{"id":16635,"date":"2014-05-21T08:13:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T12:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=16635"},"modified":"2014-05-21T08:13:44","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T12:13:44","slug":"how-many-businesses-have-verified-g-pages-for-local","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/21\/how-many-businesses-have-verified-g-pages-for-local\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Businesses Have Verified G+ Pages for Local?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While at SIINDA conference, Google was an obvious point of <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/20\/some-thoughts-on-the-yp-industry-google-in-europe\/\">reference and conversation<\/a> both in the formal sessions and the informal discussions afterwords.<\/p>\n<p>One number that was bandied about was the total number of currently verified <em>local<\/em> business listings worldwide. While I have no way to independently verify the number\u00a0of\u00a020 million verified listings, \u00a0as Google has not confirmed it, the number noted seemed credible and reasonable. Roughly 20% of all of the world&#8217;s businesses as of last November.<\/p>\n<p>Google has chosen to not publicly <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/14\/the-growth-of-google-places-claimed-listings\/\">share<\/a> this number since December\u00a0of 2011 when the number of claimed listings was 8 million.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/number-verified-w-labels1.png\"><br \/>\n<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/number-verified-w-labels-est.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16645\" src=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/number-verified-w-labels-est-520x365.png\" alt=\"number-verified-w-labels-est\" width=\"520\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/number-verified-w-labels-est-520x365.png 520w, https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/number-verified-w-labels-est-284x200.png 284w, https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/number-verified-w-labels-est-1024x719.png 1024w, https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/number-verified-w-labels-est.png 1245w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>How does this compare to Facebook?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It essentially would put Google on even footing as far as verified locations. In November Facebook <a href=\"http:\/\/marketingland.com\/facebook-we-have-25-million-active-small-business-pages-65629\">noted<\/a> that they has 25 million active pages but they <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2013\/11\/18\/facebook-smb-25-m\/\">included<\/a> in the number 5 million non local businesses, what Google calls Brand pages.<\/p>\n<p>For Google, the total number thus could be much larger at this point.\u00a0However, verification does not engaged make. Facebook noted that the business\u00a0<span style=\"color: #3e433e;\">must have a Page that\u2019s been active in the past 28 days.\u00a0That doesn&#8217;t <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/five-hundred-words\/dad4c3736409\">speak to the accuracy \u00a0<\/a>of Facebook&#8217;s listing, an area that Google has a significant advantage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3e433e;\">Most of the verified business listings in Google&#8217;s court have been verified and then effectively not touched by the business. Historically, there has been little compelling reason for a business\u00a0to return to the dashboard. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>My sense is that is <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/25\/google-intros-the-mother-of-all-smb-review-monitoring-systems\/\">slowly changing<\/a> and that Google is <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/15\/one-more-reason-for-an-smb-to-engage-with-google-plus\/\">well positioned <\/a>to strongly increase engagement going forward. That \u00a0assumes they can finally get the technical and branding mishegas that is the Plus\/Places fiasco behind them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While at SIINDA conference, Google was an obvious point of reference and conversation both in the formal sessions and the informal discussions afterwords. One number that was bandied about was the total number of currently verified local business listings worldwide. While I have no way to independently verify the number\u00a0of\u00a020 million verified listings, \u00a0as Google &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-plus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16635"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16648,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16635\/revisions\/16648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}