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Claiming Google Places Listing

December 15th, 2011

Although businesses have been able to claim their Google Places Listings since 2005, the number of businesses claiming them since April of 2010 is tremendous. Over 1 1/2 years ago, only 4 million listings had been claimed. Last March the number jumped to 6 million, and now just nine months later the number has jumped to 8 million. According to Google, that is 16% of all the business locations throughout the world.

A Google Places listing doesn’t just include your address, phone number and a link to your website. You can describe your services and products and upload logos, pictures and videos. Customers also have the ability to write reviews, which can greatly help with your rankings.

Claiming Google Places Graphic

If you haven’t claimed your Google Places listing, what are your waiting for. It is FREE web visibility.

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Local SEO For Small Business

August 31st, 2011

You have heard it all before. If you want to be found online by prospects, you need to optimize your website with search terms related to your products and services AND your local target market. Maybe you have put off doing so because you weren’t sure how much you bought into the whole idea of search engine optimization (SEO). Or perhaps you thought it was too expensive or not worth the return on investment. Well, here is an interesting fact that just might change your mind!

According to a study by the Pew Research Center, Americans trust small business owners over 13 other institutions! A whopping 71% of those polled said they trusted small business. Only 25% trust large corporations. And only 25% trust the federal government.

Pew Research Center

In this tumultuous climate, people trust local small business for a reason. Why? Because you are not some large inaccessible corporation. You are their neighbor, their son’s little league coach, and a face. But you need to get that face seen if you want to be recognized. So join your local chamber of commerce, volunteer for local organizations, join local networking groups. AND make sure your business can be found online.

That’s Where Local SEO For Small Business Comes In


You don’t have to tell people to shop local, this study already shows that people WANT to shop local. So make sure they can easily find your website when they are searching for your products and services. Don’t just rely on what you think your ranking is – remember personalized search can inflate your search engine rankings. Get a website visibility analysis and see how you are fairing. Learn how you can improve your site’s Internet presence and then do it! Here are some tips:

1. Make sure you are targeting terms that people are actually searching for
2. Don’t forget to include your market, such as dry cleaners warwick ny
3. Then make sure those terms are placed in the website’s coding and on the page itself
4. Create local business listings on Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local and optimize them with the appropriate search terms as well
5. Submit your website to the top directories – Yelp, SuperPages, InsiderPages, and more
6. Submit your website to any local directories
7. Submit your website to industry specific directories
8. Create a Facebook page, optimize it, and post often

Local SEO for small business is important and it doesn’t have to be break the bank expensive. The local business listings are free. The directory listings are free. Facebook is free. If you’re tech savvy, you can attempt creating your listings and optimizing your website yourself. If you’re not, you should find an SEO consultant who can help. Depending upon the size of your website, SEO services can be minimal with great ROI.

Local residents want to support your small business, so make sure they can find it.

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What Happened To Google Tags?

April 21st, 2011

Those bright yellow Google Tags that highlighted your business will soon be history.

According to an email from Google, the company will be retiring the tags on April 29th. If you currently run a Google Tags campaign and you didn’t get the email – hopefully you will – let this posting serve as your notice. While we received an email notification for one of our client’s, we did not receive one for our own account. Instead, we received the following email:

According to an email from Google, the company will be retiring the tags on April 29th. If you currently run a Google Tags campaign and you didn’t get the email – hopefully you will – let this posting serve as your notice. While we received an email notification for one of our client’s, we did not receive one for our own account. Instead, we received the following email:

“This is to notify you that the following offers in your Google Places account will expire in 13 days on 4/30/11.

15% Off SEO Services

We are sorry to bother you but we thought we’d let you know early, in case you wished to extend their lifetime or replace them. Please visit Google Places to extend the expiry date of your offers or to replace them with new ones. After expiration, the offers will no longer be displayed until they are renewed.

Thanks,”

Kind of confusing, huh? Perhaps you also received this email. But it is official. The Google Tags will soon be no more. Once we logged into our Google Places account, there was a notification up top saying:

What Happened to Google Tags?

What Happened to Google Tags?

It appears that Google is trying to push its new Google Boost – a very simplified version of AdWords that you supposedly “don’t” have to manage, in place of Tags, which will make them money (as Google Tags was a nominal fee), but cost you more. Google mentioned Boost – and even offered a $100 Boost credit for Tags users for the month of May – in its email and in our Places dashboard. When Google first started Tags, it offered its users a free month credit, i.e., $25. So it seems Google wants you to spend at least $100 per month on Boost.

Google Tags worked well for our clients, both in terms of visibility and cost of conversion. It’s a shame that it will no longer be available.

So if you notice that your Google Tag is no longer showing, or if you finally decided to try Google Tags and logged into your Places account and see no option for it, you will no longer have to wonder what happened to Google Tags.

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Google Hotpot Reviews Now Rolled Into Google Places

April 12th, 2011

Hotpot is a recommendation engine that displays reviews and ratings of local businesses and establishments. Until last week, Google Hotpot reviews were integrated with Google Places in the iPhone and Android Google Places apps when users were searching Google Maps or Google.com. You set a geographical location and local reviews were displayed. Now Google has rolled Hotpot into Google Places.

According to Google, the Hotpot “community has quickly expanded to millions of users who are rating more than one million times per month and enjoying a truly personalized view of the world.” So they are making Hotpot a permanent part of Google Places. They also plan to add more features to Google Places to make it even easier to rate, discover and share.

How does merging Google Hotpot Reviews into Google Places affect you?

If you have a Google Places account, make sure it is complete and optimized. If you don’t have one, create one. You have to be found in order to be reviewed!

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Can I Use a PO Box as My Google Places Address?

January 31st, 2011

Clients with home businesses often ask if they can use a PO Box as their address in the Google Places listing. The short answer – not a good idea.

Google has seemed to waffle back and forth in this area. When Google Maps was first created, businesses without a brick and mortar address could not create a business listing because the Google Map was unable to display a listing without a pinpoint address. Then Google Maps started incorporating business listings from data partners and began showing a floating dot, rather than a pinpoint, to represent those businesses with no “actual” address – but that information had to come from data partners rather than a listing.

When confronted with how businesses with no brick and mortar address could get on Google Maps back in 2008, the Google Earth VP suggested that those businesses get a PO Box. Hence, people started doing so. Acknowledging that not all businesses have brick and mortar addresses, in April 2010, Google rolled out the ability to add service areas to your listing AND hide your address.

A few months later Google seemed to do an about face. In a December 2010 blog post on tips for creating a business listing in Google Places, a Google rep wrote:

“Google Places is meant to facilitate customer interaction with brick-and-mortar businesses and service providers. Therefore, the business owner or employee who is officially authorized to represent their particular business location must have a physical address in order to comply with our guidelines.”

The guidelines the rep is referring to state: “P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Listings submitted with P.O. Box addresses will be removed.”

Some of those listings have been removed and some have not. But there are plenty of Google Places Help questions out there regarding people being penalized for using a P.O. Box as an address.

What are your options? Some places let you get a P.O. Box that is not listed as a P.O. Box address, but rather as a suite number. Use your home address but don’t display it. Try to partner with another business to use their address – but remember that there cannot be two businesses at the same address so you would need to have a suite number.

Can I use a PO Box as my google places address?
If you want your Google Places listing to be shown, DON’T use a P.O. Box!

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Google Places iPhone App – One More Reason to Have an Optimized Google Places Listing for Your Business

January 13th, 2011

Yesterday, Google announced that a Google Places App is now available for the iPhone. This App lets you quickly search for places nearby, just like local search on google.com – but while you’re on the move. Google gives you some popular search categories to choose from and allows you to customize the list by adding your own favorite searches.

The Google Places for iPhone App also helps you make an informed decision by integrating Google Hotpot, which is a recommendation engine that displays reviews and ratings of local businesses/establishments.

Google Places AppGoogle Places App2

Google is making local search easier while people are mobile – looking for a nearby restaurant to stop and eat, the closest gas station, a good cup of coffee. Want them to find you in their search? Make sure you have a complete and optimized Google Places listing for your business. The iPhone already has a huge market with ATT. Imagine how much larger that market will get when Verizon starts selling the iPhone next month!

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What is Yext Advertising? A New Way for Small Businesses to Be Found Online Through Local Search

January 5th, 2011

Similar to Google tags, the brand new Yext Advertising allows you to highlight your business listings with a – yellow tag.  But unlike Google Tags – which are simply seen on Google – when you advertise with Yext, your highlighted listing can appear on multiple search engines including Yahoo, Yelp, MapQuest, Superpages, Citysearch, Yellowbook, WhitePages and many more.

You can create custom messages such as coupons, specials, new products or services, and more.  And you control/update your tag on all of Yext’s partner search engines from one dashboard – quite a time saver.

The power of Yext advertising

According to Yext’s website, “recent studies performed on Google search results showed that businesses highlighted with a Google Tag received more than twice the attraction from prospective customers. Through special partnerships, Yext now offers you a new way to advertise your business listings on leading local search sites.”

The cost is $99.95 per month.  Although this is four times the cost of Google Tags, your listing is showing on more places.  You can try it out free for 7 days.

While we don’t think Yext Tags are going to replace Google Local Search, they are another affordable way to expand your web presence.

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Place Search On Google

October 28th, 2010

Will Place Search on Google Affect Your SEO Efforts?

Yesterday Google introduced a new type of local search result. Place Search organizes information around local places to help searchers more easily make comparisons. Previously when you did a local search, you would see the local results from Google Places at the top of the page next to a pushpin map. Now the map is in the right column above the AdWords ads and the results are included in or above the regular organic search results, marked with red pins – which helps your listing jump out from the rest.

Place Search results will appear automatically when Google predicts a searcher is looking for local information, i.e., “chinese restaurants new york city”. Google has also made it easy to start a local search – just click on the “Places” icon in the left panel of the search results page. If a local web search doesn’t yield you the results you want, click on places and you just might find what you were looking for.

One very important thing to note, Google does not seem to be consistent with how it is displaying these new results. We did our own test. Some searches yielded one “result” per business, which incorporated a regular result with a Google Places result with links to both the website and the Places listing. This combined result is included in the 10 results per page. The problem with this is you are not being displayed twice, as you may have been in the past. Other searches yielded the old format with a 1 or 2 or 7 pack listing separated from the regular results so that you could appear twice on a page. Not sure how Google is determining what to show and how.

In any event, if you haven’t created a Google Places listing you need to now more than ever! Write On Point is here to help if you need us.

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Hyperlocal Marketing For Small Businesses

October 22nd, 2010

Hyperlocal marketing is a fabulous way for small, local businesses to get the word out about their products and services – both online and off – to their communities. This post will focus on how to gain online visibility in your local community.

Hyperlocal marketing – or should we say hyperlocal search – for small businesses


Local search is really gaining traction. More and more people are moving away from browsing through the local phone book and turning toward searching for businesses, services and products online. When they do, can they find you? Here are some Hyperlocal Search tips:

1. Create a local business center listing on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Make it robust with specific information about your services and products, pictures, videos and discount offers – and make sure to use relevant keywords in the appropriate places.
2. Optimize your website with the names of your town and surrounding towns.
3. Incorporate Google Maps in your website – you can even customize Google Maps to show your service routes.
4. Get listed in online directories.
5. Incorporate local events on your site.

Hyperlocal marketing or in this case hyperlocal search is a truly effective way for small businesses to target customers where they live and shop. For those of you who don’t have the experience or know-how to implement these tips, you can always reach out to your SEO consultant for help.

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What are Google Tags? How do Google Tags work?

August 2nd, 2010

Google Tags are a new way to help you enhance your web visibility. This post will explain exactly what Google Tags are and how they work.

What are Google Tags?


Google Tags are a new paid advertising feature for Google Places accounts. They are a way to enhance your local business listing on Google.com and Google Maps. A Google Tag is literally a yellow tag that highlights specific information about your business, such as a video, a coupon, or a weekly special and most importantly makes your business stand out! An example of what a Google Tag looks like is below:

See How Google Tags Make a Business Stand Out

See How Google Tags Make a Business Stand Out

How do Google Tags work


For a flat monthly fee of $25 you can select a type of Google Tag you would like to use to highlight your business. You can choose from:

· Photos
· Videos
· Coupons
· Menus
· Website
· Reservations
· Custom Messages

The type of tag you can select depends upon the information you already have included in your business listing. For example, if you want to highlight a photo, then you need to have uploaded photos to your listing. You can only select one tag at a time. However, you can change or remove a tag whenever you like which is great if you want to announce special discounts or limited time offers. You can even keep track of how well your Google Tags are working in your Google Places dashboard.

As more and more people are searching on the go, you may be happy to know that Google Tags will appear on mobile web searches.

Since this is a NEW advertising medium, Google Tags are a great way to get a jump on the competition. Keep in mind though, that Google Tags will only enhance your visibility if your listing is actually visible. If your business listing is not showing for keyword phrases that relate to your products or services, you may want to consult with an SEO company that can make that happen.

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