Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google Email Inviting Businesses to Update Their Listing in a Newly Converted Dashboard
Last week Google announced that they were starting the process of converting existing, old style dashboards to the new Google Places for Business Dashboard. I just received this email notice that one of my favorite “business” listings had received the dashboard update: Illusory Laptop Repair.
When you log into the new dashboard the user is presented with a nicely designed visual encouraging them to add missing details to the listing.
Here is a copy of the email that is being sent:
(click to view larger)
The dashboard prompts to add missing information:
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
10 Comments
I’ve been really suprised, and slightly encouraged, by both the speed and support of the new dashboard roll out. Hopefully these are signs of good things to come for Google’s local ecosystem
Looks nice Mike 🙂 looking forward to seeing them here in Canada soon.
Got it too..on two of my listings..the updates are super fast !
That’s great, now they need to update their verification process. For people with a life and a business to run it can be daunting.
Thanks for the update Mike. I’m looking forward to them coming to Massachusetts soon!
If the client doesn’t receive the email will the Dashboard update automatically without the email? I’ve been logging into the different accounts to see if the client has the new dashboard.
Susan
@Susan
I am not sure but I assume that the owner of the account will always get an email when the account is upgraded. I think they are doing the easy, one business ones first.
Thanks Mike – I’ll make sure they watch for the email.
Google still has Illusory Laptop Repair as a real business? It’s been years now. And it’s still located on top of the railroad crossing.
Other than in the drugstore area, where they had to pay the Department of Justice $500 million after helping the FBI’s fake “SportsDrugs.com” steroids site get ad placement, Google still doesn’t seem to have made a serious effort to clean out the phonies.
It’s still so easy to spam “social”. I have a paper “Social is bad for search, and search is bad for social”, which you can find if you’re interested. There are so many embarassing examples. I especially like the restaurant reviews which were clearly copied from reviews of a car wash.
Of course, as I point out occasionally, if Google cracked down on phony advertisers, their revenue would drop 9%. There was a nice article in the Washington Post last year about DuckDuckGo, which, while tiny, is a threat to Google. DuckDuckGo, by existing, puts a floor under how obnoxious Google can get. Bing could do more in that area; they don’t have the legacy
Doubleclick advertiser base. But Bing mostly tries to emulate everything Google does.
@Mike
Any word on when Google will support text formatting, HTML formatting, and hyper-linking in the business description of listings with the new dashboard? I’m sure Google wouldn’t have included these options if they didn’t intend for them to work at some point. I’ve checked out the Google Product Forums, and it sounds like this is a universal issue. Although some people are saying that it is supported on a very rare basis.
I’m sure you’re seeing the same thing I am, which is that it saves and is displayed in the desired format on the edit screen. But on the actual listing the content is all bunched together in one block of plain text.
I assumed this issue would have been corrected by now. Any rumors out there on a time frame for an expected resolution?
Thanks for your help!
@ryan
There are indications that Google is working on it and that a solution should be coming down the pike… but no great guess on the exact timeframes…
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