Google My Business has rolled out a new attribute that allows businesses to identify if they are Black-Owned. This makes it the third attribute highlighting ownership type in GMB; Women-Led and Veteran-Led were earlier releases. This was first spotted within the Google My Business API on Monday, June 29th, 2020.
Interest in Black-Owned businesses has soared since George Floyd was killed at the end of May. Google Trends data illustrates the need for this new attribute and shows a drastic increase in a number of search terms related to Black-owned businesses including ‘Black-owned businesses near me’, ‘support Black-owned businesses’, ‘Black-owned coffee shops near me’ and ‘Black-owned restaurants near me’.
Users have also been submitting requests to Google My Business directly—some on Twitter:
Can we add a feature or category to GMB profiles to allow users to filter for Black-owned businesses near me on google maps?
— Amber Robinson (@AmberRobin5on) June 6, 2020
The Black-owned highlight is displayed on desktop and mobile but do not seem to impact search results.
Here, you can see how the attributes are displayed:
Desktop display:
About tab on mobile:
When performing searches for ‘women-led’ terms, another GMB highlight attribute, Google is surfacing results that have these words in their reviews and on their website, not surfacing businesses based on their attributes.
If you want people searching for Black-owned businesses to discover you on Google, make sure this is included in your website and reviews content in addition to enabling the new Google My Business Black-Owned attribute.
Yelp rolled out a similar feature in early June, but it is a searchable attribute.
