Mike Blumenthal frets that with Google Local Business Center now becoming Google Places and adding a lot of nifty new features:
As part of Google’s rebranding of the Local Business Center to Google Places, they have created a new help area and a totally new forum area for uses of the Google Places center.
The forum move is particularly dramatic and likely to be very disruptive. Google has archived the very active threads relating to LBC issues and replaced them with a single thread.
Mike reads the semantics tea leaves and declares:
It seems to make perfectly clear, that despite the many problems and issues with flaggings & the verification process that only Google can solve, a user will not be able to expect help from Google.
As always Mike’s blog is an indispensable guide to understanding Google Maps.
One Response Comment
Spot-On Andrew…and having had a couple of issues my own self in the LBC, I understand completely!
Latest figures show that about 20% of all searches at Google go thru the MAPS area…which by my reckoning is something in the neighbourhood of hundreds of millions a day….
Ya’d think then that G would at least offer up some real time help area too, eh…what with the new advert model or those TAGS that they’re going to roll out to the PLACES areas too…
…sigh…
Jim