Press enter to see results or esc to cancel.

Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Google Places Guideline Update: Now Allowing Descriptors in Business Title

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.