Tag: Google Places

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Google Gets Serious About Building Business Reviews for the Web

Two women
Google is going after building local business reviews by real people.

Just this last week I joined the ranks of Google’s local reviewers. Google has quietly put the word out that it wants to enlist its own approved writers to start building reviews on local businesses. Google calls their program “Local Guides”.

You too can apply to be a writer. I am not sure what their criteria is to be approved, but as I am already reviewing local businesses and write regularly for many venues, I was approved the same day.

Here are the perks you’ll get based on the amount of reviews you write.  There is no money involved, just bragging rights, really.

That being said, what is interesting is to identify is that Google considers reviews done by real people to be important. So important that it is enticing a wide variety of individuals to beef up the number of business reviews in the Google Places arena by creating a special program complete with enticements for 5, 50, and 200 review levels.

If you need help with reviews for your own business and you are not getting the action you need from Google’s Local Guides I invite you to review our Brand Booster program to help build online reviews and web visibility.

 

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Google My Business Explained

Cover of my own Google My Business Page.
Cover of my own Google My Business Page.

If you have been using Google Places or Google+, Google has a new property call Google My Business that you need to be looking at and migrating to.

First notice that even if you have been posting on Google+ pages you may not have a Google My Business site. For that matter if you’ve had a Google Places or Google Maps page, you may still need to re-verify to migrate that page to Google My Business.

Here’s what I’ve found out. I have a number of Google+ pages that I routinely post to as well as a personal Google+ page. I even had one Google Places page. When I set up my own Google My Business page, it was a different URL than any of them. Sigh… that means I had to start all over in building a fan base as any of my existing pages did not migrate into the new Google My Business page.

The Google My Business pages even look different. You’ll know you have one if over the cover image you see things like your office hours, your address, and website URL. You can see the cover image of my own in this post and view my site online.

Google is really pushing the Google My Business pages. My Google AdWords account rep even told me this past week that Google AdWords will be doing away with the ability to add business addresses manually in AdWords and using only the Google My Business  page for locations in the near future. This means that it is time to get going on embracing this new Google product.

Personally I hate that the migration did not allow me to pick up one of my existing pages about my business that had a nice number of followers, but this is Google, it is their way all the way.

So, better get prepared for the future, as it is clear that Google will want to only deliver Google Maps and Google organic results pointing to a verified Google My Business page in the very near future.

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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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Improving Your Rank in Google’s Local Listings

Man's hand pointing on street map
No Kidding Google Knows Your Business Location!

Local listings on Google.com can make or break certain types of businesses, but did you know that when you drop in placement there may be some things you can do to remediate your drop.

Here’s what I recommend you look at first after your ranking has dropped:

1. Make sure you review, understand and fully embrace Google’s Places Quality Guidelines.

2. You must link to a specific address – no post office boxes.

3. Google wants a local phone number not your vanity number or a 1-800 number.

4. Select one category at the minimum from Google’s own list of categories. Even if you provide permanent makeup not tattoos, the correct category for you according to Google is tattoos. Provide other choices using the custom category option.

5. Here’s a big one: “Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing.” So if you don’t ever meet your customer face to face, you will not be able to get Google+ Local placement and should not expect to rise in the rankings or placement.

6. Be aware that Google is cracking down right now on duplicate listings for Google+ Local Places; trying to weed out fictitious accounts or those that have previously gamed the system trying to get better location specific placement by using fake or bogus addresses. You can no longer use your mother-in-laws address as a store location just to get placement in that city.

With Google Local providing an excellent avenue to drive traffic to local stores, but with Google’s improved understanding of your real business location, it is getting nearly impossible to “game” the system as many were previously able to do.