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Google is rolling out a new “Asian Owned” badge for US businesses that will appear in Search and Maps. The purpose of this new badge is to make it easier to find Asian-owned businesses in the user’s area.
It appears as a red flower (opens in new tab)business owners can adopt the optional new badge by first switching to the corresponding badge Google Business Account (opens in new tab). Under My Business, owners will go to View Profile and then click on Business Information. By scrolling down to the More section and clicking “From Business”, they will be able to enable the “Identified as Asian Owned” feature. After you hit save, the red flower icon will appear on the location’s Business Profile in Google Search and Maps.
We reached out to Google and asked if there are any plans to expand the identifier internationally. Officially, there are plans to expand the Asian-owned label to “ad-supported publishers” on Google’s Display & Video 360 marketing platform within the next few weeks, but nothing for other countries.
We’ll update this story if we hear back from Google.
Support local business
As of July 2020, Google has consistently introduced identifiers for small businesses run by historically marginalized groups in the United States. Black businesses were the first to be singled out. Then there were Latinos, veterans, women and, more recently, LGBTQ+ businesses.
Leanne Luce, Google’s Product Manager for Search, said in the announcement that the purpose of the badge is to support local communities that have been affected by recent events such as the pandemic and to thrive. COVID-19 has, tragically, caused many small businesses to close across the country. Luce also cites “targeted acts of violence” in the Asian-American community as another driving force behind this new support.
To further promote growing businesses, Google also announced that it is expanding its partnership with the US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce (USPAACC) to help “10,000 Asian-owned small businesses” learn digital skills through Grow with Google initiative.
Map updates
Google has developed many interesting features in Maps applications aimed at both businesses and everyday people. In fact, several were announced back during it Google I/O 2022 conference.
In Maps, some of its features have been renewed as such new and improved bike navigation. Now cyclists will be able to see what traffic is like on the road as well as how steep or windy the roads are. We still miss them Immersive view However, something that would allow people to look inside restaurants before visiting.
For businesses, Google has implemented a new AI to look for any errors with listings on Maps, i.e. opening hours. The machine learning model looks for business profiles that haven’t been updated in a while and tells the owner to update their information.
But these tools are only the tip of the iceberg, as Maps had many hidden tools. We recommend checking out our list of five things you didn’t know Google Maps could do.
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