{"id":8890,"date":"2011-01-20T11:54:27","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T15:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=8890"},"modified":"2011-01-20T16:31:11","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T20:31:11","slug":"google-places-tidbits-and-quirks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/20\/google-places-tidbits-and-quirks\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Places Tidbits and Quirks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Update 3:30<\/strong>: Google Employee Sid has <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/20\/google-places-tidbits-and-quirks\/#comment-544115\">noted below<\/a> that the Report a Problem Link is a bug that Google is working hard to fix.<\/p>\n<p>1. Top Contributor EHG in the Google Places forums, emailed me yesterday that the &#8220;Report a Problem&#8221; Link has disappeared from the bottom of your Google Places Page. It is still MIA this AM from both the places page AND the <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Screen-shot-2011-01-20-at-11.12.27-AM.png\">drop down in the list view<\/a> of Maps:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Screen-shot-2011-01-20-at-10.36.49-AM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-8891\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-20 at 10.36.49 AM\" src=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Screen-shot-2011-01-20-at-10.36.49-AM-520x149.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"520\" height=\"149\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Screen-shot-2011-01-20-at-10.36.49-AM-520x149.png 520w, https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Screen-shot-2011-01-20-at-10.36.49-AM-300x86.png 300w, https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Screen-shot-2011-01-20-at-10.36.49-AM.png 555w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>2. Some readers <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/18\/google-places-to-rollout-fix-to-merging-issue-this-quarter\/#comment-544059\">reported here<\/a>, via email (hat tip to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chunky-seo.com\/\">Robert Ramirez<\/a>)\u00a0and on Twitter that Google was no longer allowing them to verify via phone and could only verify by postcards. When I attempted to do so yesterday, I was allowed to verify by postcard. Several possibilities:<br \/>\n&#8212; Google is becoming more stringent on who is allowed to phone verify in an effort to increase trust level<br \/>\n&#8212; Google is changing the procedure to post card verification only and certain users are seeing the changes first<\/p>\n<p>Are you experiencing this limitation?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Screen-shot-2011-01-20-at-10.47.40-AM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-8892\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-20 at 10.47.40 AM\" src=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Screen-shot-2011-01-20-at-10.47.40-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"299\" height=\"85\" \/><\/a>3. Several Twitter commenters (<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/mktgbill\">@mktgbill<\/a> (Bill Allen), <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/DavidKyle\">@DavidKyle<\/a> &amp; <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/KiwiMarketing\">@KiwiMarketing<\/a>)  noted that they were seeing &#8220;a shift to the 7 pack + organic and away from Places\/Organic mix?&#8221; As Matt McGee has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smallbusinesssem.com\/google-places-isnt-testing-new-layouts-get-used-to-variety\/3888\/\">pointed out<\/a> there has been no discernible rhyme or reason as to which shows when and there is an increasing variety of displays. It has been so volatile that I just haven&#8217;t lost any sleep over it. I have not been tracking specific search results either so I can&#8217;t verify the observations.<\/p>\n<p>Are you seeing more old style 7-Packs showing?<\/p>\n<p>4. TripAdvisor Reviews are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/forum\/p\/Places\/thread?tid=5cb2066d2156c005&amp;fid=5cb2066d2156c00500049a48cb3d4ea5&amp;hl=en\">reported<\/a> as once again missing in action by readers and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/forum\/p\/Places\/thread?tid=5cb2066d2156c005&amp;fid=5cb2066d2156c00500049a48cb3d4ea5&amp;hl=en\">posters<\/a> to the forums. For those of you that missed the <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/06\/tripadvisor-reviews-missing-from-google-places-bug-or-kerfuffle\/\">Google TripAdvisor Kerfuffle<\/a> in December see <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/08\/tripadvisor-blocking-google-from-reviews\/\">this article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update 3:30: Google Employee Sid has noted below that the Report a Problem Link is a bug that Google is working hard to fix. 1. Top Contributor EHG in the Google Places forums, emailed me yesterday that the &#8220;Report a Problem&#8221; Link has disappeared from the bottom of your Google Places Page. It is still &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8890","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=8890"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8899,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8890\/revisions\/8899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}