There is a story unfolding at Google that indicates a huge shift in their thinking about Places. Google, over the past 9 months has been making significant investments in creating support mechanisms for Google Places. Yes, you read that right. But just to be sure let me repeat myself: Google has been making significant investments in creating functioning support mechanisms for SMB problems with Places.

I never thought that I would be writing the words Good and Support and Google Places in the same sentence with a straight face but if current trends continue they are approaching that benchmark. Given that they literally had next to no support as recently as early summer, this demonstrates a significant resource shift and policy change.

Good support requires good processes, good people and good tools. And based on my observations over the past quarter Google has made significant progress in local on all of those fronts. Don’t get me wrong, there is still long way for them to go but there has been a tectonic shift on every front that indicates a 180 degree change in Google’s approach to the issues for SMBs interacting with Google in the free local space.

The History

Support, or rather the lack there of, the poor product quality and the inability to fix all too prevalent problems has been a common thread amongst critics, including myself, of Google Places for a number of years. I have penned a number of screeds on the topic and not one of them showed Google in a favorable light.

The problem has always been that Google would roll out upgrades to Places while never fixing bugs AND frequently providing no mechanism to fix the resultant bad outcomes. Even if these problems were the direct result of a Google decision there was no remedy. If it affected a very small percentage of businesses then you would have absolutely no hope of a solution at all. In fact often it wasn’t viewed as bug at all. In Google’s eyes, the sacrifice of accuracy for a few businesses to see the overall improvement of the index was a switch worth making. It was just the cost of being in the large data, local listing business.

A classic example was the problem of merged businesses. A merging between two distinct businesses into a single Places page was an artifact of the merge/purge routines built into the Maps algo. Two similar businesses, located nearby would become a single Frankenstein like record that showed part from one business dashboard and part from another.

There was no easy way for Google to separate the two. Certainly there was no easy way for the affected businesses to separate them. It required months of careful upstream cleansing of the local ecosystem for BOTH of the affected businesses. It affected a very small % of businesses but if you were the one affected it could be devastating to watch your traffic dry up as your phone stopped ringing.

At the end of the day, the affected business might make their way into the forums, beg, cry and whine. Perhaps their posting was flagged by a top contributor and if they were extremely lucky an engineer would ultimately look at the situation. But it could be months or more likely never. Unless of course you managed to get the case a fair bit of publicity and the shining light of publicity “encouraged” an engineer to take a look.

Clearly Google didn’t want to provide a fix or perhaps was unable to provide a fix at the individual listing level. It doesn’t matter, there was no fix.

But now I am beginning to see a new Google Places support structure emerging that (hold on to your seat…) actually seems to be working. And in a dramatic departure from past behaviors, it is one that acknowledges that the individual Place listing is worth fixing.

The forums:

Historically the forums were a place for problems to go die a slow agonizing death… where problems would be written about but never solved. I would estimate that for much of my experience over the past 5 years in the forums less than 1 post in 5 (maybe as low as 1 in 10) would even get a response and a solution was available on less than one in fifty. If you check today you will see a much higher rate of posts being answered and many, if not all, have solutions. On some days the response rate can approach 100%. What has changed?

Staffing in the Forums: For the first time in my memory, there has consistently been at least one Google staffer and often more in the forums. Vanessa, who came on board in late summer, has responded to both top contributors AND directly to posters with reliability and persistence. She has stepped in and solved the types of problems that top contributors were incapable of solving as they involved direct Google intervention in the cluster. She has been alert to bugs and has, in several situations, stepped in quickly to be sure that a potential disaster was averted. Equally important is that it appears that the folks in engineering actually listen to her and that information is making it back into the forums.

Additional Volunteer Faces: One or two volunteers can hardly be expected to cover the hundreds of specific issues in the Places forums. For much of my history in Maps, there were very few regular folks providing support to businesses in Places and even fewer that had access to Google as Top Contributor. But Vanessa (with Joel Headley’s support) seems to have been instrumental in elevating more people to top contributor status (for example Linda B and Nyagoslav as well as others) so that the load is much more spread out. These additional TCs not only are more able to respond to the many queries but are able to alert Google to a need for intervention AND a fix.

Additional Paid Staff: In addition to Vanessa’s obvious public role, there are a new Googlers appearing in the forums from their Troubleshooter group on a regular basis of late. If Vanessa is not available, they are now filling in both privately to assist top contributors and in the public forums. A Google Press person noted to me upon inquiry:  I’m … able to confirm that we’ve invested additional resources in the Google Places forum to ensure that specialists can help answer users’ questions as needed.

The result? In the forums most posts are being responded to and in situations where a TC is unable to solve a problem a Google staffer is stepping in and providing answers and more often than not a fix.

Other means of elevating problems:

Report a Problem: With the exception of map based problem reports, Report a Problem, which came out in late 2009, always seemed like a deep, dark well for the burial of Places issues. I, a careful watcher, actually thought that the input was in fact being fed into the algo for large scale solutions and was not going to a human at all. It was either that or the largest joke that Google had ever perpetrated to get folks with Places issues off their backs.

But sometime around mid year (or perhaps earlier) that started to change. Dupes, erroneous categories and some of the other oddities (but not merges) of a Place’s listing, when reported via this mechanism, were starting to disappear within a few weeks. And despite the terribly inappropriate automated email responses, it seemed that there was something, or more likely someone, at the end of the those reports. This feature, not available in all countries, was recently also rolled out in UK, Germany, Finland and Sweden as well.

Troubleshooters: The troubleshooters, released this fall, are a self guided system that drives users through a precise description of an issue and in the end, generates a report that is sent off to Google. When first released, I feared that they were one more “piss in the ocean” effort that would collect data for engineers to determine what big data problem to solve next and would not solve the issues of individual businesses.

It appears however that not only has Google put in place backend procedures & software that can cope with issues like merged listings, it has actually staffed it with people that can operate the software. Issues are not only responded to on an individual basis but reported back out in a meaningful way when solved. It appears that there are in fact US folks at the end of the Troubleshooter system and they understand what is involved in customer support. When asked about the program Google PR said that “we’re experimenting with additional ways to offer Google Places users assistance with their accounts“.

Here is a report from a business describing the timeline of an issue that showed up in the forums shortly after the release of the Troubleshooters. Previously this sort of anecdotal testimonial had been unheard of:

Wow! pleased to announce my horrid merging mess appears to be fixed! Also revealing a whole new serp layout too with the maps and thumbnails! see it here http://tinyurl.com/3nvelt6  This is record time, I have been trying to get my badly corrupted places fixed since Oct 2010!  For you SEO pros heres my timeline for the new “fix a problem” link:

Implications & Inferences:

First and foremost there seems to be a broad understanding on the part of everyone at Google from the top down that they can’t move forward without some sort of support structure in place.

Recall that Google has shifted high level executives to focus on Google local. This shift may have started under Eric Schmidt with Marissa Mayer’s assignment to Local last October.  But soon after Larry Page took the helm in April, Jeff Huber was elevated to the inner sanctum  with a specific local portfolio. At a lower executive level,  I think it significant that Carter Maslan left Google Places this summer and it seems that Lior Ron, of Hotpot fame, appears to have taken on an increased role in setting the goals for Places. We can’t know for sure but these changes preceded the many shifts in support levels. I have to believe that they were likely instrumental in providing the necessary budget and in paving the way for making support in Local a funded priority.

As I noted at the beginning of the article good support means more than just good people, it requires good tools. I know that many problems that were once the sole province of engineers can now be solved by staffers like the folks in the Troubleshooter trenches. It appears that internally the necessary software tools have been developed that allows those without CS degrees to delve into the bowels of a business cluster and straighten out much (but not all) of the mess that is sometimes created by the algo. On the public side, the April, 2011 rollout and recent interface improvements of Mapmaker have given some of that power to the greater mapping community as well.

Too Soon to Declare Victory:

One can’t, by any means, declare victory by or for Google on the service front. Google is just beginning the process of adequate support of the SMB in Places. There is plenty left to do and plenty of messes to still clean up. Here are some of the outstanding issues:

The way that Google has implemented Places on the technical side means that any changes in the algo continue to affect Places listings in often unpredictable ways with new bugs and quirks cropping up on a regular basis.

There is still an incredibly circuitous route for an SMB to get help when going from the Places Dashboard thru the help files back to the Place page report a problem and onto the Troubleshooter.

It still takes a number of weeks for the “report a problem” process to see any affect and despite some improvements the communications back to the SMB are often less than understandable.

It is necessary for an “index push” to fix the display of many problems on an SMB’s Places page, oft times delaying final resolution of a fix for a month or more.

Reviews are a huge source of problems and frustrations and as yet, perhaps because they exist in a separate index, the problems there continue. It is an SMB flashpoint and one where Google really needs to double down on both the technology and support.

It isn’t always clear which problems should be solved in the Troubleshooters and what is the best path for specific problem resolution. Some problems like bad photos are done on the Place page, others are best done via Report a Problem and still others are most quickly solved via the Troubleshooters or MapMaker. I have trouble keeping is straight and I do this every day. No SMB can be expected to decipher it.

The Future of Support in Places:

As I noted, good support requires good processes, good people and good tools. Google seems to be on track with good people (Vanessa truly gets support and from my few interaction with the Troubleshooting staff they do as well). The tools are at least being made available internally and externally even if they are not yet easy to use. MapMaker is particularly powerful but still opaque example.

The processes are still an issue and there appears to be a huge disconnect between what happens in the Places Dashboard, where these support efforts should be focused, and the disparate support mechanisms (forums, things on the Place page, the troubleshooters in the help file) that are now in place.

Conclusion:

Compared to last year at this time, when everyone was wishing for any Google Places support in their stockings, it seems that we can now move on to asking for improvements in these process and tools. Google seems to finally be putting in place mechanisms to solve the many problems that they themselves have created. Hopefully the support that we are seeing is more than just a test and is a foundation for not just solutions but quick ones.

Long haul, to compete on main street, Google needs great service. It ultimately will be one of the things that distinguishes them from the many players in the space. It is also a “feature” that they dare not to bring into their coming battle with Amazon, Facebook and Apple.

Hopefully what I have seen over the past several quarters will not only help SMBs market their businesses more successfully and with less pain but will give Google the necessary tools to effectively compete in the local space in the future.

Related posts:

1. Goog-411 Billboard- Googles throws down the gauntlet to Tellme et al
2. Google Places: Growing Reports of “We currently do not support the location”
3. Google Officially Ends Support For QR Code in Places

Universities, hospitals, governments… it is often very difficult for them to get control of their listings in Google Places. Some of this is due to the claiming process and some due to the underlying nature of the way that Google assembles listing data. Regardless, when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work and, as this frustrated poster points out, could one day very well lead to a disaster. I was just too tired to post an answer in the forums to their query. Perhaps  one of you kind souls could help Frustrated UM out?

Yes, I’ve tried “edit” and I’ve tried “report a problem”.  Those functions are not working.  Here is what’s happening:

Many pages for the University of Montana have the wrong phone number on them.  They all have the phone number for Family Housing listed.  Therefore, Family Housing is being overrun with calls for Financial Aid, Human Resources, Mansfield Library, Registration etc.  They are also getting calls from people looking for Campus Security!  This has the potential to become dangerous.  Students are actually calling the wrong number trying to get to the Campus Police but are reaching Family Housing. Here are the locations that are wrong:

University of Montana: Financial Aid
University of Montana: Human Resouces
University of Montana: Campus Security
University of Montana: Registrar
University of Montana: Native American studies
University of Montana: School of Law

I’m sure there are more.  All of these have the same phone number listed (406) 243-6030, which is for family housing.  I’ve tried using the edit button and the report a problem button.  I’ve followed the steps but all I get back is an email that says “Thank you for updating Gizzy Pool”.  and then later another email saying “We could not update Grizzy Pool, the information could not be verified”.

I did not try to update the Grizzy Pool page (and it should say Grizzly Pool by the way).  I can get no other response.  What should I do?

Again,  before anyone tells me to try the Edit or Report a problem route, I’ve been trying for nearly 2 months with no other response except the Grizzy Pool emails

Related posts:

1. New Google Maps Layout- a work in progress but still unfinished
2. Verification Pin or Pain? Does Phone Verification Work for You?
3. Local Links of Interest

As I noted last week, Google Maps has managed to lose (more or less) the town of Rogers, MN….their “report a problem” feature notes that Map corrections take 30 days.

This widget will keep track of how long it actually takes for Google to find Rogers…the clock has started!

Will they meet their self imposed deadline? Will Rogers ever find its way back to the 7-Pack? Will they find the real Rogers?

Stop back next week to learn the exciting conclusion to this and other mysteries.

Related posts:

1. Google Maps: What Happens When You Lose a Town?
2. Maps Hybrid view misplaced (by me), not missing
3. Will free long distance service accelerate adoption?

Wikipedia seems to know, Mapquest knows, Bing knows, even Google Organic seems to know something that is a secret to Google Maps & Google Universal results – the whereabouts of Rogers, MN.

Well its not exactly true that Google Maps doesn’t know where Rogers is. It is apparently more complex than that. But real life often is. The result though is the same.

The Cabellas store that is in Rogers, MN can’t be found by Google (it sends you to Owatonna, MN). The Hampton Inn & Suites that is in Rogers can’t be found by Google (it sends you to Minneapolis). The reality is that not much that exists in Rogers including emergency services (it sends you to Burnsville ..some irony there) can be found by Google. Essentially, everything in the town of Rogers, MN 55374 is MIA unless you search on the zip code instead of the town name.

It appears that Rogers, MN might actually be two places. One , an up and coming fast growth community that is 40 miles or so Northwest of St. Paul and one, that seems little more than a road sign, that is 70 miles southwest of St. Paul. If you look carefully (ie by zip code) you can find the principle Rogers to the NW of St. Paul. I have ground checked the Rogers, MN 55374 and found that it really does exist. I am not all that confident on the other. I couldn’t find anything or anybody there to call.

The problem is that when searching in Google, the apparent ambiguity is not recognized and, for whatever reason, the not so significant Rogers, MN gains precedence and nothing shows from the “real” Rogers. Thus no place in the Rogers, MN 55374 can be found. Not the baker, the butcher, not the candlestick maker and certainly not the doctor.

I attempted to explain this whole mess via the report a problem link but somehow the choices just didn’t seem up to handling the problem. I did, in the end, manage to file a report after being booted out of the system once.

But is that really enough? Will it really be fixed in the promised 30 days?

I am hoping that Google takes pity on the poor town of Rogers, MN zip 55374 and finds them a place in the Maps world sooner.

PS Before I finished the article I did get an automated response from Google on Problem ID 94CB-A209-B92C-FD74…..

that they will send me an update once the case has been reviewed.

Here is the screen shot from Mapquest which handled the ambiguity properly:

Here is the Bing embedded map showing the Cabella Store correctly:

No related posts.

Today Google is changing the category structure and posting process in the Google Maps Help Forum in an effort to reduce miscategorization of topics and improve the quality of the help provided. All posts since the new forum was rolled out in January have been apparently been placed into the new categories:
Problems and Errors —> Map Won’t Load
For Business Owners —> Verification Issues
How Do I? —> Base Map Data

The move, while a big step in the right direction, will not really solve the customer support issues that Google faces in the SMB world.

In the current forums users typically mix questions across the categories and often cross post as they are unsure as to which category a query belongs. This move to upgrade the forums with more granularity has apparently been successful in other Google forums.

Google noted that “We’re hoping to also generate more discussion around the various features of Maps rather than simply providing a forum for transactional questions and answers”.

In the new layout, Google first asks users to identify themselves as either a business owner or not a business owner as to allow a choice to see all posts by business owners only.

The user is then asked to select one of the many new, more specific categories to post their question.   Google’s hope is that this will make it easier for them “to identify issues, find resolutions, and circle back in a more efficient way”.

-Maps User Categories:

Business Owner

Not a Business Owner

Topic Categories:

-Verification Issues
For business owners having difficulties verifying listings in the Local Business Center.

-Local Listing Issues
For users with questions about editing, adding, or removing business listings.

-Loading Issues
For users who are unable to use Google Maps because the map won’t fully load.

-Feature Requests
A place to share your ideas to help us improve Google Maps!

-Base Map Data
For users to discuss the current base map data for Google Maps.

-Driving Directions
For users to discuss best practices for getting driving directions, or to report driving direction issues.

-My Maps
For users creating personal, annotated, or customized maps.

-Street View
Discussions surrounding all things Street View!

Having spent a great deal of time in the forums, I think this change is very positive and will generally improve the overall environment of the groups and their usefulness. In many of the categories it will improve the ability of users to help each other and create more of a community feel as MyMaps users congregate or geeks talk of packet problems or firewall settings in the Loading Issues category.

But there is a limit to this strategy to improve the self help nature of the forums. When it comes to small businesses with problems in the Local Listing & Verification process, it is unlikely to be as successful as in the the other categories in changing the transactional nature of the Maps problem solving cycle. The reasons for this are several.

Firstly, SMB’s perceive, often rightfully so, that Google has an obligation to display their business information correctly.

Secondly, most SMB’s that I know are either so busy due to the struggle of surviving or enmeshed in customer support issues of their own to be willing to spend their free time in the forums. In the best of circumstances they are franticly executing their new promotion or paying their bills.

Most have an intensely focused and competitive attitude which precludes them lingering long to help others with similar issues. They have survived, as they perceive it, by their own grit, let others do the same. Most are understaffed, underpaid and even if they do understand that cooperation might produce better results than not cooperating they just don’t think that they have luxury.

By the time that they arrive in the forums they are not “grateful” for the free nature of the product but resentful of the imposition of energy and aggravation that they have gone through in their mostly futile attempts to get their listing looking right or ranking as they think it should.

These folks typically come from a world where the phrase “customer service” means talking to someone and when they are confronted with the deafening silence from Google in the forums, they just get more angry.

Thirdly, while the new format will categorize the problem to be solved more clearly, it will still not force the poster to provide enough information to allow another forum contributor to understand the problem quickly and point them in the right direction. The postings almost always lack city, business name or a link to the listing forcing the job of discovery onto the helper. This is time consuming and rapidly wears out even the most dedicated of forum followers. The problem results from the contradiction of trying to solve issues with the structured data of the business listing in the free form context of the forums.

Fourthly, the search system in the forums doesn’t provide answers to new questions it just shows previously posted relevant questions of the same ilk. Thus it requires massive effort on the part of the poster to pore through these many questions in search of the answer that often is not there. Nobody wants a lists of questions to their question, they want answers.

The help system needs to improve to the point of actually answering questions when and where they occur, in the LBC, to be effective. The new Verification troubleshooter is a baby step in this direction but not nearly enough.

Fifthly, many of the problems that drive SMBs to the forums are either features or quirks intrinsic to the Maps system and even if they can be identified, they just can’t be solved by others.  Mergings, duplicate listings, wrong telephone numbers, undeletable coupons, are mostly artifacts of Google’s technology. The problems that they cause can not be solved with a simple entry in the LBC but only by Google’s direct intervention in the account. The circuitous route of a top contributor to identify these types of problems to Google staffers who may or may not respond quickly is both time consuming and demeaning.

So while this upgrade is a welcome change, in and of itself, it will not change the reality for many small businesses hoping to find a solution in the forums unless Google themselves actually invests more people and time in the forum process, improves the types of issues that can be solved in the LBC and refines the help system to actually answer the range of real questions that exist.

Customer service, while it can be automated and scaled to a point, ultimately has a human at the end of the query that deserves a quick and correct answer. That responsibility should not be futilely shunted off to others or left to a solely algorithmic solution.

Related posts:

1. Google “upgrades” Maps’ Forums
2. Why does Google Have the Maps Support Forums?
3. What is the source of problems in the Google Maps Help Forums?

Last night while at Marty Weintraub’s AimClear SMX East SchmoozFest, I was fortunate to meet Frederick Vallaeys of Google. He is the forthright (he gave me a business card!), communicative product evangelist for Adwords. He was on his way out the door but took the time to answer some of my questions about the newly announced Local Listing Ad product.

According to Frederick, email support will definitely be an integral part of the Local Listing Ad product. Supprt will take the form of an automated first response to the initial query with human escalation if the answer provided is not satisfactory. He noted that discussions were on-going and that all other support options, including the possibility of fee based phone support, were on the table but no final decision had been reached. He noted that he felt strongly that “people should be able to get their questions answered”.

Even though brief, the conversation was far ranging and touched on my of my questions about the new product:
-What will the prices be for a given market and category?
-Will the pricing be transparent to all, across all markets?
-How long will the price remain fixed and when it does change what will the procedure be?
-Will the price have a relationship to the adwords pricing and will that relationship be transparent?
-How will placement be determined in competitive markets?
-Will categorization be limited to the existing categories or will it allow for long tail catogorizaton?

Much of the conversation was off the record but it is clear that the process and procedures for this product are still very much a work in progress.

Support (or rather lack there of) for Local Bussiness Center users has long been an issue with Google with many serious problems going unanswered and unattended. Early this year, in a far ranging discussion about Why the Google Local Business Center Fails, Matt Cutts responded that:

Here’s my personal take on the “paid support” suggestion. Historically Google has been averse to offering paid support for free products. I think it’s because we don’t want to evoke the idea that Google has a conflict of interest. For example, if we offered paid support for (say) websearch, lots of conspiracy theorists would accuse Google of making search worse in order to make money off of people paying for support.

The new Local Listing Ads is an exciting product that will appeal to many SMB’s. It offers simplicity and a fair bit of transparency and can act as an effective first step for many local businesses in the world of on-line advertising. It could, by providing support for both Ad related AND other technical problems, improve the image of the Local Business Center in the marketplace.

I can envision those with solvable by Google only type problems signing up so as to just get their listing issues resolved. A 30 Day Free Trial could easily turn into 30 days of free support with an ad thrown in.

That being said, I am looking forward to Google working out the kinks on the way to this new product. It seems ideally suited to the needs of many businesses who are just now beginning to look to the Internet for an solution to replace the declining value of the print Yellow Pages and news papers.

Frederick will be speaking at Q&A session at SMX East this afternoon. I would encourage all of the Local world to come and get the answers to the many questions that you have had. Well, OK, to at least ask the questions.

Related posts:

1. Google Intros Local Listing Ads to LBC in Limited Markets
2. Google Maps Support Groups Switching to New Platform
3. Microsoft’s TellMe Spams Google with Bogus Tech Support Number

When things go wrong with Google Maps, like all large scale systems, they go terribly wrong. Google Maps though, unlike most large companies, offers no mechanism for these problems to be fixed in any direct fashion.

While I understand Google’s desire to fix the big problems for large numbers of people first, there also needs to be a way for small people with personal problems that have been wronged to get their problem fixed. Currently the only way is to post into the Google forum, where a volunteer might bring an issue to Google’s attention and it may or may not get fixed. Is that the best that Google can do?

Here is my first example of Google Maps Customer Service Hall of Shame. This poster initially posted in the forums on August 9th. It was highlighted to Google at the time through their private Top Contributor system. This is the type of problem that is not really easily addressable by a volunteer nor should it be handled by a volunteer. It points out that forums are not the best place to get this sort of problem resolved. Here is the first posting from August 9th:

lrury2002 Level 1 8/9/09

Here is the second posting from August 18th. Both postings were highlighted for the Google Guides so that they could possibly take care of the issue:

lrury2002 Level 1 8/18/09

I think that this is the business listing being referred to:

I guess just can’t know whats going on in suburbia these days, can you?

Related posts:

1. Google Maps: What might customer service look like?
2. Google Maps Rolling Out New Ads & New PR Campaign but Same Customer Service
3. Google Maps Offers Refine by User Rating & Neighborhood Option