Google Places becomes Google+ Local

At the end of May, Google announced a significant change to its Places listings, through a rebranding as Google+ Local. This marks another move by Google to integrate more services into their Google+ social network and therefore to promote and encourage more web searchers to use this tool. The implications for any business – but particularly those targeting a local market – was the way that their details were being presented on Google changed overnight, plus the ways people may interact with the listings also changed.

If you have previously had your business listed on Google Maps – through the Google Places listings – you will see a change in the way your company is now being presented. Although Google Places was particularly important for businesses that target a localised market, we would recommend that every company should claim and verify their business listing on Google, as it gives you better control over the accuracy of the information shown, as well as the presentation and branding of your business. This is just as important now with the Google+ Local listings.

The change to the Google+ Local format is Google’s way of increasing the awareness and use of their Google+ social networking platform through integration with more Google services. Since it’s launch, Google+ has struggled to gain sign-ups and usage against the established position of Facebook, so with much riding on the success of this service, Google is making the most of their network of services to grow usage of Google+. With the Local listings, they claim this recent change is to enable users to get “personalized recommendations, see what your friends are up to, and help others find great places”.

That’s all good if there are enough people using Google+ and sharing with others on this social network. At the moment, this is not significant, but Google is also integrating reviews from Zagat, a US-based review site which they bought in September 2011 and which is also being rolled out internationally. For business owners, the first thing is to claim your listing or check how your business is now being presented in the new format (see below), but ongoing, you need to be aware of how reviews and ratings will be displayed against your listing.

Whether or not this rebranding of Google Places as Google+ Local proves to be a success is yet to be seen. This depends largely on whether the Google+ social network becomes anywhere near as popular as Facebook. First impressions indicate that this may take some time to have any meaningful impact, but the integration could definitely become more useful in the future as business owners and web searchers increasingly use Google+ to share information and post reviews to share within their ‘social circles’.

That’s the critical issue for businesses, as reviews – both good and bad – could become a significant factor on their Local listing and these need to be monitored and managed. If you would like more information about the changes from Places to Local+ and what this means for your business, please contact us now.

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