Google Business Profile Integration

Getting Started with Google Business Profile

Bullseye Store Locator now integrates with Google Business Profile (GBP)!  GBP is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. By integrating Bullseye Locations with your GBP account, you can ensure that your location information is accurate across the web, and keep your information up to date in one place. With Bullseye and GBP , you can simplify your life, and help customers find you.

Here is a set of instructions along with links to more detailed information that will help you configure your Bullseye account to use the Google Business Profile integration. It’s important to understand and follow our instructions and recommendations to protect your data in GBP .  Locations can be duplicated or changed in GBP if these instruction aren’t followed.

Integrating Bullseye with Google Business Profile requires that you have a Bullseye account with location information, and an existing Google Business Profile account. This document assumes that you have locations configured in both Bullseye Locations and GBP .

We’ll get into more detail below, and in-depth instructions are available in our Help Docs. In summary, the following steps are simple, but very important for successfully integrating Bullseye Locations with GBP : 

Step 1: Connect Bullseye to Google Business Profile

Step 2: Link Locations

Step 3: Compare data

Step 4: Resolve discrepancies.

Step 5: Set up Masking if necessary.

Step 6: Update locations. 

1. Connect Bullseye to Google Business Profile

To add the Google Business Profile (GBP) integration subscription to your Bullseye account, contact our sales team at 800.606.1415, or via email or chat from our website. 

Once the subscription has been added to your account you’re ready to link accounts. You’ll find a new  Google Business Profile tab on the Setup page at Settings>Setup .

Click on  Link Account, then sign in to or choose your Google account that you use GBP with. You’ll need to allow Bullseyelocations.com to connect to your Google account.

Once the accounts are linked, you are ready to configure options for the integration. 

First, you’ll see the checkbox that allows you to put Bullseye’s Google Business Profile module in  test mode, to ensure that no updates are made to GBP . By default, this setting is off and Google Business Profile is in Production mode. Check the box to enable test mode. When you uncheck the box, you’ll need to confirm that you are ready to put GBP in production mode, where it can make updates to GBP .

Below that,  you’ll see the checkbox that allows you to configure automatic updates. Don’t select this now. We suggest waiting until you’ve completed setup instructions in this document and have run a manual update or two.  Turning this on now, would start updating locations immediately and could overwrite data in GBP. You can always update locations manually if necessary. 

Next, select the  default Category to add new locations to. GBP requires that all locations are categorized with at least one GBP category from their existing list of categories. Here’s a little more information about categories from Google. In Bullseye, you’ll need to choose the default category from among those in GBP, that will be used when locations are added to GBP from Bullseye. 

Finally, configure fields for  masking (more information on masking follows). 

You can revisit the Google Business Profile settings page any time to update options.

2. Link Locations

The first step to successfully integrating Bullseye with GBP is linking locations between the two. The Batch Match tool searches your GBP locations for possible matches to each of your Bullseye locations. Batch Match returns a list of your locations along with possible match(es) from GBP.

In some cases, there may be more than one possible match. In those cases, you can review the possibilities and choose the correct one, or create a new location.

You can create new locations in GBP when Batch Match is unable to make a match too using the  Add New Location button. When you use the Update Google Information tool, the new unlinked location will be added to GBP. You can also add locations to GBP from Bullseye from the location detail page. While adding locations is possible, be extra careful to check for a locations existence in Google first, then add it to your GBP account, then link locations whenever possible. 

To create the link, Batch Match adds the location ID from GBP to your Bullseye locations to identify the link. This link is used to keep them in sync. Linked locations are identified on the .CSV and .XML location exports when the Google Business Profile module is enabled. Linked locations are identified with "Yes" in the GBP  column or field of the export, while unlinked locations are identified with "No." 

In the next step, you’ll have an opportunity to compare linked locations to identify and address any inconsistencies between GBP and Bullseye.

3.  Compare Locations

Comparing locations is done by running our Comparison Report.  This will show you what location information exists in Bullseye in comparison to any location information that exists in GBP . This allows you to identify any discrepancies, and make a plan for addressing them in your next steps.

It’s imperative to understand that updating GBP with location information in Bullseye will overwrite the data in GBP .

Some discrepancies you might see are:

Location names - Google Places may use different naming techniques. Bullseye location names will overwrite GBP locations, which is NOT desired. So, if naming formats differ, and you want to retain the difference, use masking to prevent Bullseye location names from updating GBP place names. Or modify Bullseye location names to match GBP . In that case, masking would not be necessary.

URL’s - You might use a unique URL for each of your locations in Bullseye, but you might use the corporate, or parent, URL across google. If this is the case, you might want to give some thought to how you want the data to be entered in GBP . You may elect to update the URLs in GBP , or you can use masking to prevent that field from updating GBP .

Empty fields - The GBP integration only updates specific fields in GBP , as identified on the location details page with the   icon. If GBP specific fields in Bullseye don’t contain any data, updating those fields will effectively erase any data in the corresponding fields in GBP . You can use masking to prevent that from happening.

Address Formats - There may be differences in the way your address information is formatted. For example, you might use Dr. in one instance, and Drive in the other. You’ll want to decide which one you want to use, and update Bullseye data to match GBP if necessary. 

The Comparison Report shows you how the data will change, so you can take the necessary steps to secure the integrity of your GBP data. Using this report, determine whether you need to update location information in Bullseye, or configure masking to prevent certain information in Bullseye from updating information in GBP. 

4. Configure Masking if needed

Now that you see the discrepancies that may exist in your data, you can choose whether or not to update all of your GBP location data with the data in Bullseye Locations. If necessary, you can use masking to prevent certain fields in Bullseye Locations (including empty fields!) from overwriting those fields in GBP by entering the Google API field names here. You can enter multiple fields in a comma-separate list - i.e. "title, websiteUri". Masking simply tells Bullseye Locations to omit certain fields when performing an update of Google information. At the time of this writing, information about GBP fieldnames can be found on the Google Developer website.

You can also define attributes in Bullseye that should be set for locations in Google Business Profile. The attributes in Bullseye must be named exactly as the attributes exist in GBP, in their fully qualified format. For example, "user.displayName,photo". To find the matching attributes in Google Business Profile, first enter a partial search term in the Include attribute in update textbox and click the Search link.

This will search the available attribute categories in Google Business Profile, and return a list of matching attribute categories. After selecting a category, you'll see a text box that you can click in to select specific attributes. You can add multiple attributes from the list, one at a time.

5. Update Google Information

Once you’ve completed steps 1 through 3, you’re ready to pull the trigger and update the location information in GBP with the location information in Bullseye. This is your last opportunity to review and resolve discrepancies!

You can use the Update Google Information tool at any time to update location information in GBP. You can also update location information for individual locations using the same tool in the location.

A few things to think about:

• GBP locations that do not exist in Bullseye are NOT added to Bullseye. So, in order to add them to Bullseye and create a link, create the new locations in Bullseye, then link them to GBP using the Batch Match tool or on the Location Details page.

• Bullseye locations that do not exist in GBP can be added to GBP using the Update Google Information tool, or the Add tool from a single location. Our recommendation however, is that you search Google for the location first, and add it to GBP . Then, link them using the Batch Match tool or through the linking function on the location detail page. If you can’t find your location via Google, that’s a safe time to use the Add tool.

NOTE: Adding locations in Bullseye without checking for the existence of that location in GBP or Google first can result in duplicated or incorrect GBP information.