What the SMB REALLY Thinks of Google Places

A poster just left this comment on another post but I felt that it so captured the frustration of the new initiate to the bizarro world of Google Places that I wanted to give it more visibility:   Mike, Can I just say, with a monumental sigh of gratitude, Thththank youuu. and Phew!. Having tried …

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hReview Testimonials from SMB Sites Starting to Show in Places

Since last October when Google noted in their FAQ that Rich Snippet testimonials might flow into a Place Page, many webmasters took the time to mark up their client’s sites in hReview. As Andrew Shotland has recently noted and my observations have confirmed, these marked up reviews have slowly been making their way onto Places …

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Google Maps & Places Tidbits

Google Maps Enhances Interface Yam Regev pointed out that Google Maps has upgraded the UI twith a stacked image and a fluid visual roll over that highlights the listing the pin highlights on the Map: Offers Tab Removed WorldWide Update from Google: To clarify, we have not removed the Offers tab for any regions — …

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Consumer Attitudes Towards Recommendations of Local Business

Bightlocal has released their findings from their Local Consumer Review Survey 2010, Part 3. The survey highlights some interesting findings – 27% of consumers have recommended a local business on Facebook – rising to 32% in female consumers & also in younger consumers (aged 16-34) Reliability, Professionalism & Friendliness are the most important traits that …

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Google Places Continues Places & Hotel Booking Upgrades

Google continues to make upgrades to Places and Maps having recently announced a wider rollout of Google Business Photos. As noted last week there have been a number of changes/additions to Places pages themselves. Adam Dorfman of SimPartners pointed out this additional visual upgrade to the Hotel booking feature. The new emphasis makes the feature …

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TechCrunch Interview with Marissa Mayer

This interview appeared yesterday in TechCrunch and is worth a watch. Takeaways? * Mayer while not the top dog in Local, she is becoming its public face * Google will be focusing all new local product developments in the context of their two core products, Maps and Places * Latitude is just a social view …

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30% of all Restaurant Queries on Google Are Mobile

In a very good online webinar that Google offered called Are You Mobile Ready? they shared some interesting internal data on the percentage of mobile queries. The charts show the % of mobile queries to total search queries from January 2007 through January of this year. Previously Bing had noted that as many as 50% …

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