Mike Blumenthal

Google Places has rolled out a new Google Places Bulk Upload Tool. From the Google SMB Blog: We’ve made many improvements and now enable the following actions: Edit one or more of your listings’ data at once Search through your listings, filtering by specific information or for listings with errors Upload new listings using a …

The snafu with the Places index that caused an inordinate number of accounts to suffer the dreaded “We Currently Do Not Support This Location” report for a listing should be fixed by now. But some users may find that they have moved from purgatory into Dante’s circles of hell. Vanessa noted in the forums that …

Nyagoslav Zhekov pointed out to me that Google has recently added the following to their Google Places Guidelines: Marketing, promotions, or other contests Any promotion, marketing, contests, or other giveaways should clearly link to the terms of the activity and provide clear guidelines and qualifications. All such promises, given or implied, should be adhered to. …

I have not been very present of late. I had some health issues that have been resolved which kept me from posting. For the past nine days I have been speaking in the Northwest and while I have had time to eek out a few posts I haven’t been very present in the comment sections. …

Linda Buquet notes that in some situations (where you have not received the start over email) Google is still apparently resuscitating some suspended accounts. From the post: Your account’s been suspended. See my response on this other related thread: Listing not live on Maps anymore, or, it is live and it’s not owner-verified? Use this …

Apparently there is a new bug (or is it an old one that has resurfaced) causing a number of listings to be erroneously noted as “We Currently Do Not Support This Location” . Google’s Places Forum Community Manager Vanessa has noted in the forums: A bunch of you have reported seeing “We currently do not support this …

Dave Oremland of Professional Bartending School in DC, alerted me to the fact that Google Places is now apparently going so far as to request a business license from some businesses to verify their authenticity. In this Google Places forum post the Commonwealth Sunoco of Boston asked: I received an email from local-help@google.com. They are requesting a scanned …

Google is no longer accepting Places reinclusion requests via the link in the Places Dashboard. I just received this email from a client that had recently requested reinclusion for a suspended account. I have bolded the significant points in the email: From: Google Places Date: Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 7:34 PM Subject: Re: [#10101010101] …

The Venice update that started in late January had significant impact on Google local search results. We saw an increase in the display of the PlusBox, an increased search display of Blended results, reduced display of Local Pack and an increasing number of city level results being inserted in the organic SERPS (See Mike Ramsey’s …