Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Category Archive For "Google Places (Maps & Local)"
Is Google Maps the Portal to Bizarro World?
Do you remember Bizarro World from Superman? A Wikipedia refresher: In the Bizarro world of “Htrae” (“Earth” spelled backwards), society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!”. In one episode, for …
Google Penalizing Category Spamming – What are the Standards?
There is another possible reason for the stats to drop to zero over night on the Local Business Center Dashboard: You’ve been penalized for category spamming . The new penalty, first noted by Chris Silver Smith last week, dings your listing and causes it to loose standing precipitously. It does not preclude you from editing your …
Google now integrating Streetview with your business listing
Google has announced in the Lat Long Blog that StreetView is now being associated with your Google Maps business listing in the info bubble. The info bubble and pin remain in view as the user moves to StreetView, The pin is persistent even as the view “moves down the street” providing some context to the …
Google Local Business Center: Why your impressions might drop to 0%
A question that occasionally crops up in the forums is why would your Local Business Center dashboard all of a sudden show 0 impressions for your business listing in Google Maps? Nick Thomas, who has worked extensively in the Local Business Center, sent along his observations that identifies the likely cause: One interesting oddity is …
Upstate NY YP Co. Delays Publication by 4 months & Passes the Bill Along
I have never been a big fan of the traditional Yellow Page companies and their tactics. They often would use FUD (fear, uncertainty & doubt) rather than ROI to convince small retailers in our rural area to take out more ads year over year. I suppose they were just doing what they needed to do …
Google Maps Customer Service Hall of Shame – What goes on in your neighborhood?
When things go wrong with Google Maps, like all large scale systems, they go terribly wrong. Google Maps though, unlike most large companies, offers no mechanism for these problems to be fixed in any direct fashion. While I understand Google’s desire to fix the big problems for large numbers of people first, there also needs …
Google LBC: New Link to Coupon Feature Raising Visibility of Coupons?
Despite a deep recession where coupon use is on the rise and an opportunity to make on-line coupons work for a large audience, Google’s Coupon feature has long been the forgotten feature of the Local Business Center. LBC coupons have been buggy, less than predictable and well, so very hidden from searchers to be of …
Google LBC: Some Bulk Upload Whitelist Questions Answered
I received this feedback from Joel Headley, Consumer Operations at Google, via Google Reader in answer to some of my questions about the newly announced Bulk Upload Whitelisting for the local business center: MB: Will the entry (submitted via the whitelisted upload) still be editable via community edit? Joel: No. MB: Will the stats of …
Get Bulk Uploads Verified in Google Maps Local Business Center
Here is the content of the Bulk Upload Whitelist Request form: **** Get Verified in Google Maps Local Business Center * Required field Generally, the best way to verify that you own a business is by receiving a phone call or postcard with a PIN. However, we understand this gets tricky if you have say, …
Google Maps Bulk Upload Whitelist Coming Soon to the LBC Near You
Update: Here is the link to the whitelist request form: http://maps.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=feeds_verify David Mihm reports from the LSS Q&A Session that Google is rolling out the Bulk Upload Whitelist reported here in early June and confirmed by Google several weeks ago. From David Mihm’s Local Search blog: Now onto the good stuff. Ari Bezman, the product …
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