Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google Adds Mirror Dice to G+ Local Pages
Google has added a new feature (props to Matt Gregory for pointing this out) to the Google+ Local pages that allows a user to add custom fields to any given business listing. You can add things like the name of the person you deal with at the business, their birthday and unique contact information. The final output, a private, personalize contact card, is similar to the details from Google contacts that shows on a G+ personal profile of someone in your circles.
Perhaps I have a lack of imagination but this is one of those features for which it is hard to see its regular use. It could conceivably be part of a CRM system, it probably integrates with GMail and perhaps is a way for Google to draw relationships between the social graph and the business graph. But one has to ask why?
Did you ever ride in a car that had chrome pipes & fancy spinner hub caps but you always felt lucky when you arrived at your destination? And then the owner, for the next upgrade, added mirror dice rather than fixing something substantial? Well that’s what seems to have happened to your Google+ Local page.
Google+ Local pages have plenty wrong with them, significant and substantial problems. This is true whether with you are working the +Local page via the old and decrepit dashboard or attempting to manage it via Plus… but now Google has added an ability that you are unlikely to use. Go figure.
Input screen:
Output added to bottom of G+ Local page when logged in:
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
12 Comments
The custom fields are definately a port over from Gmail Contacts.
Couldn’t agree more, Mike. Unless you use this option for an employee you liked while patronizing a business, or know the owner personally, who’s going to use this? Maybe our friends @Google were getting bored with all the old problems they’ve been fixing with Places/+Local, so they wanted to fiddle with something else. I believe mirror dice usually fall under the category of obstructing a driver’s view where I’m from, so maybe this is Google trying to distract us from other problems…
LOL – someone at G+ Local must have caught everyone napping in a meeting… “hey guys, I have this great idea for a G+ Local “add on”… k, everybody cool with this? ok, I’m just going to install this thingy and see how it goes”
On behalf of the Mirror Dice manufacturers of America, I demand an apology for equating our quality product with this Google crap. Next time pick on the Pine Tree Car Air Freshener…
@andrew
I don’t know what you have against the pine tree freshener. They saved my butt numerous times as a child.
@Andy, Your comment made me LOL but then again i’m thinking to myself..Geez he may be right because every since late May and early June Google seems to keep pushing the important stuff back ( ”dropped Listings” & Service Area Changes. ) Iv’e had multiple listings go down that all go by the quality guidelines to a T. I also have some clients, Towing Companies, and Google determined that those companies were all linked and have Call Centers but they did in fact have different numbers for EACH location & Different Business Name. Below is an E Mail i got from The Google Team. How can they determine this?
Greetings,
Thank you for your response.
After performing quality checks and calls to each number listed for your business we have determined that your listings are ineligible, as previously mentioned these are listings for the same business at locations managed by a call center.
I’m here to help with your listing problems; other questions related to ** policy issues, and best practices can be discussed in our forums, in addition to being addressed in our Help Center.
Please do check out the forum, where you can discuss questions like yours with other business owners as well as product experts and top contributors: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business
Thank you for your time.
@Frank
Google has gotten quite good at ferreting out call center based listings and removing them from the index. They likely use a combination of techniques including the “secret shopper” mode.
Kerry states above that this could be used in the case of employees you like….I’m afraid I see a future of nasty nicknames for employees you don’t like. Mike, I agree, the beautiful purpose of this is eluding me. I would kinda rather Google fix the issue with putting U.S. suite numbers at the front of street addresses (hey, we’re not Canadians, eh?) before adding fuzzy dice.
@Miriam
The list is long… lets start with the bugs in the merging process, the fact that the Dashboard doesn’t allow uploading videos and it takes forever for changes to appear, the fact that stats don’t really work, that there is no way for +Pages for local to really work for multilocation businesses…. cripe the list of things more important that this is very, very, very long.
And, as Dan points out, if they are going to add a new feature add one that offers some significant value.
I like it, but…How come there isn’t a dead simple way to add starred locations to Google Contacts? Shouldn’t I be able to star something, and see it in my Google Maps Starred location folder on the Gmail Contacts? If I’m able to add all this info. in the private contact details, why isn’t it already filled out for me (like the company name, etc.)? Why can’t these contacts sync with the Google+Local page so that the contact details always stay up-to-date as soon as the business owner changes them (for example, hours, etc.), and are easily exportable in a vCard format?
Could not agree more with what has already been mentioned, the list of problems is way too long to add features like this.
Pinging off of more interesting conversations… @Mr. Shotland and @Mr. Blumenthal – the ‘Black Ice’ Pine Tree Car Air Freshener is my favorite! 🙂
I concur with everyone’s thoughts here…seems like a pointless feature. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets nixed in the near future after Google realizes nobody uses it.
Travis Van Slooten
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