Google Introduces “Google My Business,” A New One-Stop Shop To Help Business Get Found Online | TechCrunch.

Google’s new suite of tools for business owners, offers a one-stop shop to for sharing business information. Called “Google My Business,” is an easy way to “get on Google”.

A bit worrying is somewhat hidden fact that this is now the default experience for anyone who is already using Google’s business-focused services, including “Places” and the Google+ dashboard. These users will now be upgraded to Google My Business, the company notes.

The new service however is a step up in ease of use and will automatically add the business information to Google Search, Google Maps and Google+. In theory this will help customers to find the business. But that we need to wait to see.

I don’t see this changing the way Google currently favours authority sites like the OTA’s in the hospitality business. Perhaps it might give small local hotels a nudge in the right direction but its along way to go to catch up, and unless the search algorithm changes small hotels will still be deposited from the top results in search.