Have you gotten the email yet? Check your inbox.
Google has slowly started sending out the email below to Google+ page owners which have left quite a few businesses confused and concerned.
Hello, It looks like the Google+ page for [your business name] has not been used for a while. To simplify your Google My Business listing, we will be removing this additional page from our system in 30 days.
This change won’t affect your Google My Business listing – you can still be found on Google Search and Maps. You can download a copy of your old content before it’s deleted by visiting this page. Alternatively, you can post or comment on someone else’s post within 30 days to keep your Google+ page active.
Thank you, Your Google My Business team
First of all, this email from Google is completely legitimate. Secondly, there’s nothing to be worried about. Let’s straighten a few things out:
- A Google+ page and Google My Business (GMB) listing are separate entities. If your Google+ page is deleted, this will not affect your GMB listing.
- All reviews you’ve accumulated on your business through Google relate to your GMB listing, not your Google+ page. So if your Google+ page is deleted, your reviews will still be available on GMB.
- Google has sent out this notice to users of Google+ pages that don’t get used regularly (the page may have been created automatically while creating a Google account once upon a time), so they want to clear up any profiles that have no purpose.
- Google+ is a social network that gets used very infrequently, and I suspect this is a step in the direction of Google phasing out the platform.
Again – don’t freak out: you can easily hang on to your Google+ page if you still use it. All you need to do is post or comment on someone else’s post within 30 days.
Bottom line: We’re not surprised that Google has decided to move in this direction. A lot of the functionality that was exclusively available through Google+ is now available through GMB. The ‘social network’ component can now be seen in GMB through the introduction of Google Posts, and perhaps Google Q&A’s (which still have a long way to go).
Another component that is currently rolling out to all GMB listings is the ability to add a description, which was available a couple of years ago before Google dropped it’s Google+ support. Now they’ve added it again via GMB.
All in all – we’re happy to see Google move in this direction to remove a lot of the clutter.
Here is the screenshot of the actual email from Google.
