A reader sent a query several weeks ago asking for a time line of developments for Google Maps. I sent him over to the Wikipedia article on Google Maps as a possible resource. I subsequently went there myself and realized that it had not been updated in since the end of 2007 and that many details that I considered important were missing.
It seemed that to understand Maps, the competitive landscape and the future direction of local, it was necessary to have a strong record of the developments in Maps for the past few years. I decided to take the time to update the article at Wiki with those additional Maps developments from 2006, 2007 & 2008 that I was aware of. Here is that list. If I am missing any please let me know: (more…)
Google Maps has been an exhilarting product allowing many to gain a better understanding of the world around them with constant innovation. Sergey Brin noted in his annual Google Founder’s letter that “after the launch of Google Map Maker in Pakistan, users mapped 25,000 kilometers of uncharted road in just two months”. That’s pretty cool stuff. It has also been a product that seems to bring out the worst in people looking to gain a leg up with spamming and hijackings.
The Swine Flu epidemic is a perfect case in point and it shows the contradictions in Maps in bold relief. Google Maps was used to track the spread of the epidemic around the world. The major press and a bevy of blogs widely covered this beneficial use of Maps that helped inform and educate.
But given that Maps is open and easily open to abuse, there are now searches like Swine Flu NY, NY that return spam in Maps of the most exploitive sorts. SafetyGearandMore.com were not the only ones to utilize Maps for their commercial advantage as several others across the US did as well. As Dickens noted in The Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities English novelist (1812 – 1870)
Google doesn’t frequently advertise their services or products in traditional venues very often. Apparently there are plans to advertise Chrome on TV and they ran their billboards for Goog-411 in out of the way places in September of 2007. In late April, Google introduced profile results that included personal profiles as a OneBox in the main Google search results. To promote this service Google offered up 25 free business cards to the first 10,000 respondents with profiles (thanks to Steve Hatcher of AxeMedia.com). Mine came in the mail today:
Along with the free cards came a promotion from iprint to buy an additional 250 cards for $19.97. Ironically, this is an 18% premium over their current rate for full color cards that include address, phone, business name, etc. One would have to love Google an awful lot to buy a set of business cards that forces the user to the web to get critical contact information. That being said, I am glad to get the cards for free as I stopped carrying business cards about the same time as I threw away my fax machine. These 25 should last me a very long time.
It is not uncommon in Google Maps for one business location to have multiple business listings. They come from Google’s many data providers, readers who create new records before checking for existing records and from the Local Business Center itself.
There has always been confusion about how to handle these duplicate records as the wrong click could remove the business from Maps completely. Even though you thought you were suspending the duplicate you might be suspending all of your records. The process is counter intuitive to the point that in the past even Google has had trouble describing the process of duplicate record removal.
Google has now published an authoritative description of the duplicate removal process (updated 5/9):
Disclaimer: Before you get started, it’s important to remember that a listing contains information merged from multiple sources. Suspending a duplicate listing could cause the original listing to be removed from Maps, because all sources of information for both the original and the duplicate might be suppressed.
Choose the listing that you’d prefer to keep in your account. Make sure that you have all your enhanced content (photos, business hours, description) attached to this listing and this listing only.
For duplicates of this listing in your account (the ones you want to remove), remove all enhanced information. Keep only required information, like the business title, address, and onephone number.
Submit these changes and verify as necessary.
Now, sit tight for a couple of weeks – just for good measure.
Delete the duplicates from your account, choosing Remove this listing from my Local Business Center account.
That’s it! Now you should only have one entry to control the details of your business listing. Be patient with updating certain kinds of information, like pictures — they should eventually appear in Maps.
Kudos to Google and Joel for posting this instruction.
