Table of Contents “Who has X near me?”This customer FAQ has become all the more important since 2020, with the public relying heavily on the Internet to help them remotely source goods and services while spending as little time as possible on business premises.Google gets this, and is taking one step after another to position itself as the intermediary for this foundational query. Becoming the “transaction layer of the Internet” is how my friend and colleague David Mihm of Near Media describes Google’s aims when it comes to online shopping and the role they plan to play in it. As local businesses everywhere have scrambled to implement e-commerce and delivery features, Google has been very busy, too, with its own developments.Perhaps the simplest of all these opportunities to get started with is Google My Business Products — a sort of virtual window shopping interface that can really spruce up your listings. Located in eligible GMB dashboards and with an output that’s visible on several local search interfaces, this feature could not be easier to use.This illustrated tutorial will walk you through adding your most important products and services to Google My Business Products, building your confidence that you are keeping apace with local search expanding to encompass local shopping search.Who can and can’t add Google My Business products to their listings?If you sign into your Google My Business dashboard, and you see a tab in the left menu for “products” you are eligible, with the exception of the products listed here that you can’t upload.If you lack the “products” link but see that your competitors are using it, it’s likely that they have a Google My Business category you’re missing. Use the GMB Spy Chrome Extension to see all of the competitor’s GMB listing categories so that you can consider adding whatever is necessary to prompt the “products” option to appear in your dashboard.Google’s documentation of this feature states that it’s intended for small-to-medium local businesses, and that they prefer large, multi-locations brands to provide product data through Local Inventory Ads. It would be helpful if Google would update this page to give a numeric cutoff between a medium-sized business and a large chain.Meanwhile, if you’re marketing a restaurant, please note that Google prefers you to use the popular dishes and menu functions for showcasing your offerings, rather than the products option. Also for restaurants and service-oriented businesses, be aware that adding items to the products function will delete any meal or service menus that have been created for you by a third party. You’ll need to recreate them with the aforementioned, Google-based menu function or the Services tab in your GMB dashboard.What can be added as a product to Google My Business listings?You can list the following as products: MerchandiseVirtual inventory, like softwareServicesThere’s a strong argument to be made for listing your services as products, in fact, because they are more visible and have those strong, linked calls-to-action. As far as I’ve seen, Google has no problem with you having both products and services listed, so you can do both!How to add products to your Google My Business dashboard in 10 easy stepsTo keep yourself organized, create a spreadsheet (or make a copy of this freebie I created for you) containing all the products you plan to list, and include a field in it for: Product imageProduct nameCategoryPriceDescriptionButtonLinkBEFORE YOU BEGIN: Note that the last product you add will be the one that shows up first on your profile. So, save the best for last. Made a mistake? You can delete a product and re-add it as the newest item, which will…