Google Seeks Small Business Owners as Trusted Testers

Small business owners now have an opportunity to try out Google My Business tools before they’re rolled out to the general pubic. Google My Business has announced its “trusted Partners” program as a way to test new products and features. Elisabeth Powers Google My Business community manager, posted in the Google My Business Help forums recently that the company is looking for beta testers from the business community. The new program applies not only to new products and features for Google My Business but in the Google Ads department too.

She further emphasized that this is a huge opportunity for all US-based small and medium sized businesses.

Google Ads too plans to introduce several new features in 2016 to improve their overall advertiser experience. And before they release them to the general public, they would like them to be tested by the kinds of businesses that will be using them regularly. Google is hoping to then gather feedback from these businesses to make the features even more useful. The company has outlined a few requirements which need to be met by a business before it can partner with Google, however.

The companies should:

Be willing to test out early stage products and features, and use the products consistently throughout the period of testing
Use a business to customer (B2C) model and not be a marketing agency
Have less than 100 employees.
Be willing to provide feedback to Google’s product team
Be willing to sign a confidentiality agreement
Be preferably an existing Google My Business or AdWords/AdWords Express user (but Google stresses this is not a requirement.)
If you’re interested and if your small business meets the above requirements for Google Trusted Testers, then you can go ahead and fill out the form in order to apply.

Google My Business is a feature which connects you directly with customers. It manages how your business information appears across Google Search and Maps. It is a free, user-friendly branding tool enabling customers to find your business more easily and enabling you to tell your business’s story.

Google AdWords is an online advertising service for businesses wanting to display ads on Google and its network. The service enables you to reach a much larger group of customers and grow your business past your current customer base.