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Google Local Business Becomes Google Places - SEO Implications for Small Businesses
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As of April 20, 2010, Google has renamed 'Google Local' to become 'Google Places.' I guess that they have learned from Microsoft that once you rename something, like Live to Bing, it dramatically improves the customer experience and catapults you into first place. Watch you Yelp! Not. But seriously what's behind this name change?
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By Jason McDonald
Senior SEO Instructor - JM Internet Group.
Posted: April 22, 2010
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Contents:
Google Replaces Google Local With Google Places
Small businesses that get local business should care about Google Local, a lot. Whatever Google decides to call it - Google Local or Google Places, what Google Places is all about is localized search. So if a customer enters just 'Pizza,' the Google search engine now figures out his or her IP address and location and returns localized results. For me, sitting in Fremont, CA, I see Fremont Pizza restaurants when I search for Pizza. You will see Pizza restaurants for your own local community.
Google Local was launched in September, 2009. It was, and is, a great concept. It blends two important but very distinct concepts:
- Localized search. When I search for 'Pizza' I am not interested in learning about 'Pizza.' I am probably looking for a local pizza joint!
- Reviews. I am often interested in what others in my community are saying about 'Pizza' and not in general, but with respect to my local pizza joint.
Google is clearly intrigued (threatened?) by the success of Yelp, which has a much slicker interface and just all around cooler design. The name change to Google Places is rather lame, but hopefully it portends some innovative new functionality that will help Google compete against Yelp. More choices! More choices!
But in the official Google blog post on Google Places, there isn't really any marketing (or other) explanation as to why they changed the name. So who cares? Not me. Let's look, however, at what else might be changing!
New Features in Google Places
According to that official blog post, Google Places has some new features that are intriguing for small businesses. First of all, however, get your free listing on Google Places set up by going to http://www.google.com/places. Then, once you have set up your listing, here are some of the old and new features that can give you new ways to connect to your customers -
- Coupons - create and issue coupons online to incent customers to download them from Google Places and visit your store, in the real world.
- Flat Fee Advertising - in select cities such as Austin, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., you can advertise for just $25 a month - a super value.
- Business Photo Shoots - Google will come visit your business and photograph the interior. No real word yet on how this will work. You can sign up for that at http://bit.ly/9bzUeT.
- Customized QR codes - for mobile phone users, this new feature allows businesses to create QR codes that can be scanned by users and take them right to the business listing. Not sure whether this will become popular, but we are seeing more and more of these QR codes.
What is missing here is REVIEWS. This is what is so exciting and fantastic about Yelp, and so immature on Google Places. REVIEWS. From an organizational perspective, Google Places is caught under the umbrella of the Google Maps department and they keep looking at this as if we are all geographers looking to map out our world, when really we are hungry pizza eaters who know our geographics pretty well, but we would really like our fellow citizens to review and common on the best pizza around!
So if anyone from Google Places is out there is listening: improve the reviews feature! That is where the value is, for Google and for small businesses!
Resources to Help Small Businesses and Google Places
Google has done its usual job of launching many new, disconnected, resources to help small businesses understand and exploit Google Places. No centralized resource here. Just different websites with different pieces of the Google Places puzzle. Here are the most important -
The last item, of course, is all about reviews, getting reviews, and promoting your business thru Google Places. So that which we call a rose, by any other name. It's all about getting listed and getting (good) reviews, no matter what Google calls it.
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