Apple Announces Business Connect, a Tool to Help Businesses Gain Visibility

Today, Apple Maps gets a new tool that will help the service, which has been around for more than ten years, compete with Google better: business owners will now be able to update and manage their own information on the platform, including crucial information like business hours and location, photos, logos, special offers and promotions, and more. In order to accomplish this, the company is introducing a brand-new web site called Apple Business Connect, which enables companies to manage their presence across Apple’s 1.5 billion devices from a single dashboard.

Apple Maps has been waiting a while to offer the service. Despite being introduced in 2012, the mapping service had long relied on a condensed system, Apple Business Register, to update Maps listings with updated data. In order to give consumers access to additional company information, ratings, and reviews, it also used third-party data from partners like Foursquare, Yelp, and Tripadvisor. Comparatively speaking, Google has permitted business owners to manage their listings since 2005, despite the fact that its product—currently known as Google Business Profiles—has undergone multiple rebrandings since then.

As Apple Business Connect debuts, Apple promises it won’t delete its Yelp integrations. Customers will be able to choose Yelp as their supplier for tasks like making an order or seeing a restaurant’s menu, for instance, and will be able to see Yelp photographs and reviews in the company place cards. The new method will enable business owners to now add the crucial information they might be missing to their listings, creating listings that are richer, more complete, and more recent.

Business owners will be able to update their business place card with essential details like the opening and closing times, phone number, address, and more, along with a “about” page, after completing a verification process.

To make it easier for Maps users to find their business when searching, they can now also alter the category of the business and even add subcategories. Additionally, they have the option to alter the details that are displayed in the “Good to Know” section of their listing, which provides useful information about a location such as whether it is “good for kids,” “has free Wi-Fi,” “offers free delivery,” “is wheelchair accessible,” and similar things.

The owner can also relocate the map pin to a more accurate location if the listing’s address is incorrect.

Additionally, certain company listings on Apple Maps include a “Action” button that enables a client to perform an action, such as making a hotel reservation with Booking.com, placing an order for groceries with Instacart, or, more recently, locating parking with SpotHero. Now that Apple Business Connect is available, the company owner can add their own unique custom actions.

For the first time, the listings can also be tailored to provide limited-time special offers and incentives, such meal specials or theater tickets. These updates, or “showcases,” may contain some illustrative text, a picture, or even a unique action for the users to perform. Use of these is uncharged.

Apple will also collaborate with partners like Walmart to improve their business place cards in novel ways. For instance, shoppers can access a “text to shop” function by touching a “message us” button in the app when they visit the Walmart location card. The program that enables clients to communicate with a business via iMessage, Messages for Business, will subsequently be accessible to them.

After authentication, business owners can also specify which team members are permitted to edit their data and, if necessary, set up their accounts to update several locations.

The main motivation for interacting with the product is to maintain the business information up to date, but Business Connect will also provide insights that let users see how their place card is doing over time. They can view these in an insight dashboard to find out how customers find their establishment and how they interact with the place card.

Despite the fact that many users of Apple devices still favor Google Maps over Apple Maps for a variety of reasons, Apple notes that the redesigned place cards won’t solely be available in the Maps app. These upgrades will spread throughout Apple’s ecosystem, improving company listings in various apps like Siri Spotlight, Apple Wallet, Safari, and others.

The Business Connect platform appears to be laying the groundwork for some sort of future venture in that area, even though Apple claims today that it has no immediate intentions to monetise this system to allow owners to enhance their listings in some way, like adverts. Apple has recently demonstrated a greater interest in upending the Facebook-Google duopoly and the digital advertising sector. According to reports, Apple’s privacy reforms have improved its own ad business elsewhere on mobile. It wouldn’t be shocking to see Apple suddenly considering a position in the search advertising industry, especially if it could use its iOS platform and numerous capabilities, like Siri Spotlight, to assist it.

Apple Business Connect is launching to countries around the world as of Wednesday, initially in the following languages: English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.