Google Maps Guide Brianna (highlighted by Barry Schwartz) noted in the new forums that restaurants (and hotels) can add discreet links to menus and reservations. This is done by adding a field with a specific label (either Menus or Reservations) to the Additional Details section of your Places account and inserting the appropriate URL. You can see an example of a linked Additional Detail field in the Place Page listing for Lombardi’s Pizza.
Dave Rodecker of Relevant Ads, points out that this feature also supports Coupons, your Facebook page and your Twitter page:
It is unclear how much traffic come from deep in a Places Page. I doubt very much. What is intrigueing is that now we might be able to tell. It will be a simple matter to create a vanity url for the reservations and menu pages that will track the local traffic that is being sent.
Obviously the Additional Details fields support a number of phrases that trigger the distinct links. I wonder what other specific tags might also trigger the results?
[...] Mike Blumenthal is also on the case [...]
Pingback by Google PlaceLinks - A SEOpportunity? — April 23, 2010 @ 12:48 pm
Great find. This will help me list my facebook page, my twitter page, my myspace page. I can now link these on my Google Places local page so my customers can find more information about me. I can integrate my social media sites on Google Local/Google Places. Awesome.
Any other benefits I missed? Any SEO benefit in this??? Does this help with Ranking at all? Any benefit??
Let me know.
Comment by Joel (3 comments) — April 23, 2010 @ 1:40 pm
Any SEO benefit in this??? Does this help with Ranking at all? Any benefit??
Comment by Joel (3 comments) — April 23, 2010 @ 1:52 pm
Certainly driving more traffic to a menu or reservation page brings very well qualified visitors. As for SEO or Ranking benefit, I can’t see how. It may somehow influence your social graph.
Comment by Mike (2486 comments) — April 23, 2010 @ 1:54 pm
Are you aware of “how” they are inputing the url. are they using an href or just starting the link with http ?
Comment by Todd BRyson (3 comments) — April 23, 2010 @ 8:19 pm
Thanks for the heads-up on the new features. Place pages may be making a bigger impact than I originally anticipated.
I’ve spoken with a handful of consumers in the last couple weeks who were looking at our Place Page and believed they were viewing our website. Each was asking prices of arrangements in the photos and I was puzzled at first, since the products on our site are clearly priced. I had to direct them to the link to our site on the Places Page.
Are you hearing of anyone else experiencing this?
Comment by Cathy (62 comments) — April 23, 2010 @ 9:38 pm
Hi useful post Mike thx…
I’ve actually been using discreet links on my clients listings for a few months now and they work fine for most url’s I’ve used…
What I have found is what ever text you put in the left hand column of the additional details becomes the anchor text for the url you include in the right hand column (as shown in Mike’s example above, you’ll notice the text field is identical to the anchor text).
It seems to work for deep linking. I include specific urls of my client’s sites, for instance to a particular brand page of a clothes shop website and that worked fine.
I don’t think there is any limitations on the urls you can use (that I have found so far).
As for format – I just use http://yoursite.com/yourpage and that works, no need for href etc…
Cheers
Comment by Andrew Baker (10 comments) — April 24, 2010 @ 1:15 pm
@Todd
Just the HTTP
@Cathy
I have not been looking for signs of Places Pages impact although I will go take a look and let you know what I see. I assume that it is very industry specific.
Comment by Mike (2486 comments) — April 24, 2010 @ 6:02 pm
Mike,
I wrote a similar article to yours at around the same time, it details how I added multiple discreet links to my Google Places page.
http://www.seobocaraton.com/seoblog/post/Google-Places-%28Local-Business-Center%29-Discreet-Links.aspx
P.S.
Two of those links are showing up on the main page for and not the details page for my LBC account.
Comment by BRS Guy (1 comments) — April 25, 2010 @ 2:08 pm
Cathy,
That is so interesting that you are experiencing this! Thank you for sharing your story about this as I have wondered in the past whether the prominence of Place Pages would wind up with them becoming a website competitor. Seems like they are, and though I have yet to personally encounter an incident of this, I can really see how this may become a problem.
Comment by MiriamEllis (610 comments) — April 26, 2010 @ 3:50 pm
[...] Maps has been updating a number of features of late, some small and some not so [...]
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