Google's New Business Dashboard and Beyond With Ben Fisher pt. 1

Madeleine

Hi, I'm Madeline. I'm Synup’s content and community manager and I'm very excited for our first ever sign cast. I'm here with Ben fisher.

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Ben fisher

Hey Madeline, how you doing? I did not know I was on the maiden voyage.

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Madeleine

Very exciting.

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Ben fisher

It definitely is. Definitely is. Thanks for having me.

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Madeleine

Yeah, yeah. So do you want to tell the audience a little about your background? Yeah.

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Ben fisher

Why not? So my name is Ben fisher. I am what's called a diamond Google business profile product expert. There's only a couple of us in the world. There's about 40 product experts for Google Business profile and about 15 of us in the United States and Canada. And including my great friends like, you know, Joey Hawkins, for instance. And of course, we all love Joy and yeah, and so and then at the diamond level, there's actually only two of us in the United States. That just means I'm putting way too many hours inside of the community and helping too many people, I guess.

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Madeleine

It's never a bad thing. It's never a bad thing. There's Google. Google does those certifications directly to you.

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Ben fisher

Yeah, it's an invite only program. Basically. Google has to kind of recognize that you're. Really able to help people and that you know the product you know, and that your feedback may be valuable to them as well. Because we do a lot to help improve the product. Like we're going to be talking a lot about a bunch of stuff today, which is fun. But, you know, it's like, you know, during COVID, for instance, you know, we fought for the temporarily closed feature to be rolled out first. That was really important because the States and the government were messing up from reporting who was permanently closed or temporarily closed. You know, all those COVID attributes. You know, I'd like to kind of put my finger on the GBP queries, you know, because we brought that up at a meet up when we met with Google, when we with Google once a year and at their headquarters. Yeah, which is fun. And yeah, you know, it's like me and I think it was me and Tom Washington, I believe it was. Yeah, we were one to kind of champion that and said people need to see stats, we need to see where people are coming from.

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Madeleine

Yeah. Thank you for that. Needed was definitely needed. How did you begin the love affair with Google?

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Ben fisher

Seven years ago, and I think I've got a story out there published about this. I'm not sure, but I probably do. But anyway, I was about seven years ago and I had a gun shop out of Sacramento. They sold like, you know, 50 caliber rifles and things like that, right? And they ended up getting suspended or, you know, at that time it was like they got removed from Google Maps. That's all I knew. I had never dealt with this suspension in my life and I knew hardly anything. Google Maps? Really. Actually at that time either it's like local OK. And so anyway, yeah, so I did what every poor schmuck has to do in this world and that is I contacted Google support and, and I say that because of the way that they treat you basically. And they basically, the support operator told me he's like, yeah, well, sorry, we can't help you. Google is removing gun shops from Google Maps. And I was like, I was like this gun shop or all gun shops here, like all gun shops.

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Madeleine

Was that for real?

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Ben fisher

Yes, it was. And that's why the story gets even more interesting. So I said, you kidding me? I said. Why? He simply said, look, guns kill people, I said. So let me walk through this logic. Guns kill people, I agree. So what about liquor stores? Alcohol kills more people than guns every single year, I said. So our liquor store is going to be removed from Google Maps as well, he said. Most likely, yes. It's in discussion. Interested, I said. Really, I said. OK. Older cars. Auto dealers. Are you going to get rid of automobile dealers too? Because you know, cars kill people. He's like no, people in cars kill people. Is a cars don't kill people, I said. So you're saying that a gun can, like, get off the rack and just go out and kill people without a human being and evening? He's like, I don't know. It's like, really? You don't know? I was like, OK, we don't follow this logic just a little bit further. I said, So what about cigarettes? Are you going to, you know, I don't know, gas stations, gas stations, gas stations, fuel cars, sell alcohol and sell cigarettes. That's a lot of murder. And he's like, we're thinking about it was like, really? OK, I can I speak to a supervisor, you know, and. And now it's like I'm not even thinking about my client. Now I'm just like thinking about like, oh God, this sounds horrible.

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Madeleine

Just a little ridiculous.

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Ben fisher

The supervisor came on and confirmed it. That was the weird part. I asked the same exact questions and he gave me the same answers. So, so I did. But what we have to do, which is I went to the the community at that time and the forum at that time actually, and I've raised up a thread about this, you know, I said, hey, my clients, you know, it's been removed from Google Maps, here's their information and this is what support told me. And I wrote and I had written everything down. I wrote down the person's names, all of that, right. I had everything documented. And Joy Hawkins, she went out and she picked up the thread. She sent it over to our contact, her contacts at that time with Google and which would soon become my contacts. I didn't know that, of course. And, you know, so basically, and they had this. And I found out later that there was this big old fight actually that occurred inside of Google about. This, I think those people end up getting laid off. But you know, ultimately what ended up happening was is they, it was indeed they were going to remove gun shops from maps. Wow, that was going to happen. Not liquor stores, gas stations and such, but gun stores. They were on the path to be axed. Um, so? But they came back and they reversed their decision. And they, they came back and they told, they said this basically they reversed their decision and that the the gun stores can be on maps, they just can't be managed at that time. That's what they said, you know, and then they reinstated my client. So at that time it was kind of an eye opener for me because I was just like, Oh my gosh, I was like, so how many people's lives did I just?

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Madeleine

Impact. Yeah. No, that's really insane. And there was no, I assume there was no like notice about it or no announcement. It.

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Ben fisher

Was it was just, it was something that was just coming along. It was, it was planned to be deprecated, basically. And, you know, but I'm like, Oh my God, I was like, OK, so you've got the owner, the owner's family, the family, the family's family, right. Their livelihood. You've got, you know, mortgage companies, you got real estate companies. Then you got all the people who are consumers that are looking for gun stores and guns. And they're like, wow, OK, I was like that. That's that's probably at least a million people there that that I just helped. Okie dokie then. So that kind of opened my eyes up to the the power, I guess you could say, of of being working with Google. And so I decided that I would continue to help in the Community and I started researching more issues and more problems that people were having. Little known to me is like I'm learning local SEO and Google business profiles inside and out by just doing this and started to really become very good at Google business profiles. Like people were just coming to me. Ask any questions and I was like, yeah, here you go. There's, here's the answer. Here's like that's how you do it. I was just reading about this last night, you know. And then, yeah, six months later, Google reached out to me and they said, hey, would you like to become part of our top contributor program? And I was.

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Madeleine

Also, it happened really fast.

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Ben fisher

Very fast. And so six months later I was brought into the program. Six months after that I was raised up to the the next level or status that it, well whatever it is I forgot what it was now anymore. And then then they changed the program to product expert and you know we all became gold product experts and then I think what was this six months or a year later or something like that ended up going up to the Oh yeah, when they rolled out they the platinum program actually they they called Joy and me. And they invited us into the platinum program as the first ones. And and then I guess I don't know it was a year and a half ago or something like that that I got they, it's called upskilling, but basically you're just given a new title and that's when I was brought up to the diamond level.

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Madeleine

Amazing. And it's.

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Ben fisher

Fun.

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Madeleine

It happened so fast. Yeah, that's really insane. I feel like a lot of the as I've been a little bit new to this space of learning about Google and all of that. It's incredible how many updates and rollouts Google does and feel like if you're not in the space, you have no idea what's going on. And they do some frustrating stuff, they do some incredibly cool stuff, and like the average person who's not involved in it would never know what Google's doing. So yeah. Yeah, so cool. I've been very excited and eager to learn about it. It's great that you're here, that the one of two diamond experts that's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely wanted to hear your thoughts about some of Google's new, more frustrating updates, the new dashboard that they're rolling out for Google, Business profile just.

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Ben fisher

Off the bat, with not all doom and gloom. Come on, come on, come on. It is not. Madeline, it is not all doom and gloom. It is just another thing. We live in Google's world and we have to play in their sandbox.

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Madeleine

That's true. You can't fight Google. You can't fight them.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. It's like, you know, I mean earlier this year they changed the name. You know. Do you remember what it was before? Of course, yeah.

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Madeleine

Yeah, they're ready. They're ready. Thread dedicated to like, Google Business Stuff still has the old name, actually, which I find interesting.

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Ben fisher

It does, it does. And the last problem for at least another year. No, but I mean it was Google local at one time, then it was Google plus local and you know, the Google places where I think was what it was called originally, you know?

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Madeleine

Three brands in there.

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Ben fisher

It's really like 3 to 4, three years. I think they do a rebrand. The interesting thing is, and this is going to be kind of a a theme, is that Google makes decisions based on data. And always by the way, make some decisions based on data, right as any good engineer will. It just so happens that Google has this tremendous treasure trove of data from all over the world. Exactly. Even have data from Mars. So yeah, just saying go figure. But you know, that's really what it comes down to is they've got data and the data tells them which way to go. Not always the best thing because you do have, you've got human beings involved basically. And human beings are going to kind of skew things and they can manipulate data based on whatever their own agendas are. Case in point is like. Google posts when they took Google posts from being at the top. Down to the bottom. Everybody was an opera, right? Why have you done this? What's going on? That was the perfect place for it. It was great. We love posts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So walking on Google campus and walking with one of our community managers and they wanted the product people for Google posts happens to be right there. And so I stopped and I said, I need to talk to you. And he's like, OK, cool. It was like, I was like, come over here, come on, let's get a drink. And. And so I asked him, I said, why? I said, why in the world would you do something like this? You know, just out of curiosity, it's your baby, it's your feature. It was up really high on the knowledge panel and you put it all the way at the bottom. It's like. He's like, look, we know exactly what's happening. And he's like, and we do tests, and we don't do tests for one day. We do them for sometimes a year or more. And he's like, but the data told us that there was better interaction at the bottom of a profile than there was at the top of the profile. Which makes no logical sense.

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Madeleine

Yeah.

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Ben fisher

Right, it just doesn't scroll.

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Madeleine

More.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. And then later I kind of heard from somebody else that you know, it's like the product owner of this, this product owner was basically. Pushed to the side. Because of the amount of real estate at the top of a profile, it's very, very tiny in comparison to everything else. So the data quote, UN quote is this this is a visual podcast or is this video or just?

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Madeleine

Audience. Actually audio, but I'm planning to pull a few helpful clips out. OK  if you have a visualization

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Ben fisher

Can, I was just saying, you know, in air quotes, you know air quotes. You know. I won't do the other other air quote. We call it the Blumenthal Air quote. Don't do that on video. But seriously. Yeah. So basically, yeah, I mean so that's why is because you know there was that real estate was needed for other features basically so. So what the reality is? Data decision. Exactly. What's the reality of it all? We're never gonna know. Obviously we're not inside of Google, so we don't, we don't know that answer, but that's how the decision was made. So Fast forward to today or actually no, we'll continue on the naming process. What they found out was that. Users across the world again would not consider Google My Business as Google My Business, so they weren't. This is kind of weird, by the way, because you have to. Google. OK, the word Google. You have to Google My Business to get to my business now. And my business profile, which is really interesting in itself, I guess I didn't think about that. That's world first. The first time I'm saying that no, seriously so. They didn't think about it that way. People didn't think about it that way. They thought about it as their Google business profile. And so people were typing this into search. Where's my Google business profile? Right.

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Madeleine

Yeah, and nothing coming up because it wasn't.

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Ben fisher

Called that exactly, exactly so. Basically. So that's why they ended up kind of making that changes because just again kind of how people were talking about it and they do a lot of focus groups, things like that too. You Fast forward to the major change that I know you want to talk about and that's the dashboard change. So the dashboard change which is called the insert experience, OK. This has been planned for a very, very long time. We're talking about north, north of a year and a half actually probably even before that we heard about a year and a half ago and you know when I say we, I mean the product expert group. We get to see a lot of features well, well before everybody else does.

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Madeleine

Ohh very cool.

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Ben fisher

And then we get to tell them what we think of it. Change it. And so, so yeah, so basically with the with this the internally they called it the NMX, the new merchant experience which you see that every once in a while you see somebody say annex and that that's what this is basically. But that's an internal designation and it sucks. So that's why we call it the in search experience because that's truly what it is and. So basically what they found out was, again globally is that especially in India, a lot of a lot of these changes by the way, start in India as far as testing goes, right? So they have to look at that and then they build from there. So what they found was, is that people were going to Google. This is the fun part about what we were just talking about and they would type into Google My Business. To try and find themselves. And they couldn't. Right, of course, until it was programmed. And they also found that people, since they couldn't do that, they would type in their business name, they would type in their business name, and then they would suggest an edit. So they would think that they could change their hours or phone numbers by doing a suggested edit. OK, which we all know doesn't work.

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Madeleine

Yeah.

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Ben fisher

A third party user cannot suggest suggest an edit.

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Madeleine

Right. Is so funny. I never even thought of that. Yeah.

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Ben fisher

Yeah. Or very well, I should say. So. Yeah. So a lot of people would do that. And we've seen this in the community all the time. We were like I tried to change my phone number, it just won't work. Or trying to change my hours and it won't work. Where are you trying to edit your hours? Well, I'm trying to do it on search. OK, you can't do that. Go to the dashboard, you know, so, so exactly. But that was user behavior. And The thing is is. And that, you know, 90% of the businesses that are on Google Maps. Wearing Google business profiles. Are what's considered a single listing merchant, meaning they have one business, right? Agencies, no. Franchises, enterprises. No, believe it or not, very, very, very tiny portion of the ecosystem. It's important.

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Madeleine

Yeah.

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Ben fisher

You would think so. I can't tell you the number of businesses that are on Google Maps, but let's just say it's really big. Exactly. So, so you're only talking about you know 10% make up the franchise, enterprise and agency space basically multilocation owners, so when they develop. Anything. They have to look at the single merchant first. And they have to develop towards that. And So what they discovered was because of these. Changes quote UN quote that they're discovering is that the dashboard was not as important. Resource wise. As the merchants experience and being able to do stuff with their profile in search. And so that's why the change. So Google went back and forth on messaging a lot. They said, OK, well, the agency dashboards here to stay, you know, you'll be able to still work with the dashboard. Well, they kind of changed midstream. And man, we fought them tooth and nail. We did. But you know, at the end of the day.

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Madeleine

Thank you for your bravery. The dashboard.

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Ben fisher

We died on the sword on this and then we kept on trying to get clarification too you know which is why we're all out there kind of saying no it's it's going to be this way, it's going to be that way and Google egg on my face so. But you know, so they are going to be at least they say they are going to be helping to better the dashboard, make it more functional for bulk activities. So for instance, like just discarding, you know, edits is in the dashboard, it's not in search yet, you know, if you want to import multiple locations, it's in the dashboard. You know, you could still kind of get back to the edit view in the dashboard, but you know, I'll tell you. I'm just encouraging everybody to just use the new interface. This is Google. It's going this way. There's no stopping it. You might as well get used to it, you know? Exactly. Just. I found it. At first I was like, no, I want to be able to edit a single location. I want to take my info tab, you know, because I was used to it, you know, and I had to rebuild a ton of processes, you know, to adjust to the new workflow. And I'm doing a whole new guide now on how the new interface works and what you can do and common things like how do I add my appointment URL, how do I add my website, things like that. You know, because it's a lot. It's a lot of clicks that you have to do to get things to work. But it's once you start doing them, it gets really easy actually.

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Madeleine

Yeah, so it's a good intuitive platform then.

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Ben fisher

I wouldn't use the word intuitive. You know, with the first iteration, I think they had what, like, you know, three chips, they, they call them chips at the top and like one was advertised, one was performance, you know, or something like I forget what it was called. It was so silly. And you know, those made no sense whatsoever. It was like, why am I going to click on this to get to that?

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Madeleine

So you know tunneling.

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Ben fisher

Yeah. So, so with now, what they've done of course now is you've got this grow if you know what is it, 4 icons or five icons, you know, two rows of them, actually 3 rows, you include the bottom two. And I I have a feeling that's going to continue to evolve. Based on usage. Based on usage, so I'm sure they're tracking every little thing that's going on there. So, so yeah. So anyway, that's what I think about that.

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Madeleine

It's good to have the insider scoop, that's what I'll say. I feel like, um, on Twitter, most of the interactions I'm doing with the sign up page at least, are people who use the multi location features. And so they were particularly struck by the change. Because I know it's like it already wasn't really that easy to manage multiple locations and now it's like, oh, you changed this, but it's still not really that easy. Manage multiple locations. I guess in the light of what you said about there being only 10% of businesses on Google are actually more than one single location. I guess it makes sense that Google wouldn't really focus all their attention on them, but I don't know what. What would you say to the outraged masses?

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Ben fisher

So at steady demand, you know obviously everything we do is focused around Google business profiles. We work with a lot of franchises, we work with a lot of enterprises. I think our largest enterprise has north of 20,000 locations, let's just put it that way. So you know and I was just talking to one, you know, late yesterday, 6000 locations, something like that. So anyway, but yeah, they were pissed. They were livid and they're like, how do I do this and what's this and how do I do that? And what's this video verification stuff and blah blah blah blah blah. And. So anyway. It comes back down to just do it and adapt you know and but the the the thing though is is that most people will have more than 1015 locations are usually going to use a tool like sign up right to help manage their profiles simply because you know, I mean updating hours across you know 100 different locations 1 by 1.

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Madeleine

Takes forever.

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Ben fisher

That doesn't sound like a fun job to me. I don't even like updating anyone. Yeah, so, you know, so. But you know, so anyway, yes, right. I think that's absolutely necessary. I think that Google understands. Fundamentally, businesses that have probably 30-40 locations or more. Are either going to use a tool like signup, or they're going to actually just programming the API themselves. You know, so, so I think they understand that. You know that's happening, right? And you know are there in a bulk verified account or or whatever the case may be. So I think they're going to tailor their experience inside of the dashboard more towards whatever they see the greatest need is. And you know what I would encourage, you know, any user of Synup to do is to come to the community and tell us your experience, tell us what you want, you know, as an enterprise or as a franchise. Tell us what you're looking for. What are you missing? You know what were you doing in the dashboard that you can't do inserts now and show us, give us photos you know give us a screenshots. You know I used to be able to do X and now I can't do it or it's I find it more difficult to do it or whatever the case may be Google actually does listen to this feedback. So, we can kind of usher that information over to them, especially if it makes sense. You know, I don't care if it's just one person's opinion. If it makes sense, yeah, I don't know. Tell Google. Pushing forward.

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Madeleine

Exactly. That's good to know that there are advocates like you on the ground, listening, waiting for good advice.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. Well, we also, and this goes into a whole different subject, don't want to dwell too far into it, but you know, it's like we even act as kind of like an early warning system for Google. So the product experts do and we lean heavily on the community. For this too, by the way, it's like, you know, for instance, it's like there's one issue I'm looking into right now and I don't know if it's actually an issue, but like over the past three weeks I'm seeing a huge amount, and I mean huge, I'm talking 101520 a day, just out of my user base of merchants that are gaining ownership requests and they're getting them from the same group of people. And it's mainly in the garage door space. And a little bit, a little bit in the HVAC, but mainly garage door. And it's, again, it's the same people too. So that's the other thing, right? It's like it's the same name whether it's real or not, different story, of course, the same e-mail address too. So, you know, it's like I'm out there and I'm doing some research right now. It's like, I'm asking people, it's like, hey, are you seeing an increase in ownership request too? Is anything out of the ordinary here? And some people are coming back and going, yeah, for the last three weeks I've been seeing some stuff. Happening, you know, the ownership requests. So, you know, I'll wait a little while longer and I'll see if I get more traction on it. And if more people tell me that they're having the same exact issue, I'll bring it up to Google. Yeah, when we see issues with reviews, you know, there's tons of issues going on with reviews because the review filters been changed.

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Madeleine

Yeah, I've seen tons, tons of that, tons of that.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. So, you know, it's like we see these issues and we bring them up to Google as soon as we see them. You know, it takes a couple of days because again we have to sample and we have to figure out what's going on. But like with, you know, reviews going missing on a daily basis, you know, that's a big one that's still going on. You know, Mike Blumenthal figure found out one where like edits were being made to a Google business profile, which would change the CID, which would make you lose all your reviews. That's.

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Madeleine

Horrible about that, yeah. Not the best to lose all your social proof suddenly.

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Ben fisher

Yes, and it's getting fixed too. So, but but in Google is very good at fixing these things too, by the way, just so you know so well. If it's not a feature, if it's a bug.

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Madeleine

It's fixed.

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Ben fisher

If it's a feature, different story so.

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Madeleine

Yeah, so where do you see? I won't ask you to give any secret insights away, but like, where, where do you?

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Ben fisher

See.

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Madeleine

Where do you see like the Google interface going? Obviously it seems like they're kind of just following what the average customer is already doing, like with the changing from Google My Business to Google Business profile. Or even just changing it from the dashboard to the Google Web search integration for accessing your profile and making changes to it. Like what? What will the average consumer of Google business do next, you know?

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Ben fisher

I wish I had that crystal ball, no. But like I said, the in search experience was under development for about a year and a half. They're slowly rolled out. Now that it's out fully, it's going to increase in functionality and.

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Madeleine

Here to stay.

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Ben fisher

It's absolutely here to say yes, this is not going to change, not for a very long time.

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Madeleine

I.

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Ben fisher

Don't know if you remember this, but places. Originally.

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Madeleine

Ohh.

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Ben fisher

Yes, changed to Google Plus local, but the interface state primarily mostly the same. Um, and then when? Google. My business. Was rolled out quote UN quote. It was actually just a souped up version of Google Plus Local and Google places. It's like you could go back and look and it's like Google places looked exactly like Google My Business.

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Madeleine

Yeah.

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Ben fisher

It's just that they look better. Uh, but they even had the funky driving directions. Everything like that, you know? Mapping everything like that is still back then 2007, so. I guess my point is that this is a pretty radical change, and it's one that is going to be here to stay. And I think it's going to be here for a very, very long time. So it works just on so many levels, you know, even the annoying aspect of having ads show when you look for my business, I think that's going to change too. But I don't. I'm not sure. So, but. But yeah, what I can say is, is that you know if you want change, suggest feedback.

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Madeleine

Suggest it. Where do people suggest it? Just on the forum or?

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Ben fisher

Just about to get to that. Two main ways, the main one first, we'll actually reach out to a project expert. You know if you've got an idea. We prefer if you go to the community and open up a thread and the like because other people think kind of chime in. You can do it on local search form. Google doesn't look there, but we do piece and. Also then you can also at the bottom of search you can send feedback to literally did link in the bottom right. Um, and click on send feedback. People do actually read these things, believe it or not.

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Madeleine

That's good to know. Not everyone does.

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Ben fisher

So click on the send feedback. Your thoughts are very welcome. And the teams at the Google business profile teams, the product managers, I know almost all of them personally and you know, and I've met them in person and talked to them and you know, blah blah blah, and friends with them. So, but they actually do care and they need the feedback. Kind of like this. It's like you think of like this, right? If you're using a product like Sina. They're not going to know everything you need, right? Right. So you have to have a feedback loop. And so, and I'm sure you guys do, right, you have a feedback loop. You listen to your users and you create features. When enough users have mentioned that they need something to do, right? Yeah, so you'll program it. Google seeks exact same way.

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Madeleine

Yeah, always got to listen to your customers. Yeah, obviously. Obviously no matter how many people were mad at Google, I I know that they never do anything thoughtlessly. They have that infamous one person who monitors the shade of blue of that search button. So nothing is by accident for sure with them.

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Ben fisher

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So and and the and the gentleman can't say his name really though, but the gentleman who was in charge of Google business profile the product itself, he's a really really nice guy. It's really awesome dude. So and like I know him pretty well I guess and he really does care a lot. So and I believe he even has some business background and experience which a lot of people in the team don't. So it's and that's super helpful. Yeah, yeah. Give feedback, give feedback. It actually counts.

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Madeleine

That's awesome. That's good to know. OK. I definitely feel a lot more. A lot better about this new dashboard.

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Ben fisher

So that's the idea, right? That is the idea, yes, yes, yes, yes.

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Madeleine

Yeah, I mean I think that's that's all my. The Google gossip that I wanted to talk about.

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Ben fisher

Alright, sounds good, sounds good. Well, I'm glad I could help with the maiden voyage of the sign up.

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Madeleine

Cast yeah, this is great to talk to you. I feel like I learned so much and I am much less angry about the new updates.

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Ben fisher

So you should put that out as a tweet, right?

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Madeleine

You say with Ben fisher and now?

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Ben fisher

Am filled with much less rage. Yes, exactly. My rage meter is now 20%.

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Madeleine

Yeah. It's definitely gone down. It's definitely gone down. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like. I feel like it's it's tough if you don't know the reasoning why things change and then they change and you don't, you don't know, I feel like but like where does the average, where's the average business owner get the news about the updates? Like are they. So it just happens.

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Ben fisher

Yeah. What I would say this is that if you want any information about what's going on with Google business profiles or maps or something like that, the main places that you can go is 1 Twitter, OK, just come on and follow us local peoples. If you want to follow me @thesocialdude on Twitter is where I'm at. It's at Ben fisher on Mastodon. So we have, I think it's SEO community. But social, I think is what it is. And so I guess I live on both platforms at the moment. And. So that's a a good way to keep up with the news, right? It's like that's pretty much all it publishes. I publish news items and so sorry, no spinning cats.

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Madeleine

Just I'm.

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Ben fisher

Just not doing that.

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Madeleine

Disappointing.

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Ben fisher

After this, I'm going to do a spinning hat. No, but you know, so that's one place. The other place is, if you want to get it from the horse's mouth, is again the Google business profile community, which is support.google.com/business/community. And there's an official communications that come out from Google there. They're cleansed. They're, they're, they're very, very cleansed. They don't say much. You know so. But they are official.

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Madeleine

Yeah, yeah. I I feel like, I feel like it's great. I feel like it's nice to have the product experts and to have all these places to have these conversations because it's only better for the business owners if they're more involved in the updates and like knowing what's going on. Umm, yeah. So I hope more people come to appreciate the new stuff.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. And it's Google. It's always going to change. So just the only thing you can do is adapt.

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Madeleine

Of course.

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Ben fisher

Or suggest features, yeah you can do that.

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Madeleine

Too DM Ben on Twitter.

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Ben fisher

Exactly. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, well, cool. Well, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun.

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Madeleine

Yeah, this is so much fun. Thank you so much again for coming on the first episode of the sign cast. There will be much more in the future. I'm excited.

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Ben fisher

Everybody needs to reach me again. You can find me on Twitter, the social dude, or Ben fisher on Mason. You can also, of course, always reach me at www.steadydemand.com.

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Madeleine

That's been the podcast.

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