Oct 12 Google Places

Google Places is a free service that allows you to create a listing for your business that appears on Google maps and on search engine results pages (SERPs). If you have a business I highly recommend that you get a Google account and create a places page for it. Fill in as much information as you can in the twenty or so boxes and add images and video if you’ve got em. A fully built out places page will rank above one that has less information. In addition to this, get your customers to write positive reviews on your places page. This will boost it above other pages in the SERPs that may also have a robust places page, but no reviews.

Google Places knocking down organics

Last year there were some changes made to Google Places. Google Places pages are now appearing above organic search results, knocking down sites that had top spots on the first page. The good news is that the places pages only appear when the Google algorithm thinks that the user is making a local search. This is only about 10-15% of all searches. However, for brick and mortar businesses that have search optimized sites, but no places page, this sucks. If you were ranking number 4 or 5 on the first page for local searches, you’re knocked to the second page now since Google displays 7 places pages before the organic results and the default setting for search results per page is 10. Take a look at the example to the left where I did a search for “san rafael carpets”.

Google Places replacing your URL

There have even been some cases that I was reading about today and saw for myself where the places pages weren’t displaying the sites URL properly on the SERPs. For some businesses rather than having your site URL below the places listing, Google is displaying the URL to your places page. Obviously Google wants to promote their own content over yours, but this is ridiculous. Take a look at the next example down. Look at the URL under “Russell & Smith Honda”. You’ll notice that it’s “maps.google.com” rather than the Russell & Smith’s website URL. Will Google correct this mistake? I hope so, because it seems like they’re playing favorites, even if it’s just a robot making a bad decision, and that’s not cool.

Competition ads on Places page

I’ve got one more gripe with places pages. They seem to be displaying links to a business’ chief competitors right next to their info. Yes, I know the listings are free, but who wants people going to their places page, only to click away to the competition? Nobody. Take a look at the screen shot to the left of a flooring business The Ad Men did some work for. Sears? CarpetOne.com? Those are big businesses that seriously threaten small business owners like my client.

At the beginning I recommended that you get a places page. I know I basically proceeded to thrash the service, but if you want to play ball and stay competitive, you’ve gotta use it. Even with all its flaws, if your competitors have good places pages and you don’t, they’re gonna take your business. It’s not fair, but neither is life.

To conclude, Google Places is an imperfect service with some big problems, but if you have a business you need a Place too.

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