Initially called Google My Business (GMB), the tool was rebranded to Google Business Profile (GBP) in 2021. GBP allows brands to:
Claim a business listing
Verify listings for each location
Specify a service area, operating hours, NAP data, and other contact information
Send and receive messages from customers
Manage local reviews
Add staff bios, photos, videos, and virtual tours
List top products, services, and providers
Boost bookings with Reserve with Google
List menu items, parking recommendations, current promotions, and more
Push GBP content to Google search, Maps, Gemini, and ads
To determine which businesses to surface in search results, Google compares brand relevance, prominence, and distance (for local searches). The more complete, accurate, and recent your Google Business Profile data is, the more likely your brand will outrank your competition.
GBPs don't just help brands stay discoverable in search. Google Business Profiles influence customer sentiment and behavior. Keeping location, product, and service images, videos, and FAQs updated is also key. So is managing reviews, locations, products, and service details at scale across the entire publisher network. Brands that optimize their GBP can boost their foot traffic, conversion rates, revenue, and customer trust.
Google Business Profile is still key to visibility, even in the AI-driven search landscape
Google Business Profile remains a critical piece of brand discovery in an increasingly fragmented search landscape. While customers now discover brands throughAI-driven search engines, maps, and social media, Google continues to dominate local intent-driven queries.
Key statistics about Google searches
Despite growth in "non-traditional" searches (AI search and searches across social media platforms), Google is still a dominant search platform. Worldwide, Google processes 16.4 billion searches every day, roughly 11.4 million searches every minute of every day.
Customers in the United States contribute 6.4 billion unique monthly visits to Google. Customers in the United Kingdom and Canada make up the next largest share of searches at a combined 79.2 million unique monthly visits.
More than half (53%) of Google searches have informational intent, where customers are asking specific discovery questions like "What does melanoma look like?" or "early onset dementia symptoms."
Another third (32%) are branded searches with navigational in intent like "Chili's happy hour" or "nearest Barnes & Noble." They tend to surface branded content and brand website links.
Meanwhile, 15% of Google searches have commercial intent, where customers are considering buying a product or service. They might search "red-light therapy vs. lymphatic massage" or "best cashmere socks for him."
Google's continued presence in search is why brands, especially multi-location brands, must actively manage their GBP listings to stay competitive.
Google Business Profiles matter for AI search, too
Google still matters — a lot. But it's not the only player in town now. Plus, as Google increases the number of zero-click search results and customers turn more often to AI search experiences, brands need to think differently about how to optimize local listings for AI.
Brands also need to think of AI as a new customer. Popular tools like ChatGPT scour every corner of the internet, including trusty go-to data sources like GBPs. But, AI search experiences don't just reference prominent online data sources. They also reference local listings on more obscure, niche, or long-forgotten long-tail sites like YP.com and hundreds of other publishers, review sites, and social platforms.
To earn visibility across every search interface (not just Google), brands need both an optimized Google Business Profile and a knowledge graph with interconnected, centralized, structured data.
Google Business Profile management for search optimization
To help customers trust (and choose) a brand when they search, location listings need to be complete, accurate, and optimized to increase engagement.
But as search keeps changing and customer journeys diversify, managing all this information is easier said than done. It's also difficult to know which changes and optimizations you need to make.
Once, local businesses had to update listings by hand. Multi-location brands could only do bulk uploads using spreadsheets.
Not only was this process wildly inefficient, but it also prevented real-time updates for one — let alone hundreds or thousands of local listings. Naturally, this created problems when customers encountered inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and duplicate profiles. Multi-location brands need an automated, accurate, scalable solution.
Yext simplifies GBP management, enabling real-time updates, review management, and listing optimization — so a brand's Google Business Profile is always accurate and competitive.
Explore GBP best practices in depth with the Yext Guide to Google Business Profiles.