New users woke up to an updated Google My Business’ review interface this morning, and it’s making a lot of sense. When leaving a review, not only will you be prompted to select the professionalism, punctuality, as well as quality and value; but Google is now asking if you actually used the business, and provides a list of services that were performed. 

For service based industries, the list of services shown is based on the categories selected on their Google My Business listing. This creates an extra layer for businesses to protect their reputations, by actually identifying if the user engaged or not with the business. This holds both the user and the business accountable for the overall experience.

Last year, the GMB platform received a backend update which made adding services to the “service tab” way easier. Google started providing a pre-populated list of services their users can pick and choose from. For example, a Towing Service category will be able to click and add from a list of predetermined services:

The question now becomes: Will this help or hurt businesses looking to generate more reviews? Adding this extra layer does provide a certain level of accountability to the user, but will it be more of a burden causing users to click out and reduced reviews?

Until now, many marketers been filling these out without being able to see a forward facing end product. Adding to the service tab all applicable services and descriptions, unsure if they would ever be shown. Now we know, the Google machine always has an end goal and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first of a series of GMB updates to come this year.