Mike Blumenthal has a great recap of a recent webinar held by the Google Places team where they answered a lot of frequently asked questions. Here are a couple of my faves:
Q: Can we use call tracking phone numbers in our listings? if not, why?
A: No, please use the most local phone number available. As I mentioned in the presentation, Google aims to provide the most useful and accurate information for users, so a local phone number is preferred.
Q: Do we list all the practitioners on our wellness centre Places account or have each business set up their own Places account? the phone number and address is the same for everyone. 18 massage therapists – acupuncturists etc. — thanks so much
A: If each practitioner is meant to be individually contactable or individually reviewed by users, then you should you should create one listing for the actual Wellness Center and listings for each practitioner. Each practitioner can create their own individual listings so that he/she can add more personal details about his/her specialties.
6 Response Comments
The local practitioner answer suggests that I might be able to get away with listing the individual computer repair technicians for my pc repair biz, as long as they are meant to be individually contacted and reviewed.
Yes, the ability for each individual within an organization to have their own listing sure seems to open up pandoras box for google, suprised they came out with this type of statement
Does Google Places automatically take your website information and insert them into Google places, which consequently leads to the fact you are seen in Google Local/Maps/Places? Or do you HAVE to do that manually in order to see your place in the map?
I am really curious about this.
You can get local phone numbers for most markets that have feature call tracking so they should work fine and meet Google’s requirements.
I just found out that my account is suspended becuase there is one action that i need to take, saying that i did not follow the guidelines, but it does not tell me specifically what is wrong. What can i do?
Sounds like you need a local seo consultant