I come from a family of small business owners. My grandfather was an inventor and serial entrepreneur who, among many other things, built a successful machine tool company in Clarksville, Arkansas. My father then ran the Galloway Lumber Company in the same town back in the 40s and 50s. He was a charismatic man who built strong relationships with his customers—he knew almost everybody in town and could rely on those trustworthy relationships to keep the business running. As my team built the new Google My Business app, I kept business owners like him in mind and focused on connecting them with their customers. We’re proud to have built an easy-to-use, free tool that helps small business owners reach more people online and connect with their customers through Google, so they can grow their business and spend more of their time doing what they do best—running it.

The world has changed a lot since Galloway Lumber Company first opened its doors for business, and now more and more people start online to look for places to eat, visit and shop. Every month, Google connects people to businesses nearby more than 9 billion times, including over 1 billion phone calls and 3 billion direction requests to stores. When we built the Google My Business app, we wanted to make it easier for small businesses like you to take advantage of that opportunity, and turn those searchers into your customers.

Let’s look at how one small business, Khamsa, gets new customers with the app, and read on for details about what’s new: