Google Places Update

At our recent Google Places workshops we emphasised how much (and how rapidly) Google likes to change things in local search, including Places, but that it was still important to include as much information about your business as possible. This helps Google to verify the legitimacy of your business and its location as well as its postition in the marketplace.

Well, they've changed things again since then, and a lot of the data you enter in your Places listing is not currently being displayed. However, it DOES still matter, as Google themselves confirmed this week:

"The following info you provide may not appear on your Place page, but it’s all still used to help us understand more about your business:


• Email address
• Menu
• Reservations
• Optional attributes / Additional details
• Service area toggle “Show service area”


So just because we’re not showing it, doesn’t mean it’s not helpful for us to have — it helps our system ensure that your organic listing appears and ranks appropriately on Google and Google Maps when potential customers perform searches related to your service."

So there you have it, from Google themselves: they still use all this data, even if they don't always display it. Keep adding data, videos, images and more to your Google Places page to keep your business in the forefront of your local market. 

And if you need any more help with any aspect of local business marketing you know who to ask.


Roy

PS. Incidentally, Google say that the absence of business descriptions that you might have noticed on some Places pages is a bug that they're working on fixing, not part of their planned changes for Places pages.