Category: Google Places

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The End of Manipulating Google Places

Google Places Pages
Google Places Pages

Very quietly Google has changed Google Places to remove the ability to manipulate a listing for organic performance. This action has very quietly slipped under the radar, but the changes are big for businesses.

First, this last month, Google sent out notices to all Google+ Local businesses that duplicate listings of the same business would not be allowed. Google immediately disable access to all Google+ Local pages (also known as Google Maps pages and Google Places accounts) to email addresses that did not carry the business domain or were not recognized by Google as clearly being the account owner by email, or having the business phone number or carrying the registered address. This effectively locked out all third party account managers and update services.

Google then advised all account access users that the main account owner – not even the originator of the account, would have to allow access to any users from the parent account. Additionally that any approved users would then have to manage the account for two full weeks before transfer of the account could be done.

By making the linking and transfer process so complicated Google has effectively locked our all parties except the one account owner. Of additional important note is that Google has been removing one by one the items a business owner could actually change on their account.

Over time, Google has removed the ability to add keywords and to craft a message that helped the business place locally. Google even removed the ability for a monthly promotion as well as comments from the page owner.

With this most recent update Google has now forced all Places pages now into the format of a true Google+ page. No longer is the look and feel different of a Places page from a postable Google+ Business page but identical and one that you can now post to with a third party app like HootSuite.

These huge changes to who can own and update the page, what the page looks like, and how you interact with the local page have now made Google+ Local pages unable to really be optimized for organic placement. This bad for businesses, but great for Google. Google gets more people forced into Google+ and now nets out manipulation of local results.

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How to Place Locally on Google – National Service Provider with Several Locations

Google Partner Badge
McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

In our series on placing for local searches on Google, this is our last option and one of the toughest although there are still some smart things to do to attempt to reach local buyers. This article is for the scenario when you have a business that has one or several far flung locations but sells nationally.

Here’s what I’ve found works for location specific placements when you are selling nationally.

1. First, see our post from 4-8-14 on how to rank for one city. In this twist of one business selling nationally, again it is key to put all your location addresses in the footer of your website. If you have more than three or four locations, I would do a location page for your website and then just list the city and state names in the footer hyperlinking to your specific location page. You may have offices in only one city or two, but having the local addresses is still key. However I would add a tag line after the locations stating something like “Serving clients nationwide for 10 years.” Make sure in your content that you are talking about your nationwide services.

2. Here a page for each state may not work or may be too cumbersome and the truth is that a nationwide provider will be at a disadvantage when compared to a local provider for location specific searches. Make sure that any city you are located in however, does still get mentioned by location as you do still want to place locally for your branch offices.

3. Setting up a Google+ Local page for each location is really key for organic placement where you have a branch office. Take some time and put some thought into what you will write and make sure the pictures and videos if you have them (highly recommended) are unique to that location.

4. Where you can, make sure you validate your Google+ Local page. A PIN will be hard copied mailed to the physical address. Your staff needs to be vigilant to find this PIN envelope. It will look like junk mail and will have NO Google ID on it. Nothing will show on Google until you validate and then typically a two to four week delay after verification to show in the results is not uncommon.

For nationwide providers the reality is that to be visible locally you will need to move into paid search if you want prominence on local placement. There is simply no way to scam Google into showing a Google+ Local page or for that matter even be able to validate one where you do not have a physical location. By setting up your AdWords program to target local city names or state names with dynamic keyword insertion your ad will appear up at the top of the page for these important location searches just not in the organic section.

One caveat on this. I have found that when you can own the state organically, Google will preferentially show your results in many cases for all cities in that state. So it is not a bad thing to create location specific pages but the content must be unique, of value, not keyword heavy and be state specific.

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How to Place Locally on Google – One Business Multiple Cities

Image of a Google Maps exposure on Google.com.
Image of a Google Maps exposure on Google.com.

In our series on how to place locally on Google I will be looking at the next easiest scenario which is one business with physical presences/offices in multiple cities. This is also a fairly easy scenario to place locally on and similar in some ways to the actions that you would take for the one business with multiple locations in one city.

Here’s what I’ve found works for location specific placement.

1. See our post from 4-8-14 on how to rank for one city. In this twist of one business multiple cities, again it is best to put all your location addresses in the footer of your website. If you have more than three or four locations, I would do a location page for your website and then just list the city and state names in the footer hyperlinking to your specific location page.

2. Again as in the single city with multiple location pages a unique page for each location is in order linked from the all locations page. What is very important to understand is that the content on these locations pages MUST be unique. You cannot simply copy the one location and then drop in the new location. Try to write something of value about each unique location.

3. Setting up a Google+ Local page for each location is really key for organic placement. Take some time and thought into what you will write and make sure the pictures and videos if you have them (highly recommended) are unique to that location.

4. Make sure you validate your Google+ Local page. A PIN will be hard copied mailed to the physical address. Your staff really, and I mean really, needs to be vigilant to find this PIN envelope. It will look like junk mail and will have NO Google ID on it. I have had many clients have significant delays in validating and have required multiple sends of the validation letter as it is simply missed. Nothing will show on Google until you validate and then typically a two to four week delay after verification to show in the results is not uncommon.

This scenario and the one on Tuesday are fairly simple to enact but very important. With mobile searches being delivered preferentially local content the activity from local searches and local exposure is simply too huge to discount.

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Google Cracks Down on Fictitious Google+ Local Reviews

I knew that eventually Google would address the growing problem of SEO firms selling services to create fictitious Google+ Local reviews, and finally they have. Here is a quote from Google:

“For business owners:

  • Be wary of an SEO or reputation management service that promises to generate reviews for your business. We’ve seen companies make up fake glowing testimonies — and we’ll take them down.
  • We don’t take down negative reviews for simply being negative for anyone, regardless of any other relationships with Google. Instead, we encourage you to utilize the owner response functionality to respond to the review and address the user’s concerns.
  • If a third party claims that they know how to remove reviews from Google, don’t believe them. Google does not work with any third party reputation management companies and we certainly don’t remove reviews unless they violate our guidelines.
  • Don’t set up a computer or tablet device in your place of business for customers to leave reviews on site. Consider sending a reminder e-mail so customers can review on their own time.
  • Remember, we don’t allow you to give customers free gifts or discounts for leaving reviews.” Read the full disclosure for business owners and SEO on this Google page.

Based on what I see, it appears that Google is not only scanning for fake reviews, but actively and aggressively targeting Local Pages that use them, but interesting enough appears to be tracking the IP address. Take a careful look at the section that says don’t put a tablet or computer in your place of business – that means IP tracking.

Additionally Google has turned to crowd sourcing to catch the offenders. If you know a competitor is doing this or suddenly has tons of reviews magically you can report them to Google for review.

“If you see a review that violates our policy guidelines, you can report the review to us by clicking on the gray flag icon next to the review in question. You’ll be taken to a form where you can tell us why you’re flagging that review. Please note that we won’t follow up with you individually, but we do review every piece of content that is flagged.”

This information is very important for website owners. I know of several who have been approached by firms selling these exact review services. They are stating that they set up individual Google email and Yahoo accounts just for your review creation, work to mask the IP address and then create a glowing supposedly untraceable review. Be wary of these types of services, is it worth being banned from Google+ Local pages to try to scam Google?