By now you’ve probably magically received a Google beacon for your business. Google is proactively sending these beacons (along with instructions on how to register them) out to businesses that use their advertising services and are likely to benefit from it.
What is a Google Beacon?
- A Google Beacon is a small Bluetooth-powered device that sends a one-way data signal to a user’s smartphone (compatible with both Android & IOS) within the proximity of the beacon’s signal without capturing any information about the users.
- To use an analogy from Search Engine Land, the easiest way to think about a beacon is to think about a lighthouse. But instead of emitting light to nearby sea vessels to designate a location, beacons emit a Bluetooth radio signal to accomplish the same goal.
How will this benefit my business?
- If your store’s actual physical location is programmed within your beacon, your phone will then use the signal from the beacon to understand that the user is actually physically in your store – as opposed to relying on other, less accurate location based signals.
- A simpler way to say it is that with a beacon, your phone will know exactly where you are, as opposed to guessing where you are. This is extremely beneficial when your place of business is located within a shopping center, auto mall, or any other location where numerous businesses are all located very close to each other.
According to Google, by activating and using the beacon they sent you, you can:
- Help your business show up on personal maps or saved places, where users have opted in to Location History.
- Gather photos, reviews, and other user-generated content for your business from people who’ve actually visited.
- Provide features like popular times and typical visit duration to help customers plan their visit to your business.
- Help provide Location Insights about how customers engage with your store.
- Access more features as they become available.
How does the Beacon benefit the customer?
- A new ease for customers is also provided, people can order things directly to that Beacon because of the precise location, for example if a restaurant put a beacon on each table then people could order directly from their phone.
- This is likely to increase sales and therefore the profit for your company. The precise location means that indoor navigation is possible, navigating round an airport or a shopping centre would be available on phones or tablets with the use of Beacons.
Will this help my SEO marketing efforts?
While it doesn’t have a direct correlation to impacting SEO, we can see some ways that it might help indirectly. By using your Google Beacon, users that have their location services enabled and visit your business will receive a notification on their phone proactively asking them to leave a review and/or upload pictures that were taken at your location.
We know that Google My Business Reviews and Engagement Signals are two of the ranking factors taken into account when Google provides users with local search results, so yes; indirectly your beacon can help improve your Local SEO!
At the moment, the Google Beacon is in a Beta period so all costs of the Beacon and installing the Beacon are covered by Google. As a result of the Beacon being in beta period we have not had a chance to see exactly how the Google beacon works, we only know what it has been designed to do and the function it has been intended for – we’ve applied for a Beacon on a few of the client accounts we manage and are looking forward to trying this new piece of hardware.
We Can Help!
If you need any advice or guidance on this topic, or you’re interested in looking into Google Beacon to benefit your Google Ads or general Google visibility feel free to
contact us at
(317) 805-4933 and we will do our very best to help you.
Photo Source:
Search Engine Round Table
Sources:
Search Engine Land,
Dealer Inspire, and
Search Engine Round Table