Google Places Launches New Bulk Listing Management Tool

May 8, 2012 at 8:22pm ET by Matt McGee

Google Places has announced changes and new features to its bulk listing management tool that it hopes will make it easier for business owners with multiple locations (and local search marketers who manage multiple locations).

The changes affect both the upload and management processes. Here are the primary bullet points from Google’s blog post:

Edit one or more of your listings’ data at once
Search through your listings, filtering by specific information or for listings with errors
Upload new listings using a data file or by adding them individually within the interface
Tell us how we can improve this new interface by clicking the “Give Feedback” link

Google has put together two short videos showing the new features — the first video is for new users that aren’t verified to do bulk uploads yet, and the second is for already-verified users.

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Place Pages

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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cptravers

Looks like this is again limited to multiple locations of a single entity, so the intro statement about helping search marketers will be restricted that way, which does not solve the issue of people who manage multiple listings for multiple companies. The latter covers most of the search marketers that we help at UBL.org with Google Places management. Has anyone seen something different in this release?
http://twitter.com/softomic Paul St. Amant

I usually go to the parent company site and look for a “locations” button, but if it’s going to be integrated into google maps, then it will save me a few clicks, and I like that.
Caleb Ross

I hope that this dashboard update is what’s responsible for many of the Google Places bugs we’ve been experiencing over the past few months (unable to upload images from URLs, reviews being stripped away, etc.).
mike ashworth

i wonder how a company that operates in multiple locations but with no building would manage i.e. a company that runs fitness boot camps in multiple locations (parks)
mike ashworth

hi, how do you deal with issue of managing google places for multiple businesses?
Matt McGee

Mike -according to Google Places guidelines, you could only list such a business at its physical location. You can’t have separate business listings for each park where you put on the camps.
cptravers

At UBL we do two main things: 1) we feed the data to the data aggregators that supply the underlying databases to Google, and 2) we use a special software solution and a team to claim the business and verify it with the individual locations with careful coordination within the Google guidelines. The business is always the owner of the location listing.
http://www.facebook.com/EddieOchoa Ed Ochoa

Google Places is way to restricting, Ad-words is more flexible around a persons budget
ppjeffy

Set up private PO Boxes for each location.
ppjeffy

How many listings/locations are you able to put in one account?
cptravers

There is no limit, though corporations with thousands of locations (of the same brand) will often use a white listed bulk upload.