Opening hours, location, menu, recommendations … who has not ever looked for relevant information about a restaurant? If you have ever done it, how many of them were in the first position in the search results? Probably none.

Google is working to make finding a restaurant’s website from a search must be increasingly hard. The algorithm is obsessed with directly capturing all traffic, so the first results are always obtained by the Google My Business tab and Google Maps, or by Tripadvisor or El Tenedor itself. Consequently, restaurant websites are losing traffic, and their positioning worsens.

Today, Google My Business tab has everything the user needs: reservation management, location, hours, phone, reviews, photos uploaded by other users and even an estimate of the average visit time. All very visual and comfortable so that, from the mobile version, the user can quickly access what they are looking for. If we add to this that it always occupies the first result, it is normal for Google My Business token gets more than 50% of the visits.

What is Google’s strategy?

As you know, Google has always kept in mind the term ‘one-click’ so that users find what they are looking for just a click away. Now it goes further and establishes the ‘zero-click’ concept as a priority so that it is not even necessary to click and access an external page. This is where Google My Business tab comes into play and its priority as the main search result.

Even though the search engine always attributes its changes to the improvement of the user experience putting the consumer on the podium of their preferences, behind is a clear monopoly strategy. With all the data collected from Google My Business tabs, Google gets beneficial information to feed its big data..

Today, food is an excellent digital product and Google wants to take advantage of it. Thus, the user has at a glance everything they need, and restaurants have a very easy to use platform that allows them to:

• Knowing the target audience in detail.
• Always come out at the top of the search results.
• The investment involved in a website is avoided, in terms of design, programming and maintenance.
• Adaptability to any device and browser already included..

And this is just the beginning of all that is to come. The king of the search engines is already thinking about how to monetize this service and it seems that he will be incorporating new payment CTAs, through which he will manage the takeaway and delivery services.