Google is launching a new feature that allows businesses to identify themselves as Black-owned on Google Maps and Search listings.
Since the start of the Black Lives Matter protests, consumers have indeed looked to spend more money at these businesses to show their support for the Black Community.
Google has seen “a surge in online searches for Black-owned businesses” and has now taken steps to make it easier to identify Black-owned businesses on both Google Maps and Google Search.
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Today the company announced it is launching a new feature that allows businesses to identify themselves as Black-owned. Once set, the tool will show a black heart over an orange three-striped background logo on listings of Black-owned businesses.
The black heart logo will be shown on results through both Google Search and Google maps.
To apply for the badge, businesses will first need to be verified on Google. It is not yet clear how Google intends to verify if businesses are indeed Black-owned or not.
The new tool comes as Yelp, one of Google’s main competitors for business search, introduced its own Black-owned icon after seeing more than 2.5 million organic searches for Black-owned businesses between May 25th and July 10th.