Google has started rejecting Offers from Google Places for quality and policy violations. Business owners that have had Offers rejected will receive an email with an indication of which guideline was not satisfied. Offers that do not provide actual discounts or dollar value will be suspended. Here is a rejection email:
From: googleplaces-noreply@google.com
Date: December 2, 2011 5:27:40 AM EST
To: xxxx@xxx…
Awareness of Google’s new, aggressive & annoying Bubble ads have been creeping into the SMBs field of vision since their introduction 10 days ago. Articles have been posted at a number of sites (here, here & here) questioning their purpose. On Saturday alone, there were 4 posts in the Places Forum from SMBs specifically about Google advertising against a given place (here, here, here and here)…
Several other instances of Google Plus integration into local search results have been found by Renan Cesar, a Brazilian search marketer.
In both of these examples, the images, when clicked, go to an intermediate search result highlighting the appropriate Plus Page with an option to add them to your circle. In the first instance the intermediary result shows a recent post. In both cases the Plus page is correctly identified…
The ever observant Plamen and his friend Stacy sent along a Places Search screenshot that clearly shows a Google Plus Page icon next to a Places search result:
When you click on the icon it shows a Google Plus Page for a different Transmission service.
It makes sense that Google would integrate Google Plus pages with their Local results. What better way to both allow a business to highlight the Page’s presence and incent other businesses to claim their Google Plus Page and keep it updated with meaningful information…
This search for “Child Protection Services, NY” provides an obvious example of Google’s inability to target a specific ad against a specific place with their new Info Bubble Ads. Â It provides great fodder for my first installment of Rogue’s Gallery of Inappropriate Bubble Ads…
There is some irony that the Archdiocese of New York* is sandwiched between Children’s Rights and the NY Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Child in the Map search results and I suppose the bottom ad for a Child Protection Lawyer is somehow oddly relevant in this context…
Should every place & business that exists in our everyday life be used to sell against? Should that specific, very real entity with its history of sentiment and purpose be leveraged to shill for something without their knowledge? And if so what is appropriate to sell against that place? I asked myself that question as I explored some of the “bubble ads” that Google was showing in the info bubble for these Places…
As the jokes were flying about how distasteful Google’s new Map’s info ad venue was, I became curious as to exactly how unseemly it really was. So I looked.
As Glen Gabe pointed out it may very well be necessary for SMB’s to take out ads defensively. Greg Sterling suggested that Google think about a Pandora like subscription so you could search ad free. For me, it reminds Google’s ads on the Map info bubble reminds me of ads on “park benches” that sit amid the fumes on street corners…
As Facebook pushes the boundaries of privacy, Google is pushing the boundaries of ad placement. Like all corporations, Google needs to respond to the demands of a market that requires ever increasing income growth. One way to do that in the absence of significant page view growth is to monetize every remaining square inch of Google.
That seems to be whats happening in Maps where Laura Alisanne points out that Google is now placing ads on the info bubble for a given business…
Many small shop owners think of themselves as being in more than one business. They have (perhaps loosely and imprecisely) marketed themselves under two or more brands into their local market and the allure of doing so on Google Places is strong. Should they continue to do so?
Scott of BreakTheSeal in the UK asked me how to best handle this situation. He inquired:
If you have a business, offering 2 separate services but at the same address, under slightly different names, is it good to have 2 separate Google Places profiles or to amalgamate them into 1? My predicament comes from a current client, a hair salon that also offers a specialist wig service for cancer patients…
With the rollout of the new grey pin local search results, Google has continued to increase the amount of information from your Places page that is visible in the main search results. This is particularly true with the new Branded One Box result.
Google is prepared to turn over to your company the better part of the information above the fold and with a little work and some luck you can maximize what the searcher sees about your business…
I was struck by the obvious similarity between the visual aspects of the new Local OneBox and the Google test of the Sources display first spotted by Cyrus Shepard.
Google has been on a tear of late in local to gather photos and display them on your Place page. One assumes that this effort is on going in other topical areas as well.
Google is currently showing similar results to the Sources test for bricks and mortar businesses and geographical points of interest…
Two weeks ago there were numerous reports of new pop-ups on the Places page to ascertain from visitors the accuracy of a business location, the website associated with the listing, and the quality of included photos. Shortly there after it became obvious that Google was starting to once again actively allowing users to edit every Places attribute of claimed & unclaimed listings via community edit feature…
I was surprised to learn that Dependable Locksmith, raided in late 2009 by the Feds and sued by the attorney general in Missouri earlier that year , was still in business and still using their “standard” business model of bait and switch. It does not speak well of our regulatory or legal environment that known crooks and charlatans with a profile like theirs could continue to operate in the exact same way…
Today, I am presenting at the seventh GetListed.org Local University in Ellicottville, NY. in cooperation with Google, Bing and range of local sponsors. Some of you I know and the others I hope to personally meet. Please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask any questions that come to mind or to just introduce yourself.
These links will provide background information and details for a pathway to dig deeper into the world of managing your listing in Google Places and ethically approaching the review process…
Since Nyagoslav of Optilocal first spotted the grey pinned local results a week ago, there have been a number of other sitings of the change in the wild. There is still a fair bit of variability in the layout and arrangement indicating that Google has not yet picked a final design and they are still testing. The widespread sitings would tend to argue that ultimately the change to grey is likely…
Related posts:
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testing 123
Related posts:
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Oh Samantha you naughty vixen you.
You get outed in Philadelphia dinging lawyers with fake reviews. Little did I know that you were a serial offender.  Triangle Direct Media seems to have found that you already had second profile with the same name and that you had done your dirty deed to 18 cleaning companies in Cary, NC.
Oh dear Samantha, how many others have you hurt? I think I see a pattern…
As part of Getlisted Local University we occasionally survey the attendees. We ask several questions to assess their level of knowledge about search in general and local search in particular. This survey sample size is very small and self selected from those that registered for the seminar. The participants are primarily small and medium businesses and the market area they occupy is mostly rural…
Andy Kuiper just pointed out to me, that in addition to the random UGCÂ discussed this morning, that full on community edits of a claimed listing have returned to Places. The new (back to the future sort of new) community editing system allows logged in users to edit any listing via Places whether it is claimed or not by simply clicking on the Edit this place link on a Places Page…
Over the past week or so a number of new features have cropped up Places Pages that solicit user input in an effort to improve the quality of Places results. Google noted that “We’re doing different experiments like that on Maps to verify data is correct and up to date”.
Ability to critique the location accuracy was spotted by Daniel Hollerung and reported by Chris Silver Smith…
The recent use of Google’s review platform in Alabama to lambast a local deli’s Place page with hate reviews (and the attendant backlash) is but one example of why Google needs to implement better control over the reviews appearing on the Places pages.
Here is another. Earlier this week, one reviewer, Samantha, left 15 reviews in one day. Fourteen of them were 1 and 2 star reviews and One was a 5 star review…
In May, Linda Buquet reported on what turned out to be apparent sabotage of Places business listings by the local search firm 411Local. Here is a recent screen shot of a search in Maps still showing the Places listing defacements.
Well 411Local is back in the spotlight today. This post appeared in the Google Places Forums:
411locals is threatening to remove my places account
vbluguitar
Level 1
10/24/11
Topic of your question (reviews, categories, duplicate listing, etc…
One of the basic tenets of reputation management in local is that regular visits to your Google Places page are necessary to prevent (or perhaps mitigate) disaster. You never know when a competitor, an ex-employee, an unethical SEO or a prankster might just deface the page. And of course you no have idea when Google, The Machine from Mars, might take a shot at the page as well…
Google has made a minor update to their guideline update disallowing a listing for an ongoing service, class, or meeting:
Last Week’s Update
This Week’s Update
You also can’t create a Places listing for an ongoing service, class, or meeting at a location that you don’t own or have the authority to represent. Please coordinate with your host to have your information displayed on their Place page as a custom attribute or within their Description field…
I found this post in the Google Places forum of interest. I hear many stories in the Local SEO world of half truths being used to confuse or obfuscate what is being done. What is your take in this case?
************************************
Can ezlocal delete my places page when I stop using their services even though I am the one that created it prior?
cmoo
Level 1
10/18/11
Topic of your question (reviews, categories, duplicate listing, etc…
The “grand daddy” of geo sitemap generators has recently included some new features. Geo Sitemap Generator, first released by Arjan Snaterse in 2009, has added the ability to generate either a schema.org file or a microformatted file of your contact information. In addition to the features in the geo sitemap tool from 51Blocks that I reviewed last week, Geo Sitemap Generator supports multiple locations and now provides a preview of the KML file locations on a Map…
Thursday’s announcement that Google Places would autmatically update Places data more quickly if Google thought they had more trusted information generated a fair bit of dismay. The words used to describe Google’s action, while occassionaly positive in nature, generally reflected fear and anger:
Unnecessary, Bugs me
Headache, Impending doom
REALLY CONCERNS ME
BACK ASSWORDS!!!!, STUPID!!!! STUPID!!!! STUPID!!!!
Clusterf***, Very dangerous
This is terrible, Absolutely scary, insane decision
Like death and taxes their is a certain inexorable nature to Google…
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