Google Business Profiles Can Now Generate Menus from Photos

Every business under the sun is pushing new AI features, but Google has just released one with a tangible time-saving benefit. Now, by using only a photo of your physical menu, Google makes it possible to automatically generate a digital copy to upload to your Google Business Profile. This is more than uploading a PDF; this is Google taking each menu item and ensuring it is specifically highlighted as its own unique product, allowing for direct optimization for each potential keyword search.

There are several caveats with this however, many are mentioned by Google in their help page. This new automatic menu creation is a generative AI feature and is currently considered “experimental.” Google wrote, “Important: Creating a menu from a menu photo is experimental. This feature is currently available for select regions and languages and may not be available for all users. To use this feature, you must agree to the Google Generative AI Additional Terms of Service.” Google goes on to describe the method of uploading your menu items as follows: “You can use AI to quickly convert a photo of your menu into a detailed menu, which includes item names, descriptions, and prices. With a detailed menu, potential customers on Search and Maps can easily discover what you offer.”

Not only will menu items show up as justifications on your listings, which makes them more attractive to prospective diners, but menus have also been shown to provide a significant ranking boost. Google specifically checks menu content for matching restaurants and other businesses to power queries. In an accidental discovery of just how impactful this is, one Google Business Profile restaurant menu had a serious typo on it. Instead of listing “caesar salad,” it erroneously listed “caesar kitchen.” By rectifying this one mistake, the listing saw the local rank for the search term “caesar salad” shoot up overnight from position 71 to position 1!