirk WilliamsFor a client I’m working with, completing this step resulted in several of their products being added to the top 10 of the PP carousel. 1 of which is in the top 5, being visible when the SERP first loads.This meant that, in this specific scenario, the product Structured Data that Google was regularly crawling and indexing in the US wasn’t enough on it’s own to be considered for the Organic Product Carousel.Note: the products that were added to the carousel were already considered “popular” but Google just hadn’t added them in. It is not guaranteed that your products will be added just because this step was completed. it really comes down to the prominence of your product and relevance to the query (same as any other page that ranks).