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 [...]

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

Google Places Ranking Factors – The PhD Version

Mar 19, 2012 at 10:00am ET by Andrew Shotland

Bizible, a start-up that makes local marketing software for SMBs, approached me recently* to preview the results of a Google Places Ranking Factors study they had conducted and I was intrigued enough by their findings to share some of them here. Bizible's team is made up of former Bing AdCenter guys and counts a PhD and a stats expert on their staff, so their study is a more scientific attempt to figure out what's going on with Google Places than your typical "here's what some SEOs think" kind of thing. For methodology, they studied 30 potential ranking factors by querying approximately [...]

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

The History Of Google Places, All On One Page

Jan 10, 2012 at 4:14pm ET by Matt McGee

Maybe it's my bias as a longtime fan/practitioner of local search and SEO. Or maybe it's because I'm mentioned as one of the sources/contributors. But more likely it's just that this is an important search reference document, and that's why I think that anyone interested or involved in local search should know about it. David Mihm has published A Brief History of Google Places -- an excellent historical document that covers back to 2004 when Google launched what was then called "Google Local," all the way through the "Google Maps" days and now up to the current Google Places era. Imp [...]

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

Is Google+ Beginning To Integrate Into Google Places?

Nov 23, 2011 at 2:36pm ET by Greg Finn

Today Mike Blumenthal of Blumenthals.com posted about what appears to be a new addition to Google's local results. A specific query for "transmission servicing lexington ky" displayed the normal Google Places listings, with one exception: The grey icon is displayed next to a specific places results. However, when clicked, the user is taken to the following Google+ only results page: The surprising thing about the above listing is that the link goes directly to a personal account, not an actual Google+ page. We had extreme difficulty replicating this on any other queries in d [...]

Google Overhauls Place Pages, Emphasizes Reviews & Kills Citations

Jul 22, 2011 at 7:28am ET by Matt McGee

Local searchers and local businesses will see a fairly substantially different Place Page the next time they're poking around Google Maps/Places. The company announced a new look Thursday and promises more changes to come. The new layout of Place Pages puts a heavy emphasis on reviews. More specifically, it emphasizes reviews from Google users and no longer shows review content from third party sites. (Google had issues with both Yelp and TripAdvisor over review snippets last year, you may recall.) Rather than showing external reviews, the new Place Page only links to third party sites [...]

Related Topics: Google: Maps & Local | Google: Place Pages | Top News

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