Google Places Listings

Updating your Google Places Listing

What many businesses may not be aware about is that recently Google updated their Google Places listings and it is now all integrated with Google Plus. Businesses, who didn’t have all the correct information such as categories, profile pictures and opening hours, will now have lost their Google Places listings and will have to go through the process of re-verifying their listings again.

NEW FEATURES

Dashboard
Google’s new dashboard can be a little daunting at first, but seriously, it is a great new contribution to Google Places. There is a range of new features and you can now easily:

  • View your listing
  • Read reviews about your business
  • Set up an express Google Adwords campaign
  • Click through to your Google Plus page
  • And look at the insights of your Google Places listings (great for those that love stats)
LISTING DETAILS REQUIRED FOR YOUR BUSINESS LISTING

Profile Picture
Google wants you to upload photographs, and select one to be your profile picture; ideally this will be your logo if you are a business. Pictures need to be bigger than 256 x 256 pixels but smaller than 1024 pixels.

There a big pros for including pictures on your Google Places listings – such as they add to your overall listing, and give potential customers more insight into your business; and your pictures are more likely to get picked up and ranked in the Google image search – so make sure you use keywords explaining what your pics are – and remember to save them with those titles.

Categories
In the categories section, you will need to make sure you select at least one category that Google understands. Simply start typing your services or products, and Google will bring up a range of categories – select from the list.

Hours
Google wants you to let your customers know your opening hours. And you will see in the Google Search, that when a business’ Google Placing listing comes up, it will now tell you if that business is opened or closed depending on the time you have conducted your search.

Google is becoming so much more advanced and smarter and it keeps every day businesses on their feet. Google Places is a free listing for all businesses, and to stand out in the local searches, it is really important that your business is featured on Google Places.

If your business was not up to date, then you will need to re-verify your listing.  To do this, you must first update your listing and make sure it says that it is complete, once you have done this – there will be a red box at the top with text stating “Changes to your business information require verification.” – you will need to click on the “Verify Now’ button and check the address is correct and then select ‘Send Postcard”.

Your postcard from Google should be at your office within 3-weeks. It does look like junk mail, so please keep an eye out for the Google logo. Once you receive your postcard, log-in to your Google Places account and enter the 5-digit PIN to verify your account. It’s as simple as that!

If you are new to Google Places, check out our blog on Submitting your Business on Google Places.

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