Google Local Image Photos – Let’s Link Anywhere but Your Site

Google invites image spam and pisses off business owners once again. Google, while ostensibly giving business owners control over which images show, has always usurped that role and done so without any guidelines or clear communication. Now though it has become possible for a third party with good web design to leverage a listing’s photos display …

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New Flow for Google Places/G+ Page Creation

Googler Jade announced in the forums that newly created Google Plus Pages for local will be visible immediately upon creation. This should make the process more obvious to new businesses claiming in the dashboard. Hey guys, A few changes to page creation are rolling out gradually today — If you’re creating a listing in the …

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Oh Where is Washington, NC? How to Fix a Google Map Error

Egregious mapping errors occur a lot less these days on Google Maps. While roads are still being lost or misnamed in New Jersey, we have seen no lost towns and misplaced communities like we saw in 2009 and 2010. And truth be told the problem with roads in New Jersey may be just a reflection of …

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Google Alerting Australian Dashboard Claimants via Emails

Last week Google started upgrading the Places dashboards in Australia. Last night (which was this morning in Australia) Google started sending out a notice to Australian Places Dashboard claimants. Several folks reported it in the forums (ht to Nyagoslav) with headlines like “Scam or not?”. Hello, Due to changes in Google Maps, we’d like to …

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Google Local Carousels MIA – Are they gone for good?

Are Local Carousels on their way out? They are gone today in my browsers. (Note others are not seeing any reduction in carousels). Which raises another question: Is this part of a larger plan to clean up the look of search results page in general and local search in particular? Several weeks ago rumors started …

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Tips for Your New Google + Cover Photo

Early this week Google updated the layout of the G+ Pages. They also updated the imagery and maps at the top of the pages moving away from the ever slithering image that continually changed in size to one that was relatively stable. They simultaneously moved the details about business location to the area to the …

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Google Rolls Out Android Mobile Places Dashboard App

This afternoon Google rolled out a new mobile Google Places for Business app that allows management of a business’s Google Plus listing via  Android. From the Google Play description: Keep your business listing fresh and up-to-date across Google with the free Google Places for Business app: – Update your business information, including hours, address, contact …

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Hummingbird, Local Knowledge Graph & Shitty Search Results

The big news earlier in the week was Google’s announcement of the Hummingbird search algo upgrade. InformationWeek noted that “the Hummingbird update expands Google’s use of its Knowledge Graph”.  Local search results were some of the first entities moved to the Knowledge graph and displayed as knowledge graph results. For me there are thus two questions. …

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LocalU Odds and Ends

Lot’s has been happening at LocalU. We have an advanced LocalU coming up Monday in NYC that has just 5 seats left. If you do sign up be sure to use the discount code WS-LUA10 for 10% off. If you are already signed up be sure to reach out to me and introduce yourself. We …

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New Countries Added to Places for Business Category Tool – Volunteers Needed

We have just upgraded the Google Places Category tool with categories for the new dashboard from: UK – United Kingdom contributed by Andrew Loy, Occupancy Marketing NL  – Netherlands contributed by Eduard de Boer FR  – France contributed by Ken Fagan Aus  – Austria contributed by Petra Kraft IT – Italy contributed by Andrea Scarpetta CA – Canada contributed by Darren Shaw Norway …

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