We’re always looking for new ways to help you more easily discover, explore and deploy recommended APIs for your mapping needs. Starting today, Google Maps Platform developers at small businesses and large companies alike have access to new features and integrations with other Google products to enhance their end-user experiences and back-end operations. 

Easily get started with Tailored Recommendations

If you’re new to Google Maps Platform, you’ll now see guided steps, based on your industry, from initial setup to implementation. For example, if you identify your industry as retail, you’ll receive relevant starter examples and documents to get you up and running right away. These recommendations will give you a jumpstart to explore the best products or solutions based on your industry.

Keep your business locations automatically updated with Locator Plus

It’s more important than ever to help customers find your business. Starting today, you can keep your store details updated with the Locator Plus solution. Locator Plus allows you to easily import business details from your Business Profile, explore, customize, and deploy place-based experiences with just a few clicks. 

So now, a change in the business details of your Business Profile will be reflected in the store locator on your website. These changes can include hours, contact information, photos, service options, and more.

Take, for example, Altostrat–a fictional store with eleven locations in the greater New York area. The owner, Val, deployed a store locator on her website. She decides to give all her employees a break over the holidays and closes the stores for a week. She goes into her Business Profile to edit her operating hours for that week.1 With the Locator Plus solution, Val doesn't have to manually enter the same Places details again on her website. Any updates to store details on her Business Profile will update in the Locator Plus solution that is live on her website. This new integration gives Val peace of mind that customers have the latest information when searching for her stores–regardless of where they get their information.

Enable quick and easy appointment bookings

Help your customers book appointments easily by embedding Reserve with Google booking capabilities into your map.2  Reserve with Google offers an end-to-end appointment booking flow, and connects users to a variety of services. Customers using a store locator are showing interest in visiting a store. By providing an option for bookings, right within the locator, you can create an easier booking process. Plus, it can offer you more insight into potential store traffic and a better understanding of services requested.

Deploy instantly with Google Cloud

Starting today, we’re expanding ways for you to quickly update and roll out your store locator. In the Locator Plus solution, you can capture the location of every single store you want to show users – all within one map. With Google Cloud, you can now embed this store locator on your application. Previously, developers needed to integrate hundreds of lines of code to embed a store locator that captures each store location.

For example, Val from Altostrat imports store details from her Business Profile into Locator Plus. Using Google Cloud, she can easily embed the store locator into her website and app–showing users where all of her eleven stores in the greater New York area are based.

Better understand the impact of your implementation

A new store locator analytics dashboard will help you better understand the impact of your implementation and generate insights from your data. The analytics dashboard provides a picture of how well your site visitors are engaging with your store locator. You’ll be able to measure your performance week over week, including number of views, number of interactions with Search and Place Details, and overall engagement rate. The dashboard uses anonymized data to provide important benchmarks on how a developer’s implementation compares against other developers using the same solution.

This will be the foundation for analytics that help retailers evaluate the ROI from each solution. Gaining this visibility allows your team to make smarter, informed decisions.

We’re continuously looking for ways to help you get the most out of your deployments from streamlining the getting started process to integrating helpful capabilities from across Google. Ready to start exploring? Try the Locator Plus experience now. To learn more about these features and integrations, sign up for the upcoming Maps OnAir webinar.

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1 User updates are subject to moderation; updates made on Business Profile, when accepted by Google, will be reflected in Place Details. 2 Reserve with Google is only available in certain countries/regions where businesses work with a supported booking provider. If you are interested in Reserve with Google, but are currently not working with a Reserve with Google partner, please direct your provider to submit their interest by completing this form and review our documentation to see how they can get started. If you don’t already work with a booking provider, you can see eligible providers in the Bookings section within Business Profile Manager.