Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Category Archive For "Google Places (Maps & Local)"
Travelling – Light Postings
I am traveling to the MN Search Presents Local U – Twin Cities. Then on to NYC for Local U Advanced at SMX EAST & Westchester for a Local Univeristy in Tarrytown NY. Posting will be of necessity light for the next few days. We are nearing capacity for the Local U Advanced in New York next Monday but there are …
Google Plaque for Excellence: NOT
This afternoon Rocky Agrawal tweeted out about this plaque he had noticed hanging in a restaurant. He (and I ) were completely fooled by the plaque and were convinced that it was really from Google. I even thought that perhaps it was an experiment on Google’s part to migrate away from Zagat signage. —– Rakesh …
Infographic: Citations – Time To Live
The local ecosystem is a complex web of interrelations with Google having positioned themselves at its center. Given this complexity, just how long does it take for data to move through the various parts before it makes it into Google’s index. And from the main index into their local index and the cluster of data …
Asking for Reviews (Post Google Apocalypse)
Since Google started clamping down on review solicitation, particularly in the dental and auto dealer worlds, many businesses have expressed fear, dismay and discouragement about reviews in general and Google’s review policies in particular. Comments like “At this point I am ready to give up and ask my customers to avoid Google and go to …
G+ Local URLs MIA
With the help of Annie & Lisa Kolb from Acorn, I became aware of a new bug affecting Google’s local index where the URL of the listng’s site and occasionally the telephone number are stripped from the search result and the G+ Page. The URL is replaced with the plus.google.com URL in the search results. …
Google+ Pages For Local – Known Bugs & Quirks After the G+ Local Merge
The initial rollout allowing single location businesses to merge their G+Local page into the fully social G+ Page for local, while very limited, has surfaced very few bugs. The rollout which occurred on August 3rd has been smooth by Google standards for local but any time a company strives to “release early and often” there …
Will Citations Stop Being Effective for Local Optimization in the Future?
Darren Shaw, creator of the Local Citation Finder, recently asked me this great question (I seem to be getting a few of these lately) via email: I’ve heard people talking about how citations might not be a valuable ranking factor in the future. What do you think? Will they stop being effective for local optimization …
MapMaker Bots and What They Do
Google MapMaker has become a tremendous resource for cleaning up listings in G+ Local. While it can be incredibly confusing, it provides a window into the complete cluster data that Google has for a given listing, provides a detailed history of activities vis a vis that listing and allows for direct editing of it. The …
Google Plus Now Allows Videos on Merged G+ Pages for Local
The ability to upload videos to your G+ Local listing via the Places Dashboard has long been broken and the feature was missing on the merged G+ Pages for Local. I am not quite sure when this happened but you now can upload videos if you have a (re)verified G+Page for Local. As reader Julie Larson …
Can a Citation Campaign Cause a Drop in Google Local Rankings?
A customer of ours sent us a question about citations. They have been building citations recently and cleaning up NAP inconsistencies. But they have seen a significant drop in rankings. I’ve never heard of ‘good’ citation building having a negative effect on rankings – have you? Also what’s your theory on speed of building citations …
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