Dave Rodecker of Local Splash uncovers the latest tweak to Google Place Pages, the ability for business owners to add custom links such as Twitter and Facebook Profiles:
Dave looks into the Matrix and sees SEO:
The hyperlink is natural, meaning it is does not indicate no-follow, and opens into a new browser window; though we aren’t really expecting to see a PageRank benefit. More likely, we may hope to find a fast tract to getting the URL to appear as an additional web reference citation, a local seo benefit.
Then again one of our sharp readers, Arjan, notes the fact that Google blocks Place Pages in their robots.txt file, so sorry Dave, but looks like no SEO here.
Mike Blumenthal is also on the case
As is Barry Schwartz
Apparently these links are called “Discreet Links”. Here’s Google Map Guide Briana’s mention of them.
7 Response Comments
Andrew, this is a nice find. I’m almost to the point of hiring someone just to keep up with the Google Local – err I mean Places – changes!
Thanks for the tip
Hi Andrew,
The page is also blocked by the robots.txt, so indeed there won’t be any PageRank benefit.
However, some extra traffic or promotion for your social stuff is always welcome..
Good call Arjan. Post updated.
This is awesome. I was just on Mike’s blog. I can now link all my other pages, and all my other social media links in my google places page.
I was looking for a place to put all these pages myself, rather than waiting for google to crawl and rank all my other social pages.
Wait no more. Add it yourself.
hhhmm..what can I say.. I am speechless with this article. Too short but its something I haven’t read anywhere else.
So that means that spreading links with address and phone number will not help in increasing local rankings on maps anymore?
sad..
I HATE Google places right now. They imported a bunch of bad data from Superpages and other sites and now our 29 locations are all messed up. I’ve gone through trying to claim each one but it’s a time consuming process with no help from Google at all.
Google Maps & Places is a real-world consumer application, Google needs to get their act together and put some serious support behind it or some other company will come along and whip them. (Bing?!)