This session was presented at the LSA19 event in Dana Point, California, February 25-27, 2019.

1. Getting the Most out of the GMB API
Damian Rollison
VP Product Strategy
LSA19

2. About
Brandify
$1 billion transactions
supported per year
4.5 million managed
locations across the globe
300+ brand clients
in 15+ industries
Slightly older than Google!
About Brandify

3. Locator Pages Listings Reputation Advertising
What Brandify Does

4. About Me
What I knew about
local in 2006

5. About Me
What I know
about local now

6. A Brief
History of
Time:
The Local
Edition

7. 2005
Google Maps launches
Local Business Center introduced
And the modern local search era begins …

8. 2006
One Box showcases listings in search
(look familiar?)

9. 2007
Reviews added to Maps

10. 2008
Local 10-Pack introduced

11. 2009
10-Pack becomes 7-Pack

12. 2010
Local Business Center becomes
Google Places

13. 2011
Google Places API launches

14. Also 2011
Google+ launches

15. 2012
Google+ Local introduced; we all try to make
sense of it

16. 2013
Google+ not winning any popularity contests

17. 2014
Google My Business launches

18. 2015
Local Guides program launches

19. Also 2015
Snack Pack replaces 7-Pack;
it’s 2006 all over again

20. And in late 2015
GMB API launches!

21. 2016 - present
Party time

22. GMB API Timeline: 9 Releases in 4 Years
V3 adds
reviews and
attributes,
May 2016
V1 limited
release to
ad partners,
October
2015
V2 public
launch,
December
2015
2015 2016 2017 2018
V3.1 adds
real time
notifications,
September
2016
V3.2 adds
Insights,
January 2017
V4 adds
Posts,
October
2017
V4.1 adds
descriptions, April
2018
V4.2 adds
verification,
August 2018
V4.3 adds
Q&A,
November
2018

23. The API in the Google Data Ecosystem
Google Sources
(Maps, Street
View)
Google Users
(Android, Local
Guides)
GMB Users
(Dashboard,
App, API)
Third Parties
(Aggregator,
Gov, Telco)

24. So what’s inside?

25. • Account management
• Listing management
• Review moderation
• Google Posts
• Chain settings
• Menus
• Media
• Insights
• Notifications
• Questions and Answers
• Recommended Locations
A Local Search Toolkit

26. Account Management
• Manage users, accounts, account
admins, invitations
• Create, find, claim, delete, or move
locations
• Trigger verification
• View statuses like ownership conflict,
duplicate listings, disabled listings
• Support for organization accounts and
location groups

27. Listing Management
• Add, delete, or update any information
found in a listing including name,
address, phone, website, hours,
categories, and lots more
• Add business description and open
date
• Check for attributes against primary
category and add to listing
• Manage service area business settings

28. Reviews
• Gather all reviews for a location
• Gather reviews for multiple locations
via batch request
• Respond to reviews
• Update or delete responses (even if
created manually, when you use the
same account)
• Retrieve author info for reviews: name,
photo, Local Guide status

29. Google Posts
• Create, delete, or update Product,
Offer, and Event Posts with photo or
video, description, start/end dates etc.
• Add CTA button: Book, Order, Shop,
Learn More, Sign Up, Call
• Add interstitial coupon link for Offer
Posts
• Gather Post Insights (views, clicks)
• Limited to accounts with <10 locations

30. Chain Configuration
• Link a listing to the chain to which it
belongs
• Chain must be found in Google’s
chain/brand database
• “Department of” and “independent
establishment in” are in beta

31. Menus
• Create and manage menus and price
lists
• Specify that a list section contains
“food” or “services”
• Create multiple sections within a list
• Item name is required but descriptions
and prices are optional

32. Media
• Upload photos and videos
• Add captions to photos
• Specify photo categories: cover, profile,
logo, interior, exterior, product, at work,
food and drink, menu, common area,
rooms, teams, “additional”
• Download and see view counts for user
uploaded photos and videos
• Retrieve media author info

33. Insights: What’s There
• Retrieve most Insights available in
dashboard and mobile app
• Searches, views, actions, driving
directions
• Photo views and count, UGC views and
count, Post views, Post actions
• Includes new Branded Searches (called
QUERIES_CHAIN)
• Like Local Reports, goes back 18 months

34. Insights: What’s Not
• No “Queries used to find
your business”
• No day of week/time of
day stats on phone calls
• No photo views or counts
for “businesses like you”

35. Real-Time Notifications
• When a location has a new review
• When a review is updated
• When there are Google updates
pending (we used to check every
listing!)
• When a user adds a photo or video to
your listing
• Now applies across org accounts and
location groups you are admin for

36. Questions and Answers
• Create, update, and delete questions
• Create, update, and delete answers
• View metrics including question and
answer upvotes, number of answers
per question
• Retrieve answers (max 10 per question)
• Retrieve author info
• No notifications (yet), no upvoting

37. Recommended Google Locations
• Helps you find locations you should
have claimed
• Uses machine learning to find matching
listings
• Available though still being actively
tested and refined

38. Stuff You Can’t Do Yet
• Hotel check-in and check-out
times
• Posts for 10+ locations
• Notifications for Questions and
Answers
• Some Insights data
• Messaging
• GMB Websites
• Manage email notification
settings
• Say “yes” to Google Assistant
calls
• Create Local Reports (Google
version)
• Showcase Products
• Create Ads

39. Major Benefits #1: Build Your Own Dashboard
• Pretty close though not identical
to the capabilities of the GMB
dashboard and mobile app
• Flexible administrative features
more or less allow you to recreate
a GMB dashboard experience
• Could establish a user-driven
“claim my business” workflow for
SMBs within your interface

40. Major Benefits #2: Speed and Efficiency
• Updates can be transactional;
synchronize client data with GMB and
change only what needs to be changed
• Timeliness of updates greatly
increased
• Monitor (and quash) user “suggestions”
• Access some features exclusive to the
API, like Recommended Google
Locations

41. Major Benefits #3: Serve Clients Better
• Turns location data management into
a scalable business
• Spend more time solving edge cases
and much less time on basic
functions, like hours updates
• Be more responsive to timely needs
like natural disasters
• Create reputation management
features that make our users much
more efficient
• Huge improvement to
onboarding time (days to hours)

42. Go to developers.google.com/my-
business/
Getting Started Create Google API project
Request access to GMB API
If approved, add GMB API to
your project
Start coding! Help is available in
the GMB forum, just search
“Google My Business API” on
www.en.advertisercommunity.com

43. Thank You!
Damian Rollison
@gobrandify
@damianrollison