March 2022

Google Business Profile Functionality.

Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) has partnered with Google to link your Google Business Profile and ATDW profile. Supported by Wine Australia, through the Australian Government’s Export and Regional Wine Support Package, the functionality allows automatic updates to your Google Business Profile (Business Profile) when you make changes to your linked ATDW Profile. This functionality also allows you to view valuable Google generated statistics and insights from your ATDW account.

What is your Google Business Profile?

A Google Business Profile is the management tool for a Business Profile on Google. Your Business Profile is the summary information that appears in Google Search and on Google Maps when the name of your business is searched. Overall, it forms a valuable part of the consumer journey, including pre-trip, in-trip and post-trip, so it's pretty important that your business has an up to date and accurate Business Profile!

 

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Why you should link your Business Profile and ATDW profiles.

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By linking your Business Profiles to the corresponding ATDW profile, you can update more digital marketing channels with minimal effort, therefore saving time! For example, when you need to update a business phone number, instead of visiting your Business Profile account and your ATDW account to update the information, you can update your information from your ATDW account and the updates will automatically sync onto the associated business profile.

 

On top of this, linking your Business Profile and ATDW accounts also provides the opportunity to view valuable Google generated statistics on your business's search performance, in ATDW-Online. These simple to view and understand statistics, compared against your ATDW insights, can form a great depth of information into your business's digital performance. 


Where to find the Google Business Profile function.

The Business Profile functionality can be connected in three locations. Each location will direct you through the same process to link your Business Profile account to your desired ATDW profile/s. Please refer to the three options below. Please note that only one Business Profile account can be linked to an ATDW account. If you have more than one Business Profile account for your different ATDW profiles, you will need to make one Business Profile account a "manager account" and transfer ownership of the other Business Profile profiles to that account.

 

 

 

After submitting for review.

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  1. Update or create an ATDW profile.
  2. Click the "send for review" button.
  3. The webpage will redirect to a prompt to connect your Business Profile.
  4. Click the blue button to "Connect Google My Business".

 

 

"Insights" section.

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  1. Click "Insights" in the black menu.
  2. In the orange menu, select which ATDW profile you want to connect to your Google Business Profile.
  3. Select the "Google My Business" option from the dropdown list. 
  4. Click the blue button to "Connect Google My Business".

"Account" section.

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  1. Click "Account" in the black menu.
  2. Select "Integrations" and "Manage your integrations" from the orange menu.
  3. Click the "Google My Business" option in the Add integration section.

Linking a Google Business Profile.

Once you have navigated to the Google Business Profile functionality, the linking process is the same.

 

 

Please note: If your business has a pre-existing Business Profile account, you will log in using those details. If you have never used Business Profile or created an account with them before, you will need to click "create account" and then Add or Claim your Business. You may be required to verify your business by one of Google's pre-determined methods.

 

Google will navigate you through a series of questions to confirm you trust and provide permission for ATDW to access your Business Profile account. By accepting these permissions, ATDW will not be accessing or controlling your business information, ATDW updating and replacing old information with any of your ATDW profile updates. Please see FAQs for more information.

 

On the successful connection, you will be able to see your Business Profile is linked. A single business profile and location can only be linked to one ATDW profile and location. If you have more than one business profile, you can link your other business profiles and locations to the other ATDW profiles, as long as they are all under the same accounts. You can disconnect the entire account or individual business profiles at any time and this will stop the auto-updates to the profile.

Login to your Google Business Profile account.
Step 1. From ATDW-Online, click the "Connect Google My Business" or "Google My Business" button.
Step 2. A Google sign in page will appear in a new pop-up window on your screen.

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Sign in to your Google Business Profile account.
Step 3. In the available field, enter the log in details for your Business Profile account, or create an account if you don't have one.

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Follow prompts and approve permissions.
Step 4. Navigate through the required log in steps. Review the terms and permission requests and accept as required.

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Your Business Profile account/profiles are now linked.
Step 5. Once all the steps are completed, your accounts will be connected and you'll be redirected to you ATDW account.

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Using the Google Business Profile functionality.

Once your Google Business Profile is linked to your ATDW profile, applicable updates to your linked ATDW profile will sync onto the corresponding Business Profile when those changes have been reviewed and accepted. 

Applicable fields that will sync to a Business Profile include; Business Name, Business Type, Address, Phone Number, Website URL, Description, Opening Hours, and Product Image/s. 

 

Google Insights:

Through the ATDW website, you will also be able to view key Google insights from the performance of your Business Profile. These will appear under the 'Insights' section. To find this information, click 'Insights' on the black menu and select the profile you want to view insights on. Google insights may not appear immediately and take some time for ATDW to receive the information from Google. 

 

Google insights can include the amount of views and searches generated for your business and where these engagements have come from.

 

Disconnecting:

You can disconnect either a Business Profile or the account from your ATDW profiles/account. If disconnecting, you will not be able to view your google insights. To disconnect a profile, use the 'insights' section and select the profile/s to disconnect. To disconnect the entire account, use the 'account' section and disconnect Business Profile via the integration feature. 

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More Information

  • FAQs
  • Report an issue
  • Sync Error
  • OPENING HOURS SYNC
  • Description Requirements
  • ACCOMMODATION SYNC

Please visit our Frequently Asked Questions document for more information on the Business Profile functionality. This document includes information on the sync process, what permissions ATDW requires and why, as well as other Google Business Profile information and support.

 

Business Profile FAQs

 

ATDW strive to resolve any issues to our platform and functionality as soon as possible. Below is a series of known issues for the Google Business Profile functionality that we are working to resolve. We will post more updates in each section, when available. 

 

If you have an issue that is not present below, please get in contact with our team. 

 

Contact Us

Google recently deployed an update to their API which has affected the ATDW sync to Business Profile. This is a known error with a fix in progress. The expected behaviour of the sync is to have any updates made to an ATDW profile to overwrite the contents in the connected Business Profile. The current behaviour is that the updates are not overwritten. 

 

One of the known sync issues has been identified and resolved by ATDW. This is regarding description requirements. Please visit the respective section for more information. 

ATDW Opening hours are required to be entered a specific way for an effective sync to your Business Profile. This is because of the way the Business Profile structures their opening hour information for optimal and simplified display on Google. 

 

To have your Opening Hours effectively sync to your Google Business Profile, please enter the individual days into ATDW and not select the "everyday" option. I.e. you need to enter the 'Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday' hours and so on. Please refer to the below graphic on the recommended display.

 

A sync error was identified as occurring when a description exceeds 750 characters in length. This includes numbers, letters, spaces and symbols. 

 

ATDW have built a logic into the system to allow any descriptions that exceed 750 characters to be truncate down to the required amount for a Google Business Profile. The logic will look for full sentences to shorten the description to so it does not stop mid-way through a sentence or word. 

 

It is recommended to curate descriptions with the information you want on your Google Business Profile at the beginning of the description text. Using the description concisely, in paragraph and sentence form is also encouraged. 

The 'Holiday Accommodation' category was removed by Google in their Business Profile section. This is what ATDW used to sync the ATDW Accommodation Profile updates to Google Business Profiles. 

 

This created a known error when trying to link profiles together, including displaying the message "An error occurred creating a Google My Business location."

 

ATDW will release a fix to the sync in April 2023 in response to Google's update.

 

For any additional support or enquiries, please contact support@atdw.com.au