Google’s Local Business Center becomes “Google Places”

Google has recently announced that their Local Business Center has been renamed as “Google Places”, as part of a rebranding process for their maps-based data, and to mark the inclusion of some new features. Every company should be listing their business details on this part of Google’s service, particularly if they target a localised area, and the updated Places service will provide new ways to market to customers through search.

Google launched their Place Pages feature last September to provide users with more detailed information through the Google Maps service for more than 50 million places around the world, with locational information such as restaurants and hotels to dry cleaners and bike shops, as well as non-business places like museums, schools and parks. The renamed Google Places now coordinates business listings with this branded service and allows businesses to verify and supplement their business information to include hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons, product offerings and more.

The new features being made available within the Google Places service include:

• Service areas – if a business has to travel to serve customers, then they can now show which geographic areas are served. And if a business doesn’t have a storefront or office location (such as a home-based business), they can make their address private but still display a listing.
• New advertising options – for $25 per month, businesses in some cities can make their listings stand out on Google.com and Google Maps with Tags – yellow markers that allow companies to promote important aspects of their businesses, such as coupons, photos, or other select features.
• Business photo shoots – in addition to uploading their own photos, businesses in select cities can now request a free photo shoot of the interior of their business which will be used to supplement existing photos of businesses on Place Pages.
• Customized QR codes: businesses in the US can download a QR code that’s unique to their business, directly from their dashboard page. QR codes can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials, and customers can scan them with certain smartphones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for that business.

These features are initially being made available to companies in the USA, and in some cases limited to selected cities, but are expected to be rolled out to other countries in the future. Google is also providing more detailed analysis within Google Places that includes data about how many times people have found a business on Google, what keywords they used to find it and even what areas people traveled from to visit the business.

If you’d like to know more about how Google Places could improve your business visibility on local searches, please contact us now.

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