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 …

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Google+ Local on Suspensions – The Algo Did It!

All too many Places dashboard users are seeing this message of late: Account suspended. Make sure your listings meet the quality guidelines. Cathy Rhulloda of Avante Garden, a long time user and promoter of the Google Places and extremely knowledge about local marketing and the google Places Dashboard, was one of them. Her account was unceremoniously suspended despite …

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Google Local Announces Upgraded Phone Support

Last night Google announced that they had formally upgraded their Local listing phone support rolled-out in January to include data issues in addition to the previous phone support that had been added for verification issues. Commenters have previously noted that Google support personal had responded to requests for data fixes on the call line but the …

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“We do not support this location” Update

Earlier this summer, Google removed a large number of residentially located service area businesses (SAB) from the index for not hiding their address. While Google was trying to clean up the index, a number of  these SABs were removed in error. It turned out that Google was unable to restore many of those erroneously removed …

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Google’s Worst Customer Service EVER – An SMB Tale of Woe

Dan Wakefield runs YardRents.com, an innovative Portland based tool rental firm that directly delivers yard tools to homeowners for their use. His firm, being a service business with his address appropriately hidden on Google Places, suffered the “We Do Currently Do  Not Support This Location” problem that inappropriately removed businesses for the second time in a month (yes Google suffered …

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When Google Places Doesn’t Work, It Really Doesn’t Work

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 …

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Google Maps: What Happens When You Lose a Town?

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 …

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