Google rolled out two major updates to Gemini on 26 June 2026, and if you run a local business with a Google Business Profile, this is one announcement worth slowing down for. For the first time, you can connect your live GBP data directly into Gemini and create a dedicated “business notebook” that stores your documents, brand voice, and business context – turning Gemini into something closer to an AI assistant that actually knows your business inside out.
In this post, I’m breaking down exactly what these features do, how to set them up, why they matter for local SEO, and how I use tools like this to deliver better results for my clients as a London-based SEO consultant.
What Are the Two New Features?
Google announced two connected updates inside Gemini:
1. Google Business Profile integration in Gemini: you can now link your live GBP account to Gemini and query it in natural language. Reviews, business hours, performance data, and profile details are all accessible in real time, without exporting anything or navigating separate dashboards.
2. Business Notebooks in Gemini: a dedicated AI workspace where you upload your own business files (invoices, spreadsheets, brand guidelines, presentations) and Gemini studies and remembers them. Every time you open your notebook, Gemini proactively surfaces insights, flags action items, and generates content – without needing to be re-briefed.
Both features are currently rolling out globally for single-location businesses. Google Workspace accounts and users in the UK and EU will get access soon.
Feature 1 – Google Business Profile in Gemini
What It Actually Does
Previously, understanding your GBP performance meant logging into a separate dashboard, navigating menus, and piecing together review themes, insights, and performance data yourself – a genuinely time-consuming task for any business owner managing operations solo.
With this integration, Gemini pulls that data on demand. You tag @Google Business Profile in your prompt and Gemini gains live access to your actual account. It can read reviews, summarise sentiment themes, identify gaps in your profile, and even make direct edits – like updating special holiday hours – through natural language commands.
How to Set It Up (Step-by-Step)
- Go to gemini.google.com and make sure you’re signed into the same Google account you use to manage your GBP.
- Type any question about your business, or use the
@Google Business Profiletag directly in your prompt. - Follow the on-screen prompt to link the two accounts. Done.
Setup takes under two minutes. Once linked, the tag becomes your shortcut to pulling live business context into any Gemini conversation.
Real Prompt Examples You Can Use Right Now
Review sentiment analysis:
@Google Business Profile look at our reviews from the last two months. What specific products or services do people mention loving, and how can we highlight them in our marketing?
Operational update:
@Google Business Profile we are closing early this Friday at 3pm for a team event. Can you update our special hours for this Friday?
Discovery prompt (start here if unsure):
@Google Business Profile what can you do? Give me a few example prompts I can use to understand my business.
Feature 2 – Business Notebooks in Gemini
What It Actually Does
Think of this as giving Gemini a permanent memory about your specific business. Instead of re-pasting your brand context into every conversation, you upload your files once and Gemini holds onto them. The notebook becomes default context for every business-related task.
Ask Gemini to write a promotional email and it will write it in your tone, using your product names and actual services – because it already has your brand guidelines and previous documents to draw from. Google also says the notebook proactively surfaces insights when you open it, flagging trends in your review data and suggesting action items before you even ask.
What You Can Upload
- Business documents (service menus, FAQs, price lists)
- Spreadsheets (sales data, booking records, inventory)
- Presentations and pitch decks
- Your website URL (optional, for broader business context)
- Brand guidelines or tone-of-voice documents
How to Set It Up
- First connect your GBP in Gemini (as above).
- Once connected, you will see a prompt to create a business notebook.
- Click Connect, confirm your GBP, and optionally add your website URL.
- Upload additional documents from there — start with your most important reference files.
Why This Matters for Local SEO – The Bigger Picture
These updates are bigger than they look on the surface. Here is what they mean for local business visibility in 2026 and beyond.
Google Business Profile Is Becoming an AI Signal Source
Your GBP is not just a listings page anymore. It is increasingly a structured data source that feeds AI-generated answers, Local Pack results, and Google’s AI Overviews. Reviews, Q&A content, your business description, and your service categories are all being read and interpreted by AI systems to decide who to recommend.
That means keeping your GBP accurate, complete, and actively managed is now a core part of your local SEO strategy – not an afterthought. The Gemini integration makes this significantly easier by surfacing what needs attention through conversational prompts rather than dashboard navigation.
AI Tools Now Read Your Reviews Better Than You Can at Scale
One of the most labour-intensive parts of managing a GBP is reading reviews regularly, identifying recurring themes, spotting negative patterns early, and feeding those insights back into your marketing and operations. At volume – even 30 to 50 reviews per month – this becomes genuinely difficult to do manually with any consistency.
Gemini’s GBP integration does that synthesis in one prompt. For any business serious about reputation management and local SEO performance, that is a meaningful operational shift.
The Business Notebook Addresses AI Content’s Biggest Weakness
The most common complaint business owners have when using AI for marketing is that the output does not sound like them. It’s generic, it misses their specific services, and it reads like it was written for nobody in particular.
The business notebook feature directly solves this by giving Gemini permanent reference material – your brand voice, your actual services, your tone. For small businesses without a dedicated marketing team, this is a significant quality-of-life improvement.
AI SEO in 2026: Why Your GBP Optimisation Strategy Needs to Evolve
Search behaviour has changed substantially. A growing percentage of queries – especially local and commercial ones, now trigger AI-generated answers rather than a traditional ten-blue-links results page. Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are all drawing from the same pool of authoritative, structured, well-optimised content to build their responses.
This is precisely what Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is designed to address. Where traditional SEO targets ranking positions on a results page, GEO focuses on ensuring your brand, services, and expertise are accurately represented in AI-generated answers – across every major AI search platform.
Your Google Business Profile sits at the centre of this. It is one of the most trusted structured data sources Google uses to verify business information for AI responses. An incomplete, inconsistent, or poorly managed GBP is not just a local SEO problem – it is an AI search visibility problem.
The new Gemini features make active GBP management faster and more accessible. But knowing what to manage, what signals to prioritise, and how to structure your profile for AI-era search requires a deeper layer of strategic expertise.
How Nurul Nahid Helps You Get the Most From These Features
As a London-based SEO consultant with 7+ years of experience across local, technical, and AI-first search strategies, I sit at the intersection of where these Gemini updates are most useful – and where they still require expert guidance to apply correctly.
Here is specifically how I can help your business extract real value from these tools.
GBP Audit and Optimisation Before You Connect
Before linking your GBP to Gemini, the profile itself needs to be in good shape. Incomplete categories, inconsistent NAP data, missing service descriptions, and thin photo sets all undermine both traditional local rankings and AI search visibility. I conduct a thorough local SEO audit of your GBP before any AI layer is added – so the data Gemini is reading is accurate, complete, and structured for maximum signal value.
Review Strategy and Sentiment Analysis at Scale
The Gemini review analysis feature is powerful, but acting on what it tells you is a different skill set. I help clients build systematic review acquisition strategies, respond to feedback in ways that reinforce topical authority, and feed review themes back into their content and service page optimisation. This is core to my local SEO service, review signals are one of the most direct ranking factors in competitive local markets.
GEO and AEO Optimisation for AI Search Visibility
Getting your business cited in AI-generated answers – by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, or Gemini itself – requires more than a complete GBP. It requires structured content that answers real user questions authoritatively, consistent brand representation across trusted sources, and schema markup that helps AI systems understand what you do and who you serve.
My GEO Optimisation service is built specifically for this. I audit how your brand currently appears (or fails to appear) in AI search results, identify the content and citation gaps, and implement a structured programme to close them.
Business Notebook Setup and Brand Voice Documentation
For clients who want to use Gemini’s business notebook for ongoing content creation, I help build the foundational documents that make it work well, a clear brand voice guide, structured service descriptions, audience personas, and tone examples. With the right inputs in the notebook, the content Gemini generates is genuinely on-brand and saves significant time in the marketing workflow.
Ongoing AI Search Monitoring and Reporting
AI search results are not static. The sources Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity cite change as new content is indexed, as brand authority evolves, and as competitors invest in the same space. My ongoing SEO services include monitoring your AI search presence alongside traditional rankings, so you have a complete picture of where your business shows up across every major discovery channel.
What to Do This Week: A Practical Action Plan
If you have an active Google Business Profile, here is a sensible sequence to follow:
- Go to gemini.google.com and connect your GBP. Setup takes under two minutes.
- Run a review sentiment prompt covering the past 60 to 90 days and read the output carefully.
- Check whether any suggested improvements are things you can action immediately – hours, business description, missing service categories, photo gaps.
- Create your business notebook. Start by uploading a service or product list and a short brand voice note.
- Test a content prompt, a short promotional email or social caption – and compare the output with and without the notebook active.
Google is also running a live demo on 30 June 2026 at 9am PT / 12pm ET with the product managers behind these features. Worth attending if you want a guided walkthrough.
If you want a strategic layer on top of all of this, ensuring your GBP, your website, and your content are genuinely optimised for how AI search works in 2026 – I am happy to have a conversation. You can book a free discovery call here, or explore my full range of SEO and AI search services.
The Bottom Line
These Google updates lower the barrier to using AI for everyday GBP management – and that is genuinely useful for any small business owner short on time. The review analysis capability alone is worth setting up this week.
But tools are only as good as the strategy behind them. Knowing which signals to prioritise, how to structure your GBP for AI search, and how to build the kind of topical authority that gets your business cited in AI-generated answers – that is where experienced guidance makes the difference.
If you want to see how businesses I have worked with have used structured local SEO and AI search optimisation to generate measurable results, take a look at my case studies. And if you’re based in or around London, my London SEO services page covers the full scope of what I offer for local businesses competing in one of the UK’s most competitive search markets.
AI search is not the future. It is the present. The businesses investing in getting it right now will have a compounding advantage over those who wait.
