From a management point of view, one of the more annoying attributes of the new Google Questions & Answers product is that it is only live on Android via Google Maps and  in mobile browsers on iOS and Android.

There is a are several hacks to allow you to see and respond to this feature via your desktop.

You can view the Google Q&A on your desktop by spoofing the browser user agent to an appropriate mobile device. Here is extension for Chrome to do just that (h/t to Stan Kolev of Pleper for the tip).

Download the extension, set it the mobile device and voila….

You now can see and play on your desktop:

As noted by Sergey Alakov on Twitter, you can also use the Chrome developer tools. This might be an even easier tactic.

From the View Menu

• Select More Tools > Developer Tools from Chrome’s Main Menu.
• Right-click a page element and select Inspect.

From there you can toggle the device mode:

Earlier this week, Jack Thumser of August Ash in Bloomington, emailed me about an significant uptick in Google Maps Insight’s views in a number of his Google  local listings. Michael Wallace of TallWave noted the same issue on Twitter today.

Jack’s result were across Office furniture stores, grocery stores, a grocery delivery service and a sheet metal fabricator.

The office furniture stores and grocery stores have AdWords campaigns with location extensions, but the sheet metal fabricator does not.

Here is the pattern that Jack noted as universal across all of his listings:

Given the multiple reports, I checked a 12 listing sample to see if there a similar result. Of the twelve I looked at 6 showed similar upticks but 6 also showed nothing. At least in my examples, both search and Maps showed the significant late July/ early August uptick.

I saw the uptick in retailers and restaurants. As I noted, though, only half of the listings I looked at showed the pattern. Many, like this listing, did not. 

On Twitter, Joy Hawkins suggested that it might be due to using Location extensions but while that applies to some of the listings where I saw an uptick, by no means all.

And it isn’t universal as Jack noted but the Insights views increase appeared on a large enough sample that it seems more than coincidence. The uptick that I see is across both Maps and search.

I am curious if you saw this uptick, if so is there any pattern to the category for the businesses?

What percentage of your businesses saw the increase?

Are they located within their primary geography or outside of it (ie in the burbs)?

Some other trend that you have spotted?

Here are some of my other writings, videos etc around the web:

Something Amazing Happened On The Way To A Google Review – Google’s Question and Answers is a scary thing but when you have a great business and are asking your customers from reviews, good things can happen.

Video: Last Week in Local September 5th – Mary Bowling and I go over the weeks developments in local.

The Fallacy of Google’s “Micro-Moment” Positioning– David Mihm and I have a conversation at Streetfight about the value and relevance of Google’s Micro Moments and whether this very limited view of marketing reality can help Google in their coming battles with Amazon.

Video Deep Dive: Recent major changes in the search industry – Mary Bowling and I discuss the many changes recently in the SEO industry and what, if anything, it means.

Local U Advanced is my favorite conference of the year. Not that I speak, or even that I contribute to the organization but because it’s a time and place where folks that are really interested in Local SEO and Local Marketing get together.

And not just get together in a spirit of collegiality and sharing. Everyone comes willing to learn and and everyone seems to leave knowing that they are not alone. More than one attendee has found new employment and everyone has a good time.

The venue is the historic Santa Monica Bay Women’s Club, a short walk from the beach and the Santa Monica Pier. We’ ll be staying at the Marriott Courtyard Santa Monica and have negotiated a nightly room rate of $220 for attendees if booked by November 2nd.

Speakers include Darren Shaw, Joy Hawkins, Mary Bowling, Mike Ramsey, Will Scott, Ed Reese, Megan Hannay, Joel Headley and myself.

The agenda is not quite finalized, so we are offering a great deal on admission at $549.

We will be announcing the agenda and topics on September 12th. The pricing goes up on the 12th but even without an agenda you can count on it being a great event.

Google provided me a comprehensive list of cities and the categories that are currently under the Home Service Ads & Advanced Verification banners in those cities.

This program is hard enough to keep track of with it’s many changes and the recent increase in rollout that I thought the list would help you understand more about the markets that you are working in.

For some of the practical implications see Joy’s article: Is Google Going to Remove the 3-Packs? What You Need to Know about Home Service Ads (HSAs) (the answer is no but…)

The ability post video to a business listing or place listing was mentioned last week and appears to be released. H/T to Phillip Barnhart, Director of Marketing at Nehmedia in Austin, for pointing it out.

For now the video can only be uploaded by Local Guides using Android Maps but the videos will be visible from search everywhere. A 10 second video can be captured with the Android Google Maps app or a 30 second video can be uploaded.

Apparently the feature is rolling out gradually so you might or might not see it right away.

From the announcement:

If you’re a Local Guide on Android, you can get started right now.

How to create a video when you’re at a place:

• Search and select a place on Google Maps
• Scroll down and tap “Add a photo”
• Tap “Camera” and hold the shutter button for up to 10 seconds

How to upload a video you’ve already shot:

• Search and select a place on Google Maps
• Scroll down and tap “Add a photo”
• Tap “Folder” and select a video. Only the first 30 seconds of a video can be added.

Visit the Help Center to learn more about sharing videos.

Here are other articles that I wrote this week that might be of interest:

Google As the New Home Page – One Big Tactical Guide – This one had to percolate a long time and while I was writing Google kept changing the rules. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Video Deep Dive: How to rank in cities where you don’t have a physical location – Darren Shaw of Whitespark and I discuss this perennial question for local search.

The top contributors met with Google and we were educated as to the changes that are taking place in both the Advanced Verification programs and the Home Service Ads program.

Both are evolving from the model rolled out in San Diego which required all local listings to be advanced verified.

One big change is that only businesses that will advertise will be required to go through the advanced verification process that involves independent background checks.

The other is that service area business listings in markets where the test is now arriving, will be pulled from any 3-Pack display and only shown in the new HSA finder.

Here are notes of the meeting:

What’s happening?

• The Advanced Verification pilot in San Diego and Los Angeles is changing for Google My Business service area merchants and expanding to new geos and categories for AdWords and AdWords Express customers.
• The Home Services pilot in San Diego and Los Angeles that includes both paying and non-paying service professionals is expanding to new categories and cities.

From Google’s point of view:

• Advanced verification helps reduce fraudulent listings on Google and ensures that local listings and local ads are relevant and legitimate.
• Home Services – tailored for service area businesses – makes it easy for consumers to discover, connect and hire local service professionals directly from Google, and connects local professionals with new customers when they need them the most.

Key takeaways from Tests of both programs:

• Independent verifications has been successful at identifying bad actors.
• Deeply managing advertising and targeting corresponding GMB listings is effective and scalable.
• Highest impact in locksmith and overhead doors, plumbing vertical has less risk (ATM). Actively testing auto glass repair and towing to determine its value.
• Google expects things may change over the coming months. As bad actors shift their behaviors, so will Google.

Advanced Verification:

Here is the where and what of the City and category expansion tests:

1. Locksmith and Plumber merchants signing up for Google My Business in San Diego and Los Angeles no longer need to complete Advanced Verification to be listed on Google.
   • Based on their pilot results, Google can effectively address Map spam with less impact on merchants.
   • Instead, Google is leveraging a behind the scenes approach to combat fraudulent businesses in these categories.
2. AdWords and AdWords Express customers promoting auto glass repair, overhead door repair and towing services in the San Francisco Bay Area now need to pass advanced verification.
3. In addition, all AdWords and AdWords Express customers promoting locksmith services across the whole of California need to pass advanced verification. It is expected this expansion will continue outside of California in the coming months.

Home Services expansion updates per city and category:

1. New categories have been added to San Diego and Los Angeles:
   • Los Angeles: HVAC, electricians, overhead door
   • San Diego: HVAC, electricians, overhead door, towing, autoglass
2. The pilot experience that includes both paying and non-paying service professionals is being extended to the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Seattle:
   • San Francisco Bay Area: Iocksmiths, plumbers, house cleaners, handyman, general contractors, electricians, HVAC, painters, overhead door, auto glass repair, towing
   • Philadelphia: plumbers, HVAC, electricians, Iocksmiths
   • Atlanta, Phoenix, Seattle: plumbers, HVAC, electricians, Iocksmiths, overhead door
3. Pure service area businesses are been moved from the local search results (“B-pack”) to the Home Services unit in those cities.

Other recent articles that you should take a look at for a complete understanding of these changes:

Is Google Going to Remove the 3-Packs? What You Need to Know about Home Service Ads (HSAs) by Joy Hawkins at Whitespark

Home Service Ads Alert – Read this Post

How Google Home Services can Affect You – by Dave Squires

Google Local’s Q & A feature is now rolling out to mobile browsers on the iPhone and Android. On the iPhone the feature is visible on both Safari and Chrome.

Sergey Alekov, an SEO specialist in Toronto, was first to notice the products increased visibility.

When Questions & Answers was released for local Knowledge Panels earlier this month, it was only visible from within Android Maps and only editable by business owners. Earlier last week editing was opened more broadly.

The feature has not yet rolled out to the iOS Google App or Google Maps but I assume that it will at some point show up. Probably sooner rather than later. I also assume that as Google gets more comfortable with the product it will ultimately show up on the desktop as well.

The rollout to mobile browsers and iOS make the feature significantly more visible to the public and thus much more likely to attract crowd sourced content to your Google local listing.

Now is the time to start posting your own Questions & Answers to your branded Knowledge Panel. For some ideas on how to proceed see my see my post 11 Tips to Optimize the New Google.

As Google’s Home Service Ads rolls out to more verticals and more markets¹, more and more service area businesses are going to feel the impact. While some of the details are changing it appears that Google is charging forward with Home Service Ads². The impacts go beyond those covered by in this great article: How Google Home Services can Affect You – by Dave Squires.

You need to read this post in the forum: Service area businesses no longer ranking?

Items to note.

•  It appears that when HSA is introduced to a market, that all service area businesses in the affected verticals are removed from the 3- Pack display.
•  If they pay for HSA and Advanced verification they can move to the top of the new Ad unit and show “Google guaranteed” notation.
• If they don’t, they are shown way down the new Ad unit’s equivalent of the Local Finder. Perhaps we can refer to this display as the “HSA Finder” although it might be better named Local SAB Hider or perhaps the “SAB Loser”.
• Many of the affected SABs are marching forward with getting an office, either real or imagined, to deal with their predicament. An interesting example of how Google pushing in one direction creates unintended (but predictable) consequences mucking up index quality. They just got the SAB stuff squared away.

^{1 – The verticals have been expanded from locksmiths and plumbers to include HVAC, electricians, garage door, roadside assistance, auto glass, painting, handyman, home cleaning and even appliance repair categories. And now includes the Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Stockton,  San Francisco, Philadelphia, Atlanta markets (and perhaps more).}

^{2 – I know that a lot of folks speculate that HSA type pay to play will reach all categories. While I do see Google increasing Ad inventory & exposure across the whole of the local ecosystem I see the HSA as a unique response to categories that had both high spam in their listings and in their local Adwords campaigns. The problem was so egregious that Google is going to the length of Pinkerton background checks on employees of businesses in the program. That has to be expensive. And it is an indicator of the level of problems in these categories. Imagine the press and lawsuits when one of these spammers killed or robbed someone? It was a mess and Google chose to offset their costs with an pay to play approach much like in Shopping ads.}