Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
Whither Places Search? Is Plus Search Next?
Update 1:00 pm EST: Googler Jade has just confirmed that some changes of some sort are on the way. Here is their statement: We’ve seen some questions about the small update to local search user interface on Google (removal of “More results near…” link) — Thanks for your feedback about the small update to the …
Linux/Cdorked: A Nasty New Apache Hack
A couple of days ago I received this email from Miriam at SolasDesign and my first thought was: what rich Google irony: Hey Mike, I was doing a search in Google today for ‘google+ local error 500’ and one of the results Google returned was this page of your site: Google + Page ‘500 error …
Google Closes European Places Support Forums
Today, Google announce the closing of foreign language forums for Google Places as of May 13th. It is not clear if language specific support will be available via email. The announcements can be seen in these various forums: Spanish: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/places-es Portugese: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/places-pt Russian: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/places-ru German: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/places-de/AEah3vEAUlk Here is the Google translation of the Spanish language announcment: Important Announcement: We …
Google Showing Sitelinks to Nearest Locations on Brand Searches
Last week Bill Slawski wrote about Google’s categorization of web pages for use in local search. The patent he writes about is one in a long line of related works that discuss this sort of web page categorization. That or something very similar to it appears to be occurring that allows Google to include multiple …
Places Link Removed From Google More Menu
Update from Darren Shaw of Whitespark: You can still access Places through a URL parameter: “tbm=plcs”. Not sure how long that will last though. For example: https://www.google.com/search?q=chicago%20pizza&tbm=plcs&near=chicago This came to me from Andy Kuiper of Calgary and Vancouver: the Places search menu option has been removed from Google. Google has been cleaning up and removing links …
Google Local Bug: Review/Plus Pages Not Loading For SAB Pages
Laura Behny of Attaboy Plumbing and at least one poster in the forums have noted what appears to be a new bug when clicking on the the “Google reviews” link in the pack results. Either a blank page is delivered or these very weird results are shown instead of the local G+ Page. It is …
ebay On the Wrong (and self serving side) of the Sales Tax Issue
I received this email from ebay this morning. I think that ebay is on the wrong side of this issue. I was in retail for many years and struggled with sales tax issues at every turn. “Struggle” is putting it mildly as at one point the NY State government came after me with guns a …
Local Weekend Update
What Else is New Dept: There is a new bug with the Google Report A Problem for SABs: If a user selects the report a problem link via Maps or G+ Local they get a “This page won’t load…We’ve tried everything” message. At least its cute. Although that sad face icon is eerily reminiscent of my first …
Google Maps Quality Calls: Improving But Still Confusing
Adrew Forster of Adster Creative recently received and recorded a call from the Google Maps listing quality team. The calls are improving in quality over previous calls that we have heard. For example the caller clearly introduced herself. A definite improvement. But the call was still confusing. The intent of the call was not clear …
Google Category Tool Updated To Include new Places for Business Dashboard Categories
We have upgraded the Google Places for Business Category tool and added our categories from the recently released, new Google Places for Business Dashboard. The new list is designated as Google English (US) (PfB) to distinguish it from the list for the old and still predominant dashboard. Note that the new categories themselves DO NOT have …
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