Google is apparently testing a new, cleaner front page layout that will affect both local and regular search results. First reported by Dan Barker on March 5th, Searchnewz is reporting that they will be rolled out.  I am now seeing this new layout on Safari for Mac.

The differences:

• The removal of the underlines from all the links that appear in the search results on both paid and organic content.
• A new font style and larger font size for the titles. This results in only 55 characters visible in the title tag; the same as mobile.
• When a listing is rolled over and the KG Info Panel is show, the whole area to the right is greyed.
• Ads are now annotated rather than shaded making them more obviously ads to a color blind person and on LCD screens compared to before.

Here are some comparisons of the change before and after (click to view larger):

Note that the grey extends down the full screen when the Info Panel is selected for Barbara Oliver & Co Jewelry:
Continue reading →

Over the past few weeks, Google has been moving a large number of listings from the old dashboard to the new one. Often these dashboards held listings that were claimed into more than one account or had been claimed in multiple ways.

When there was a conflict in either scenario Google sent out an alerting email. Jade has just clarified when a user would get that email and what they should if they do.

If you recently received an email from Google that begins:

“We’d like to inform you that Google Places no longer accommodates more than one authorized owner per business location. Your account contains one or more listings that have been identified as duplicates of other listings and as a result, some of the information you provide will not be shown to Google users anymore…”

We have upgraded your account to the new Places dashboard, but we ran into one of the following complications:

In one scenario, your account and another account that you don’t control became verified for the same business using the old Places dashboard:

Additional unknown verified account(s) from the old Places dashboard

Google Places no longer supports multiple verified business owner accounts for the same business location, so we are letting you know that your account has a listing that’s a duplicate of a listing in another account. By logging into your Google Places for Business dashboard, you can view the duplicate listing, which will show a banner reading, “You cannot update this listing because it has been marked as a duplicate of another.” If you no longer want to manage this listing, you can remove this listing from your dashboard. Alternatively, you can request administrative access from the current owner of the listing using the link to Learn more in your dashboard.

It’s possible that someone else in your organization, or a third party whom you once worked with, verified the business in another account. If you don’t believe anyone else could possibly be active in managing this business information, other than yourself, you can always contact support directly to help restore your account’s access to the listing.

Or, you may have verified the page multiple times using accounts you control:

Multiple known verified accounts from old Places dashboard

You may remove the duplicate listing from the dashboard in the account we emailed, which won’t affect the information on Maps. Then, please simply use the other account to manage the listing.

Verified same business in both Google Places and in Google+, same account

You had a listing that you created on Google Places as well as a local page that you created in Google+, using the same account. You PIN verified the local page in Google+. The system now has identified that the listing you have in Google Places and the page you have in Google+ as duplicates. We have marked the listing from Places as duplicate. If you log in to Google Places, and you should see your local page (from Google+) as well as the duplicate listing, which will show a banner reading, “You cannot update this listing because it has been marked as a duplicate of another.” You can remove this listing from your dashboard, and continue to manage the business using the account with the listing which is connected to Maps.

Verified same business in both Google Places and in Google+, different accounts

You or someone in your organization used different accounts to verify the Google Places listing and the local page in Google+. If this is the case, please use the latter account to manage this page. You should be able to do so via Google+ or Google Places. You can remove the duplicate listing from the account we emailed in Google Places, which won’t affect the information on Maps.

In any of the above 3 scenarios, you can keep the duplicate listing instead of the active one if you really want.  First, remove the active listing from that account Then, you should contact our support team, who can help make the duplicate listing active again.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact our support team.

Here is a screen shot of what you will see if you fell into the Verified same business in both Google Places and in Google+, same account scenario. Sinply delete the unverified data. 

As you know I have been a fierce critic of the bad local results that came out of the Hummingbird update. Search terms that should have returned lists of local businesses would often return a branded one box that often would be complete spam.

When it was critical for a client, I reported the bad results and they would disappear after the second or third report.  Often after writing an article, some would magically disappear. But I was tracking several as markers that I hadn’t reported and those are now gone.

I am curious if others are seeing the same thing. Have the s$%%^&y Hummingbird One Boxes disappeared for you? Has Google final solved this problem? Can I finally put a lid on (at least for now)  the toilet humor?

Or was it just the few that I was monitoring have disappeared and there is still the problem of brand being such a strong signal that spam will surface?

Can you let me know if you are seeing fewer of the Hummingbird precipitated branded one boxes?

Update Friday 2/21 7:30 PM: Some comments that Google has noted that we care share about the Canadian Places Warning:

The February 21 deadline only applies to users to whom Google has sent emails.

If a user sees the message in the dashboard (but no email), deep breaths. It will be okay. There is no imminent threat. Just follow the instructions and the scary message will go away.

If a user didn’t get an email nor does he/she see a message in the dashboard, there is no action required.

To all my friends in the 51st state: Everyone stay calm. The Placopalypse is not about to descend.

Chris McCreery has reported in Linda’s blog that Canadians with the new dashboard may be receiving the  “To Keep your listing live” message from Google. This is the same message that was received in Australia earlier in the month.

Colan Nielson the Local SEO Manager
Imprezzio Marketing noted:  “Saw my first example. Hit the Submit button. Message went away”. Chris McCreary noted that his listing went to an “In Progress” status.

These sorts of messages from Google, given the lack of detail and color, seem to cause a certain hysteria. For whatever reason Google rarely tells the whole story and rarely explains these things well to the public which seems to further the hysteria.

I speculated at the time of the Australian email that “whether it is an effort to clean up listings after the upgrade or has something to do with local licensing issues, no one really knows“.

Regardless all that is necessary is that when you receive the email (or before) visit your dashboard, do the null edit and move on.

Question for those of you with Canadian dashboard and who have received this message; What verticals are you getting the message in?

With the rollout of the new Google Guidelines and the @maptavists exploits, there has been a very lively discussion about Google and whether they are active enough in removing spam and in creating an even playing field.

Dan Austin made the point with this comment. Please read his comment below prior to taking the poll. Or better yet read the posts and the comments. Do you agree?

[polldaddy poll="7818333"]

Dan’s comment:

I feel safer with potential competitors than I do with the incredibly incompetent Google, who can’t manage to maintain fairly static and benign listings without them ‘accidentally’ disappearing and reappearing with no explanation (as happened to a friend of mine over the weekend), while at the same time they’re doing everything in their power to encourage the proliferation of spam.

I think there’s an element of good faith and fair play, when the marketplace is fair. No one is out to screw you if everyone feels like the “cops” are working to resolve and prevent crimes. You can compete on your own merits. That is not the current state of affairs. Google doesn’t care about your listing, they certainly don’t care about you, you’re the product they’re selling to their advertisers.

That being said, I don’t anticipate that they’ll make it any harder than it is. I think they just need to tighten up their guidelines and actually enforce them, particularly for business segments that are incredibly spammy. Locksmiths listings are 95% spam. Lawyer listings are 70%. That is bad. They can all be verified fairly easily. I think I can say with some confidence that I have about a 99% success rate in identifying spam. I have taken down good listings by mistake, but I worked incredibly hard to get them back up as soon as I realized or was made aware of my mistake.

Let me put it another way: what’s to stop a competitor from bombing your listing with bad, fake reviews? You can retaliate, of course, which is the risk they take, but most of the bad faith I can see in previous situation isn’t between legit business owners, it’s between Google and the business community they purport to cater to. They’re coddling the spammers and destroying our confidence in their reporting mechanisms. If they want to fix it, they can, as easily as they removed the spam POIs.

Google has announced an update to their Places Guidelines and now is explicitly allowing owners to add a descriptor, via the Places or Plus Dashboard, that helps people locate the business or describes what the business offers. From the post (bold is mine to highlight the significant change):

• Your title should reflect your business’s real-world title.

• In addition to your business’s real-world title, you may include a single descriptor that helps customers locate your business or understand what your business offers.

• Marketing taglines, phone numbers, store codes, or URLs are not valid descriptors.

• Examples of acceptable titles with descriptors (in italics for demonstration purposes) are “Starbucks Downtown” or “Joe’s Pizza Delivery”. Examples that would not be accepted would be “#1 Seattle Plumbing”, “Joe’s Pizza Best Delivery“, or “Joe’s Pizza Restaurant Dallas”.

Obviously for Google to make this change, they must think that they can control the inane and insane abuse that is likely to occur. Either businss name is no longer so important in defining search results or the descriptor (which can only be added via the dashboard) is ignored or Google is so confident that they know what the business name is that they can penalize abusers.

Or none of the above and the recent decline in the quality of their local index will continue to new lows.

Update: Google has taken these down. My sense is, in speaking with him, that @maptivist views that as a challenge.

Nyagoslav Zhekov wrote a blog post yesterday detailing a long standing MapMaker abuse vector. The person claiming to be responsible, @maptivist, reached out to Darren, Nyagoslav and myself with some more examples of his MapMaker “work” which I present to you here:

Super Mega Fun Time Land Suck Balls Kim Jongun Church of God

Snowden’s Secret Hiding Place

Vladamir’s Hangout

Mormon Comedy Club

Church of Scientology aka Church with no Sense of Humor. Or Sense.

Not the Phelps Sex Toy Shop or Not Crazy Lawsuit Happy Bigots Read Matt 7

Blumenthals.com – Not the real one silly. Google is still my bit.ch. @maptivists

My “new listing” is verified (and of course being in touch with pop culture the way I am, I had to do a search to learn who Ron Burgundy was):