Category: Google Place Pages

Mike Blumenthal dissects Google Places’ latest redesign: According to Mike: “They include a strong call to action (review, upload photos) and clear sense of priorities as to what is important going forward – even coupons now have a higher visibility – more user generated content, more understanding of your social circles intent and a greater desire, at least in the hotel industry, to use Places to “close” the sale.” While reviews are still a big part of Places, my initial impression…

I haven’t pontificated on last week’s changes that removed most of the third party data from displaying on Google Place Pages – I basically agree with David Mihm’s assessment of the situation – this is an interface update, not an algorithm update. This article by FT.com implies that Google removed 3rd party reviews from Place Pages because of potential legal threats from sites like Yelp. This may be, but I am not 100% convinced. After all, there are numerous review…

Phil Rozek has a great post on The 1st Annual Google Places Freakshow: “Whatever your ranking, I suggest you pay attention to how your Google listing comes across at a gut level.  Ask friends, family, or customers who haven’t seen it to take a look and give you their first impressions.  You’ll ensure that YOUR business won’t ever make it into a future Google Places Freak Show.” Kind of reminds me of the curious case of Dr. Robert G. Aycock.

Justin Sanger, CEO of JoinHere, an interesting new SMB “Social Engagement Platform”,  puts it thus: “A G+ and G Places integration will create the most powerful discovery, publishing, and social suite the marketplace has seen to date. The G maps algo will undergo more change as content contribution, followers, and +1s begin to affect discovery – rightfully so, as we move closer and closer to an algo that mimics the real world. A G Place will be the heart of G+…

My first spotting of a Google Place Page – actually a link to a Place Page – in Google Plus.  According to Greg and Mike, Jeff Huber, GOOG’s head of Local, said SMBs will eventually have G+ profile pages.

From Mike’s post today entitled Some Days Are Shittier Than Others: Someone uploaded pictures of poo on my business listing and I can’t get them off!!! Fortunately Google took notice and brought out the pooper scooper. Of course this probably only happened because Mike’s post brought it to GOOG’s attention which will likely leave a large amount of businesses with their own Place Page issues even more frustrated than ever about their inability to get similar quick action. Warning: Parents…

I have been hearing reports from a variety of sources that over the past few days more rich snippets have started to show up in Google Places. Using rich snippets on your site to get your content into Place Pages has been a hit-or-miss affair – mostly miss.  At SMXWest, Google’s Carter Maslan told me that they had been working on improving the algorithm to better index and display rich snippets that they find on websites.  Over the past few…

Mike Blumenthal has some concerns re Google Places’ new user review feeds: When was the last time you heard a reviewer ask for an RSS feed of their reviews? Well maybe some reviewer some place did… but then I suggest you follow Google’s instructions and go find it. Instead of attaching it to the obvious place in your main Google profile or making the existing review list more visible it is is hidden in your Hotpot area. Hidden?  More like non-existent.  I…

Greg Linden uncovers a potential new Google Maps ranking signal: direction requests: …certain very large search engines have massive logs of people asking for directions from A to B, hundreds of millions of people and billions of A to B queries. And, it appears this data may be as or more useful than user reviews of businesses and maybe GPS trails for local search ranking, recommending nearby places, and perhaps local and personalized deals and advertising. Geeky paper on the…

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