• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, April 29, 2020

Uberall, in response to the pandemic, has released a free service called Uberall Essential, which brings real-time location data and listings management to business owners across directories and local search platforms such as Google, Apple Maps, Facebook, and Bing.

The company also offers a paid version, Uberall Listing. In fact, there are more than one million customer locations being managed globally with the paid version. The free product, Essential, doesn't offer all of the same functions, but it does covers critical features.

With numerous studies estimating between 80% and 90% of small businesses in the US have been impacted, Uberall wanted to help partners and their small business customers by offering this product. In Europe it's aimed primarily at healthcare, but in North America partners have considerable flexibility in terms of the types of business to which they provide the service.

Multiple Uberall partners offer Uberall Essential to their customers. Uberall works entirely through partners in North America. 

Online directories are still important, although many consumers have increased the amount they spend online with brands and retailers.

This has prompted consumers to switch from requesting driving directions, a proxy for store visits, to information about local website visits as a primary source of information. As people are stuck at home, their principal tool for local information has been the internet, even more than before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Driving directions are off in the aggregate by more than 50%, according to Uberall data, although that will likely change in the near future as states start to relax their stay at home rules.  

Uberall Essential, the free version, enables local businesses to manage online listings for all business locations; serve up on major search engines, navigation services and business directories; update important location information, keywords, images and videos in real-time; publish updates and promotions using Google Posts; monitor impressions, clicks and more from one dashboard; and give multiple users access and advanced user management authority.

As cities relax their stay-at-home and business closure guidelines, businesses will need to communicate new hours and operational details to customers.