Google My Business is Testing “Services” Justifications
Colan Nielsen

The services menu in Google My Business allows you to add details about the different services your business offers.  Up until yesterday, the fields would only show up on mobile as a tab that either display as “services” or “menu” (which looks silly for any non-restaurant businesses).

GMB services menu

The service menu can be created directly in the Google My Business dashboard.

GMB Service Menu - justifications

What is a “Justification”?

In early 2019, Google started to display Google post highlights in the 3-Pack and Local Finder.  Joel Headley confirmed that at Google, they call these “justifications”.  We are seeing these more and more lately and have learned a lot about how they function.  There is currently justification for Google posts, Google reviews, and website mentions. Here’s what they look like in the wild. GMB website mention

gmb justification

New “Services” Justification Test

Up until yesterday, we didn’t see a ton of value in adding services to the GMB dashboard. At best, they added an additional section to the mobile version of the GMB business profile, but there is no ranking benefit to adding the services menu.

Our perspective changed yesterday when we spotted “services justifications” in the wild. Here’s what they look like. These are being pulled directly from the “services” section inside the GMB dashboard.

services justification

GMB services justification

So What?

Service justifications, like the other types of justifications, can have an impact on CTR. For instance, in the weed control example above, if the user is specifically looking for broadleaf weed control, the listings with the “Provides: Broadleaf Weed Control” will have an increased chance of getting clicked on and/or contacted.

The second takeaway is an emphasis on the idea that if Google My Business has a feature, you need to be utilizing it, even if the benefit isn’t immediately clear. So make sure to utilize all the GMB features.

To learn more, follow the discussion at the Local Search Forum. 

Colan started in the local SEO world back in 2010 and is also deemed a product expert by Google as a Top Contributor on the Google My Business Forum. He is a contributor to Moz’s famous Local Search Ranking Factors survey and is a former Google MapMaker Regional Lead. Read Colan's full bio here.