Mike Blumenthal

There have been many questions about the recently publicized change in Google’s Places policy that home based businesses that do not receive customers at their home should hide their address. Many have been critical of Google’s change and many have criticized the apparent illogic of the rule. I see the issue somewhat differently. Certainly Google …

With the ending of Google’s real estate listing service in Maps, it was necessary for Google to update the Google Places Quality Guidelines to reflect the fact that the service was no longer available as a listing option: Previous Guidelines New Quality Guidelines Ineligible Business Models: Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify …

The newest Places Quality guidelines include a number of significant changes. In this update Google has not just added new rules but has removed a few specific guidelines from the previous set. A significant one that was noted by Linda Buquet was the removal of the following phrase in regards to content used in the …

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 has recently added a new “best practice” to their business listing quality guidelines: Use standard capitalization & punctuation, unless your business name or address in the real world contains unusual capitalization & punctuation. The guideline makes it clear that you can only uses non standard capitalization and punctuation if in fact your real business …

Google has recently added a new section to the Google Places quality guidelines concerning Custom Attributes & Description fields. From the updated guidelines (bold is mine): Custom Attributes & Description Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title, …

Stefano Gorgoni has pointed out that Google has once again changed the Business Listing Guidelines as regards to legal business name, switching back to the standard that was in use previously: Previous Guideline New Guideline The business name on Google Maps must be your full legal business name. Represent your business exactly as it appears …