The date your business opens is an important trust indicator. When your business is more established, people are more likely to trust you. This is the reason Google has “Opened on Date” as an option to select within your Google Business Profile. Google wants customers to know how long your business has been operational.
The opened on date is often left blank within the Google Business Profiles that our SEO Agency audits. I’m going to tell you where to find the opened on date, why it’s so important for local SEO along with common mistakes we see with inputting the proper information for opened on date.
You can find the opened on date at the bottom of your Google Business Profile (see screenshot below). If you click on “Info” and scroll to the bottom, you will find the business date at the very bottom of the page, underneath the business description. According to Google, only the year and month of your opening date are required. You can enter a date up to one year in the future if you intend to open a business at a future date.
Point of Confusion
The opening date is when your business opened, not when you moved into a new office location. For example, The Media Captain moved into a new office location in 2021. We still put our opening date as July 1, 2010 since that’s when our business was established. A lot of people get confused about this so I wanted to clarify.
Importance For Local SEO
When you do a Google search and hit the local pack, you will see it says, “Years in Business” directly under the reviews. This information pulls directly from the opened on date within Google Business Profile. This is a trust indicator that can help differentiate your business versus competitors. This can lead to more clicks from your GMB listing. Aside from reviews that populate, this is one of the most important piece of information that displays with the local search results.
In Closing
I can’t tell you how many Google Business Profile pages I audit that don’t have the opened on date. You can stand out from competitors by filling out this information. Don’t forget to go to the bottom of your Business Profile and add the date you started the company. This is a trust factor that won’t go unnoticed.
Jason Parks is the Founder of The Media Captain, a Top 1% Agency in the U.S. according to UpCity. He frequently writes on SEO, PPC, eCommerce and Social Media Marketing. He's helped hundreds of businesses grow via digital marketing since opening The Media Captain in 2010, He's been featured in well-known publications like the New York Times, Entrepreneur.com, Search Engine Watch and more.
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