Google just started rolling out a new feature: Sponsored Maps Icons. In case you don’t know what a map icon is, let alone how to sponsor one, they’re those tiny little points on the map that look like they’re basically part of the map level, not even an overlay. If you click on one, you [...]
Archive for the ‘Google Places’ Category
26 Aug
Don’t Be Fooled By Yelp’s Absence
Much has been said about Yelp’s removal from Google Places as a review/citation source. It’s unfortunate, because Yelp’s review system is unique and assures quality reviews from quality commentators. Google Places offered great exposure for Yelp; people see the reviews, along with a link to the business’s profile page over on Yelp. On the other [...]
16 Aug
Cool Trick for Advertising on Your Competitors’ Place Pages
You may have noticed on the center right part of your place page that Google runs some ads. This is a great place for ads – anyone who is looking a plumber’s Place Page, for example, is probably a pretty good potential customer for any other customer. Here’s how you can run ads exactly in [...]
15 Aug
Google Throws Solutions at a Wall to See What Sticks
Google’s been catching some criticism over the last year or two for ignoring small business owners concerns and being notoriously hard to reach, particularly over in our little corner of the search-o-sphere, Local Search. If you need any sort of customer service when it comes to Google Places, try posting to the Google Maps help [...]
11 Aug
Spy On Your Competitors’ Citation Profiles
Matt McGee discovered an interesting tool for finding your competitors’ citations, and it’s not a bad one. The folks over at Ontolo have put together an automated version of their citation tracking by phone number method. Basically, the way it works is like this – the phone number is the one absolutely unique element of [...]
6 Aug
Weekly Local Search Roundup – August 6, 2010
I think it’s probably a good idea to do these roundups every week, and I’m certainly going to try. I plan on doing these every Thursday, but got a little distracted yesterday by the Jerusalem Wine Festival, so my inaugural Weekly Local Search Roundup is going to have to be a day late, and slightly [...]
5 Aug
Google Places: Respond to Reviews Feature Could Be Better
Responding to reviews is a critical feature for reputation management, and now Google lets you do precisely that. The benefits are enormous – business owners finally have a voice to combat malicious or even fake reviews, and even just say thanks to great reviews. Here are a few features I hope we’ll see added to [...]
31 Jul
Checkins: A New Google Places Ranking Factor?
Google has just announced that they’re opening up their API to developers, encouraging checkin-type apps to link up with Google Places. This is a great move, that can 1) Bring additional focus to Google Places, encouraging both greater customer interaction, as well as increased SMB owner awareness of Google Places, something Google has been struggling [...]
29 Jul
Four Types of Google Places Citations
We all know SEO is all about the links. More than any other factor, an absence of links translates into an effective absence of ranking, while a large quantity of quality links usually translates into a site that ranks well. Local SEO is a little different – it’s not so much the links, it’s the [...]
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