Google Posts now live for all Google My Business users

Google Posts is now rolling out to all small businesses that use the Google My Business (GMB) platform.

Google just announced the rollout late this afternoon. A couple of weeks ago, the company moved Google Posts into GMB, and that is where you can access it now — on both the desktop and the Google My Business Android and iOS apps.

Go to your GMB account and click on “Posts” on the left-side menu when you are in your Google business listing. You can also access it by clicking here.

You should see a screen that looks like this:

When writing a post, you are given several options: upload an image, write text (up to 300 words) or add an event title (with start and end dates and times). Users can also add call-to-action buttons including “Learn more,” “Reserve,” “Sign up,” “Buy” or “Get offer.” Here is a screen shot of that interface:

Google says this give businesses the ability to:

• share daily specials or current promotions that encourage new and existing customers to take advantage of your offers.
• promote events and tell customers about upcoming happenings at your location.
• showcase your top products and highlight new arrivals.
• choose one of the available options to connect with your customers directly from your Google listing: give them a one-click path to make a reservation, sign up for a newsletter, learn more about latest offers, or even buy a specific product from your website.

Posts will show up in both Google search and maps results. Here are examples of how Google Posts come up in search:

For more details, check out this help document.

Google Posts first launched in January 2016 under the name “candidate cards,” but they were only available initially for political candidates to post content that would show up for relevant political search queries. A couple of months later, the feature was available for a very limited number of small businesses. It has slowly expanded since then until today’s full launch.

Postscript: These Google Posts seem to expire within seven days after posting them. Businesses are reporting that they get a notice on the sixth day that the Google Post will expire.

Brodie Clark from optimising.com.au share a screen shot with us of this notification: