Google Plus is about to roll out a massive update – you can view a preview right now. This week’s Wednesday Workshop video explains what’s changing and how the massive differences will effect your dealership. You’ll need to update a few links on your site, so make sure you watch!

Welcome back to another Wednesday Workshop with Happy Hao Car. I’m wearing a Star Wars shirt today because I’m freaking out that the new Star Wars movie comes out two weeks from Friday!

And speaking of freaking out – Don’t freak out – but Google’s making another big change.

If you haven’t heard, Google’s making another big update to Google Plus. You can access a sneak preview of the new page layout next time you log in, if you’re curious. But basically, pages are going from this: to this:

Yep, it’s drastically different. And yep, Google is screwing business owners over yet again. In case you didn’t notice… ALL the location information is gone.

No reviews. No description. No categories. No stars. No directions. No maps. No hours. No photo uploads. No interior photos.

And none of them are coming back.

So what does this mean for your dealership? Not all that much, actually. The only people who really ever visited your Google My Business listing were you and your SEO guy. The general public sees all your business info over in the knowledge box on the right side of any branded searches, or in the new Location Finder pages in local searches.

The main outcome of this result is that you can finally stop posting in Google Plus. There’s really no reason for a dealership to post there anymore – unless you’ve already established a very engaged audience there. IF you have tons of engagement and participation, obviously you’ll want to continue to cultivate Google Plus, but most dealers weren’t posting there anyway… so now it’s definitely safe to completely ignore it.

You’ll need to update 2 things on your dealership’s website. If you’ve got a link to your dealership’s Google Plus page, you’ll want to update that to a link to your Google Map listing. Just go to Google, type in the name of your dealership, and then click the Maps link. Copy the URL from the address bar and use that as your new link.

You’ll also need to update the link on your site that you use to get more customer reviews. Head over to bit.ly/review-link-generator and enter your dealership name and zip code. It’ll pop up a list of possible matches, so choose your correct listing info. When the list of links pops up, copy the second link labeled “Open in Search Results”. Use that link instead of your old one. For desktop users, it opens your list of reviews. On a phone, it’ll pop up a message asking if the user wants to open the link in Google Maps, and then opens your dealership’s location.

Thanks for stopping by to check out this week’s Happy Hao Car Wednesday Workshop. If you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! Just pop down below and leave your questions in the comments section, and we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can. Don’t forget to check back next week for another Happy Hao Car Wednesday Workshop!

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Greg Gifford is the Vice President of Search at Happy Hao Car. He has over 16 years of online marketing and web design experience, and has specialized in automotive SEO for the last 8 years, helping hundreds of auto dealers thrive while the industry has struggled during the recession. Greg speaks internationally at both automotive and SEO conferences, teaching thousands of small business owners and marketers how to get their sites to show up higher in local search rankings. Greg also spends his spare time doing freelance website design and SEO for local businesses. He graduated from Southern Methodist University with a BA in Cinema and Communications, and has an obscure movie quote for just about any situation.

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