Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Category Archive For "Google Places (Maps & Local)"
Google Places Now Requiring New “Places Profile” For Reviews
Several weeks ago, before, during and after the Hotspot rollout, newly created reviews from reviewers with non-public Google profiles were having their Places reviews filtered. I tested this by writing a number of reviews, over time and many places in a secondary account. All of the reviews were accepted, none were published. Google has now …
Google Hotpot Recommendations Now Surfacing on Places Page and Maps
Hotpot, Google’s new recommendation engine for local, while still in its infancy is already influencing results in Places and Maps. In Maps, when a searcher sees a listing that has a review from a Hotpot friend, Google will surface that friend’s snippet in the list view. As such, in this case, it is the most …
Google Places – Do 800#’s Put Your Listing in Places Purgatory?
The general consensus in the Local Search industry has been that using an 800# in a Places listing might be a cause for some loss of rank but was generally not considered a deal breaker. Has the new Google Places Rejection algo now found a place for burying businesses that use an 800 number? This poster, …
Google Places Updates Quality Guidelines
Google last rolled out the last major Places Quality Guidelines update almost exactly one year ago. There have been a number of often critical additions (here, here and here) during the past 12 months. Google has once again released a major update to the guidelines. Historically, these guidelines have preceded algo based penalties for non …
Google Places – You Are Not Rejected, Not Suspended – You are in Places Purgatory
When does the word active simply not mean active in Google Places? When you are in Google Places Purgatory. Wikipedia: “purgatory”, derived through Anglo and Old French from the Latin word purgatorium.[8] has come to refer also to a wide range of historical and modern conceptions of postmortem suffering short of everlasting damnation,[1] and is used, in …
Google Places Upgrade: Reviews with Sentiments & Hotel Booking Tool
Along with the recent rollout of Hotpot, Google has added new review related features to the Places Page. The first, available on restaurants and hotels (perhap more but not on every type of business) allows you to summarize sentiment about the location: Restaurant: Hotel: The ability to quickly and easily add sentiment will further build …
Google Hotpot – Yelp Meets Netflix in a Local Recommendation Engine
In August I asked: Will Reviews Become Google’s First Successful Foray into Social? It struck me at the time that reviews were Google’s strongest and most successful play into the social world. Google had succeeded with Places to garner a significant number of reviews and with the owner review response feature to garner a strong, …
Google Coupons Joining the Witness Protection Program as Google Offers
You won’t have Google Coupons to kick around anymore. It appears that they are joining the witness protection program under a new name: Google Offers. Google Coupons had been the Rodney Dangerfield of Google local products, always hidden, never talked about and for years, after an optimistic start in 2006, they languished. Until Google removed …
Google Places Upgrades Owner Review Response Feature
Owners responding to reviews is a volatile arena where most anything can happen. Despite discretion being the better part of valor, silence rarely is the option chosen. When the Google Places owner response feature was not functioning this week, this owner responded to a negative review with a review of his own: It appears that …
Google Places – 12 Step Checklist for a Great Listing
Google Places Help is now offering a nifty, interactive “checklist” that drives SMBs through the correct help documents and in the correct order to learn the basics of creating a successful Places listing:
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