Apple Gets More Google-Like with Apple Business Connect

Another day, another Apple Maps update. After the app’s new parking search feature earlier this week, it has launched a new self-serve business listings feature. Known as Apple Business Connect, this follows Google’s model for Google Business Profiles (GPB), the artist formerly known as Google My Business.

This essentially means that Apple, as Google has done for years, is crowdsourcing its listings data by allowing businesses to add and maintain their profiles. That includes the standard set of business details like name, address, place (NAP) as well as photos, promotions, and other particulars (think: mask policy).

After going through a Google-like verification process, SMBs will be able to update their business place “card.” New business designations also join this update, including categories, subcategories, and a new “good to know” field. The latter includes additional business attributes like “free wifi” and “pet friendly.”

These updates also go beyond just listings accuracy. Apple Maps will become more functional with a new “action” button that SMBs can customize. This includes options like booking hotel rooms (via Boooking.com), ordering groceries (via Instacart), or finding parking spots (via SpotHero).

Apple Maps Can Help You Find a Parking Spot

Index the Universe

All the above takes place through a new business-facing portal that offers much more control and customization than previously offered. That previous system resided in Apple Business Register which allowed local businesses to request changes to how they were showing up on Apple Maps.

Apple Maps also previously got by with the help of third-party data partners like Yelp, Foursquare, and TripAdvisor. In fact, both Apple Maps and Search have long relied on cobbling together content and data from best-of-breed vertical partners, as opposed to Google’s approach to index the universe on its own.

To be clear, data partners like Yelp will still be integrated into Apple Maps, including photos, reviews, menus, and ordering. But now, with an additional layer of self-serve listings management, Apple is hoping to improve its mapping accuracy and UX through the advantages of crowdsourcing.

What are those advantages? It’s mostly about scaling up efforts to keep listings accurate – pursuant to a better user experience – by incentivizing SMBs to do the legwork. Like Google, the thinking is that businesses are self-interested to put in that effort to maintain their profiles (more on that in a bit).

Google also uses GBP as the tip of the spear for SMB paid search. By engaging SMBs in a free process, it’s hoping to get them excited about online presence, then double down those efforts with paid search. Apple of course has a different endgame which is to improve its Maps UX as a hook to sell more iThings.

Mapping Mashup, Part III: Apple

The Carrot and the Stick

Back to incentivizing SMBs to play ball, Google has played this game for years using the carrot and the stick. And they both trace back to SEO. SMBs know that more accurate listings mean that searchers will find them more effectively, while a more populated profile is a ranking factor Google has stressed.

The question is if Apple holds that same sway with SMBs. And that comes down to a question of if they see Apple Maps as a meaningful source of business leads. They feel the impact of the carrot and the stick when they Google themselves… but do they have that same vanity-based drive from Apple Maps?

If anything stacks up in Apple’s favor, it’s gravitational pull. Apple Maps comes pre-loaded on 1.5 billion iOS and MacOS devices. Even though all those users aren’t necessarily turning to Apple Maps for their navigation needs (versus Google Maps), that installed base could be enough of a motivating factor.

And when diving into the speculative psychology of the local business, the dynamics are of course different for SMBs versus multi-location brands (MLBs). The latter’s listings management has become its own subsector, with companies ranging from SOCi to Yext helping automate and centralize MLB efforts.

So Apple’s update is likely being discussed among these companies, whose lives just got a bit more complex (and opportune). It’s unclear how Apple Business Connect will natively work with things like bulk edits for MLBs, but this could be an opening for the SOCis of the world to ease their pain.

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