More Changes for Google Local Business Places

Talking the time to make it as easy as possible for customers to review your business on a variety of sources just got a big shot in the arm. Google made the decision to place the third party reviews above the fold and above Google’s own reviews. Most people do not scroll so reviews that are placed directly on Google may not be seen. Potentially, your best reviews on Google will be hidden behind old content from years ago on third party sites. On the positive side, a review on Yahoo shows not only on Yahoo local, but in Google as well. Total exposure is the goal, not just showing well on Google.

The first third party site displayed is the review site that has the most reviews (opentable.com above), then up to two other third party sites (yelp.com & tripadvisor.com) are displayed.

It is somewhat technical, but Google has also announced the development of “Rich Snippets” for local search which means that testimonials placed on your website could be aggregated on Google Places and treated as a review.

Key take home points

• Create a review page to make it easy for people to see and review your business
• Consider updating testimonials on your website so Google will capture and place them on Google Places
• Do not concentrate on Google as the only place to direct good customers to review you.

My guess is that Google is continuing to develop Google places as the prime access point for smart phones to use for local business.  So keep up and continue to provide and link information about your business on a variety of local third party websites.

Customers seeing wrong review ratings

The greatest asset for a business’s  Local Business Listing is favorable reviews placed on the listing  by satisfied customers.  New customers seeing a poor review rating can drive customers to pass you by and contact your competitors.

Hopefully this will be a short term problem, but you should check your business listing on Google Places.  Hopefully only a few unlucky business owners are having the problem of Google  displaying the opposite star rating of review sites that it imports.

An example is The Paper Place.  Their ratings have been reduced from over 4 out of 5 stars to less than 2 out of 5 stars.

The Real Story - Good Reviews

The real data from the imported review sites are:
Ourfaves.com
13 reviews – average 4 stars
Toronto.ibegin.com
5 reviews – average 4.25 stars
Blogto.com
average 3 stars
Yelp.ca
8 reviews – average 4 stars

The good news is that The Paper Place posted this in the Google Maps Forum and Google’s Joel H states that this is now a problem that Google hopes to fix in the next few weeks.

Thanks for letting us know. We’re working on a fix and hope to get it resolved soon. It will likely be a multiple weeks before it’s resolved.   Thanks for reporting the issue!

Joel H

Google Employee
7/14/10

So check your Google Places listing to make sure you are not one of the unlucky. All you need to do is search for your business on Google Maps.  Click here http://maps.google.com/ , type in your business name and city, and search for your Google Places listing. Take a minute and make sure your business is not effected.

Tell us if you are experiencing this issue.  If you are we can help mitigate  the issue.

I have been working with Rib City Grill in American Fork and have established a great starting point for taking advantage of Google Tags.  The key is that when you search for “Restaurants American Fork” Rib City Grill is on that list (Click here to understand how to get on the Box 7).  If that is established then Google Tags can be leveraged very effectively.

Good Reviews & a Coupon - How can Customers not find out more

By being on the Box 7 list on the first page of Google searches, a business has a great deal of free exposure to potential customers.  The next step is having the customer first (or only) look at your information on Google Places.  Before Google Tags, having multiple, great reviews was the only key differentiator.  Now with Google Tags, you can differentiate by being the only one (at least right now) with a coupon or promotion.

If a customer is viewing Google Maps, Google Tags are also highlighted and right now with few businesses taking advantage of this new offer from Google you really stand out.  Check out some of the views of  how Google is highlighting Rib City Grill’s use of Google Tags.

The last view can potentially expand your reach and notice beyond the local map.  In a sea of red pins, customers will start to look for those lonely Yellow Tags with scissors indicating a coupon that saves them money.  And Remember that all these views are also on Google’s applications on smartphones.

Customers will be looking for those Yellow Scissor Tags

Take advantage of this new Advertising tool quickly and get ahead of your competitors that are either not in the know, or are slow to move.  But there is a process here.  They are:

1. Take control of your Local Business Identity
2. Maximize your presence and get on the Box 7 on Google
3. Get positive reviews of your business
4. Start advertising with Google Tags

I can help you with this effort

Tags are yellow markers that allow business owners to promote important aspects of their businesses. Scroll over Tags on Google or click on the sponsored link to view coupons, photos, or other select features.  Tags do not affect the rank of search results; they simply add more information when a particular user is searching.

Hightlight Coupons with Google Tags

If you are already on the Top 7 Box for your key search words and have a coupon or event your want to promote, spending $25.00 per month could be a no brainer.  It is clear that Google is looking to make some money from the development of Google Places.  Google is charging less then $1 a day to post a small ad of 22 characters under the short listing that appears next to the Business listing within the Top 7 Box on the Google Search Page.

To get the most out of those  little yellow arrows you need to be in that Top 7Box.  Knowing how we all want a deal,  being able to mention discounts, events and coupons directly on the search results page is going to help you entice people call or click.

Google Places Tags used on Mobile Web Applications

Coupons for Customers that are Smart Phone Enabled

With Nielsen’s latest study that 21% of all wireless subscribers in the U.S. now have smartphones,  Google Maps being the 2nd most popular download (after Facebook) and Google is providing retailers the ability to include coupons as part of their location search results – You have a real winner for a great way to promote your business on cell phones.

For an example of how Tags works, enter “hair salon” as a Google search on your phone. (You do not have to type the location – Your phone knows where you are). At the top of the page you will see a Google local search result listing a number of hair salons in Washington DC,  and one of the listings, Easel Hair Studio has a little yellow tag. When you tap the tag, which is clearly marked as a sponsored item, a coupon displays that you can present to the retailer for a savings.

I have not yet come across one of these ads yet in my own smartphone searches, but I will keep an eye out for them.  I anticipate using this service to find coupons for my favorite bike shop in the near future.

Have you received a call from a Google sales person yet about this service? It may be happening soon.  One of my clients got a call yesterday.  You can get in touch  with a customer service person at 800-838-7971.  I just wish that there was someone at Google to talk to when you have a problem (One of my mantras is that there is no customer service at Google.)

If you have used me to set up your Google Places listing, I will set up Google Tags for you for FREE.

It seems that in the past few weeks, Google is again integrating Yelp reviews into Google places.  Not only that, but Yelp reviews are the first reviews Google lists for businesses that have Yelp reviews (indicated by www.yelp.com/biz/name of business ). Yelp reviews are before reviews placed on Google (indicated by maps.google.com) or any other review service such as Citysearch, or yellowpages.

So if you have been getting good reviews rejoice.  If Yelp has not been your friend, start pointing your happy customers to review your business on Yelp

Yelp is back in the Saddle with Google Places

Google has changed the name of Local Business Center to Google Places.  Here is an example of La Costa Uphostery’s Google Place.

All the major search engines (Yahoo, Bing, Google) have some type of alternative to Google Places.  For my discussions you may see me using the term Local Business Listing – This is the general term for Search Engines aggregating a specific business’s information (what they sell, hours, reviews, etc) and allowing some form of control by the owner of the business, but not complete control.

Google’s Place Pages are primarily for local businesses, but they also provide useful information about cities, neighborhoods, points of interest, and mass transit stops. You can see a Place Page simply by going to Google Maps and entering in a search term. When the results come up, you’ll have several results with representative pins on the map. When you hover over a pin, a box will pop up and in that box is a ‘More Info’ link. That link takes you to the Place Page for that local business or location.

One out of every five searches is location related, but local search still represents a relatively small portion of Google’s revenues. Google wants local businesses to claim their Places pages (4 million have already done so- Have you?), update them and buy local search advertising.

Businesses can also add real-time updates to their Places page and define the areas they serve.

Below is a short video from Google explaining Google Places

There is power in using Google Places, but to make the most of it you need time and knowledge.  If you have limited time and knowledge,  contact me and let me  help you.

Google’s control is highlighted by the latest change of your Local Business Listing – The addition of “Nearby Places you might like”. This feature could have both positive and negative effects on your business.

Google’s Nearby Places could give your established customers the idea to go to a competitor, or you could be the competitor and steal their customer.

Top 7 list for Google Search "Upholstery Carlsbad, CA"

So what has Google done? In the middle of your Local Business Listing Google has placed a section that list other business that may be of interest to someone who is looking at your business. As an example I am going to look at Upholstery in Carlsbad.

Round 1 – Fanco’s Upholstery gets the attention

In the example, Francos Upholstery is the top of the list of Google local places for the search Upholstery near Carlsbad, CA.  Learn more about how to get on the top of Google Places here.

It is on the top so most people will click on it to find out more… It is clear Franco’s owners are  taking an active participation in embellishing their local business listing, they have a review and have created a coupon

Where would you click next?

But look what is below that – My favorite Upholstery store, La Costa Upholstery, with 15 reviews and a 5 star rating. My guess is most people will click on La Costa Upholstery at this point.

Round 2 – La Costa Upholstery steals attention

So now let’s look at La Costa Upholstery’s situation with the roles reversed. La Costa Upholstery does not have a coupon (They need to work on that), but if you look at the competitors in Nearby places (including Franco’s Upholstery) you would not click on any of them (Maybe We-R-Fabrics).

Would you click away from La Costa Upholstery?

So Google addition of Nearby places should help La Costa Upholstery and hurt Franco’s Upholstery.

So what does Google say about Nearby Places?

Here is Google’s description of what they are doing in Nearby Places in a local business listing:

You’ll notice that we do not limit these suggestions to places sharing any specific characteristic; instead, we use a broad set of signals to come up with what are hopefully the most interesting suggestions. We’re still working on refining these signals, so bear with us if your serendipitous discovery of a new place is even more unexpected than you’d anticipated.

The reality is that  most of the businesses listed in this section of your Google Places are going to be competitors to your business. Like all things on the internet, Google Places is going to continue to change, so you need to keep vigilant of those changes and benefit from those changes and make your competitors suffer.

What is a Local Business to do?

Given that you are not in control, what can you do?  The answer is to push the Nearby Places section as far down your page as possible. This means adding content, pictures, video and REVIEWS.  Here is the complete Local Business listing for La Costa Upholstery.  You have to read a lot of very positive info about La Costa Upholstery before you see the competition in Nearby Places.

Push the competition down the page

Round 3 – La Costa Upholstery keeps attention and get the phone call from the customer.

What are your first impressions of “Nearby places you may like?” Tell us if you you share our concern by leaving a comment below.

Make Google your friend - Steal Mcdonald's business

Ranking = Location + Information + Corroboration + Input + X

Understanding these variables is a critical part of successfully marketing your business online. Small Local Businesses have just two meaningful representations in the local search space: a website and a business listing or “LBL”.

Get to the Top of the Local Bus Listing

Business listing optimization and improving your “findability” in the local search space is the hot market right now. Local search is mainstream. And If you’re not already convinced of this, all you have to do is measure the real estate Google allots to their 7-pack (listings that appear adjacent to the large map of business locations) in the universal results – on many screens almost pushing the index-based results below the fold.

Surprisingly, only about 11% of Businesses have even claimed their business listings. And roughly 25% of the existing “Name, Address, Phone Number” representations floating around online are incorrect.

This is an opportunity for those of you who take full advantage and correct the mistakes of what Google represents about your business.

For any local search, the major search engines (e.g., Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, Bing Local) all use their own “black box” algorithms to deliver results they determine are most-to-least relevant.  I’ve found a handful of factors that influence rankings.

Ranking Factors: What Determines the Ranking Results in Local Search?

Back to my equation: Ranking = Location + Information + Corroboration + Input + X; X being defined as the consistent unknown and ever-evolving factor contributing to the unpredictability we see in results. The definition of X might as well be stored in the same vault as the Coca-Cola recipe. The other criteria of the local search equation are better understood.

1. Location: Distance from the geographic center of the area searched – the closer your business is, the higher you rank — well kind of.  This factor has been reduced in weight recently, but at a minimum, claim your basic listing and make sure business name, address and telephone numbers are accurate and complete to take advantage of this location factor.

2. Information: Listings containing more robust information and links rank higher in results (e.g., a website link, keyword-rich content, media, etc). Enhance your listing with keyword-rich content targeting the top keyword phrases prospective consumers may use to find you. Businesses with product/service keywords in their LBL title get an extra boost (some businesses actually change their name specifically for this reason).  I also suggest supplementing your listing with as many “extras” as possible. One example would be adding a custom coupon.

3. Corroboration: How many other local search engines or directories have your same listing published? Each time the information contained in your listing matches the Name, Address, Phone and description on other “relevant” sites, your listing gets a “citation” (award) — the more citations you have, the higher your business ranks.

4. “Objective” Consumer Input: How many consumer reviews/ratings or other sources of user input does your business have on “relevant” sites? How many are positive/negative? To maximize citations and achieve the highest possible ranking you need to get as much positive feedback as possible. Encourage your happy customers to go online and give you a positive review on multiple sites. Google recognizes unique and non-unique URL’s within the review section – so don’t think you can get carried away with rating your own business.

Negative ranking factors: Avoid using an 800# or multiple phone numbers across listings for tracking purposes; non-local area code; use of a P.O. Box; multiple LBLs with same phone number and/or DBA and/or address; stuffing geo-targeted keywords into non-related categories or fields; high percentage of bad reviews.

Play it again, see which sites fully load in 7 or less seconds, and the example websites that loads in more than 7 seconds (La Costa Upholstery, Facebook, CNN, ESPN) will probably be negatively impacted.

Why Does Upload Speed Matter?

The reason is that a week ago, Google announced a change to how its search rankings are calculated. This change will affect every business with a web presence. At the highest level, the change means that a website’s Google ranking will now be influenced by its speed. Faster websites now feature higher in search results, and slower websites drop down in the search results.

For now, Google is targeting only the slowest sites saying that “only 1% of search queries will be affected.” Looking into the near future, however, speed is guaranteed to have an increasingly important impact on the search ranking calculations. And when presented with the choice, most businesses would not want to risk their livelihoods by assuming they’re not in that 1%.

Either way, website performance has become the newest cost of doing businesses.  Building a cutesy site is no longer enough for the average business. As Google increases the impact of speed on their calculations, businesses will only have more to lose.  You are throwing money away if you don’t do something about your site’s performance.

For far too long businesses have been able to treat their web presence as a checklist item that merely needs to be crossed off, regardless of how sloppy the results are. This news is a reminder that you not only need to have a web presence, but need to have a really, really good one. You need good design, content, interactivity, SEO and fast load times to gain the greatest advantage against your competitors.

Slightly higher Google traffic can bring more new customer  to your business, and especially in today’s bad economy that could make or break a small business.

Here is a real quick way to find out if you’re likely to be affected: Test your site’s speed using WebPageTest, a popular and free online service that uses a browser in a controlled location to surf to your website and measure the load times for first-time and repeat visitors.  I used this site to create the video you viewed.

A quick estimate indicates that the average website load time across the Fortune 500 companies is a little over 7 seconds. If your pages load under 7 seconds then you’re better than average, and there are good odds that beating this average is good enough for Google.

But if your load times are more than 7 seconds, you’re slower than the average, and may want to speed up the website by optimizing your website, or finding a faster web host.

The key thing to remember is that if you’re site is hosted by a slow provider, or your website is sloppy,  bogged down by lots of Flash, video and images, you risk impacting your Google Search Ranking.  Words are King in Search Ranking.

Microsoft announced a deal with Yahoo in which Bing would power the portal’s search for the next decade. Consumers could still perform searches at yahoo.com, but Microsoft would provide the results and the automated buying platform for advertisers. Yahoo would provide the worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

The move, meant to challenge the industry giant by consolidating about 26% of search share to Google’s 65%, is currently in regulatory review and is expected to be implemented next year.

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