Blog • Page 2 of 8 • More Customers More Sales

22 June, 2017 By margaret ornsby

Google extends Review Notifications

During the 3rd week of June, 2017, Google quietly extended the review notifications for listings from just the primary owner, to any user on the listing with review notifications enabled.

This has been a much requested feature, and we’re delighted it has rolled out.

Exceptions

As with every rule, there are the seemingly necessary exceptions:

You won’t receive review notifications if:

The listing was verified in bulk (even if it’s on a single listing account now)
The account has more than 100 listings on it, even if the listings have not been bulk verified

Not available

Still pending is the ability for bulk listings to be able to turn on notifications for specific listings.

There was a temporary glitch with the notices that meant every bulk listing was sending notifications. While popular with some, it was resoundly howled down.

Don’t hold your breath for this sometimes requested feature.

13 June, 2017 By margaret ornsby

Google My Business Website Builder – the Complete Guide

This is the ultimate guide to Google’s Website Builder which was launched in Mid June 2017.

As the name implies, it is only for businesses that have a Google My Business (GMB) listing. Your listing doesn’t have to be verified yet though. That means you don’t have to wait for the postcard to get a simple website up and running in about 10 minutes!

Let’s be clear about something: This website builder is *not* intended as a “secret SEO tactic”, lead generation, or other advanced type of website. It is simply a free tool, designed to create websites for people who are not technical.

If you are SEO-minded, then you’ll understand the value of having another asset on the web which can help people find your business by name, and that re-enforces your branding, key products, and services.

Let’s dive on in.

Why have a Google My Business website?

For businesses with no website, this is a chance to put a description of your business out there on the web and explain the products or services you offer.
It’s an alternative choice to the second most common “website” used by small business – a Facebook page. Fb is limited in how it displays info about your business, and people have to go looking for it. Most people won’t. So while you may have a great following, how many of your peeps know everything you do?
It’s simpler than the free site on sites on other platforms. Many of those other platforms don’t suit every business type; this simple website can serve just about any.
For businesses who already have websites, this is yet another online asset to expose people to your business. It is another credible platform to get your branding and messaging consistent. Done well, it can rank surprisingly high for brand searches.

Zones

The site is divided into zones of content, and depend on how well you complete your GMB profile. These include:

Navigation – Navigate zones of site plus two or three key actions
Header – Business name, brief descriptions of site from the description
Banner Image – upload your own
Updates – pulled from Google Posts in GMB
Testimonials – pulled from your Google reviews
Services or Menu – pulled from the Services or Menu in GMB
About us – the body of the website you create
Gallery – photos from GMB
Contact – a map with contact, address & hrs from GMB

Each of these zones has its own “in-page” link, meaning people can use the hamburger menu (3 horizontal lines at the top left corner) to go straight to each section.

How it works

To be clear, this is a simple one-page website.

It’s designed to be fast, lightweight, and responsive. It’s designed for mobile, end to end. The vast majority of mobile users look at one page only on a site. The main actions are all right there so people don’t have to scroll.

Pulls Info from your Google My Business listing

It pulls information from what Google already knows about your business, including your Google My Business (GMB) listing. What does it include?

Business name,
Business address,
Phone numbers (automatically made as “click to call”),
Operating hours,
Photos,
Google Posts,
Services,
while the category isn’t displayed, it does appear to influence the extra styling image Google sometimes adds to websites.

The site can be live even before your listing is verified. However, if your listing gets suspended, the site may be taken down as well.

Create Your Website

First, go to your Google My Business dashboard and login with the same email as the one that owns the business listing. If you have more than one business listing on your dashboard, select Manage Location. If you don’t see that option for a location, switch from list view to card view.

Click the hamburger menu ( three horizontal lines in a stack ) at the upper left to show a menu. You should see a new option Website, just below Photos.

Google My Business Users at the level of owner or manager (but not communication manager) have the ability to access and edit the website builder from within the GMB dashboard.

First time you go in, you’ll be greeted with a “creating your website” screen, and you may get an automated tip window to start you off.

The first step is to pick the the overall look of the site – a theme.

Pick a Theme

Google provides a small selection of site themes. The theme itself can be changed. Settings for the theme (font, font-size, colour scheme) cannot be modified.

The “button” you see in the theme thumbnail is the colour of the button you’ll see over the main cover banner.

Very important: To save what you do in each section, click on the little tick at the top next to the section name. The cross, of course, is to cancel any changes just made that haven’t already been saved.

Call to Action

Next, decide the main action you want people to take. Call you? Get a quote? Send you an email?

Giving people just one main thing to do makes it easier and quicker for customers to start a relationship with you.

Depending on your type of business, Google will provide a selection of options (in no particular order).

Call Now (call) – this is the default option and pre-fills with the primary number on your listing.
Contact Us (email) **not recommended ** – this provides a form for people to complete and sends the following information to the listing owner accounts:
1. Name,
2. Phone number – doesn’t automatically pick this up from the device they might be using,
3. Email – does a limited amount of checking for a valid email address format,
4. How can we help you? – a free-format text entry of up to 1000 characters.
Get Quote (email) **not recommended ** – same function as Contact Us, with slightly different message hints for the How can we Help You section.
Get Directions – gives directions to your business using Google Maps.
Message Us (SMS) – Depending on the device, visitors will be presented with their sms messaging app, hangouts, messenger, and possibly others. Google also reminds people that carrier fees may apply.Note: this does not automatically include you in Google’s Messaging service you can opt into for the Knowledge Panel.
Message Us (WhatsApp) – launches the WhatsApp on mobiles. On desktops it launches a web page that ultimately directs you to the app for your phone. Take your audience into account if selecting this option.
Find Table (URL) – enter a web address for people to make reservations.
View Menu (URL) – enter a web address for your menu.
Place Order (URL) – enter a web address for people to book online.

Why two options are not recommended

If your call to action involves an email, not all listing users receive a copy of the incoming message.
If it’s a contact request, the message could be titled “You have a new customer from Google!” or “A customer has got in touch about your business”. In testing, we’ve seen messages randomly received by any or a combination of: primary owner, owner, and manager. Sometimes not at all.

Tell Your Story

Headline

Maximum Length: 80 characters
Shows in: Banner

The website builder defaults this to the business name on your GMB listing business name. You can change this to an attention grabbing headline. I recommend you do, as Google also automatically adds your business name in the upper left hand corner of the published page.

From a technical perspective, this is an “H1” – making it the most important text on the page. Don’t stuff this full of keywords, but do work to include some words or phrases that say what your business is about.

Description

Maximum Length: 140 characters
Shows in: Header

The website builder defaults this to your business category (from your GMB info) and is standard text formatting.

Summary Header

Maximum Length: 40 characters
Shows in: Main Content

This displays below the banner image on the page and is an intro to your full description.

From a technical perspective, this is an “H2” – making it the second most important text on the page. Again, don’t stuff this full of keywords, but do work to include some words or phrases that say what your business is about.

Summary Body

Maximum Length: unknown
Shows in: Main Content

This is where you have the most freedom. You can do basic rich text and add links. I highly recommend you do! Ideas for links:

Your website‘s key pages (if you have another site),
An online booking system or menu,
Your email subscription form (unfortunately you cannot embed things like forms in the site),
Social media platforms you might be very active on,
Your certifications/credentials on industry body sites.

Content Tips

You’ll see in the image above I’ve attempted to find the max number of characters. Be real with this. Just because you can add 13k characters, doesn’t mean you should. How much of a monster page would that be for someone to try to read?!

If you’re copying and pasting text from other applications, be sure to post to match the existing format. It seems to be reading the HTML from wherever you’re picking it up, and that mucks up the format shockingly.

Just like with “normal” websites, the word content on this site should be unique. This is a real website, meaning it’s out there competing with all the other websites in the wild.

If you’re using an email service such as Mailchimp, you can use the text link in MC’s signup form. Some of these services also give QR codes for links to the form which you could add as an image.

Add a brief summary of your business attributes that may be of interest to your site visitors.

Add your happy hours or other special offers.

Adding links to other websites / listings – this works like any other website. You don’t need to write out the full URL (eg “http://www.domain.com/page/”). Simply add it in ordinary text and use the link icon to add the link.

When putting links to your own website, use Google’s Campaign URL Builder for tracking in Analytics.

From a technical perspective, you cannot embed javascript into this or switch to a HTML view to edit.

Photos and Menu

Maximum Images: 9
Shows in: Photo Gallery

This is where you can ADD images that you’d like to add to the photo section which comes after your description.

Google pulls these images from your GMB photos section. These are added to the site in the order they come; they cannot be resequenced here.

If you don’t have any images yet, Google inserts a suggestion “Add photos, menu images and other pictures to tell the story of your business.”

While I agree with the concept of an image of your menu, you need to remember to maintain it. Remember, these photos go into your photo area of your GMB listing. If you change your menu seasonally and simply upload the new menu, then the old menus will remain out there as photos. That can cause confusion and unhappy customers. Ensuring your best presentation means going into the photos and deleting outdated ones.

The photos section is where you go if you put an image in and want to remove it. Yep – you have to leave the website builder. Save your site, go up to the hamburger menu at the top and select photos from the left sidebar menu. There you can delete images.

Navigation & Header

Business name in upper left hand corner
two or three action buttons in upper right hand corner. The actions depend on how you have your GMB listing set up and the action button you choose for this website.
Call to action button in banner middle.

Banner Image

By default, the Website Builder puts in a generic image if it doesn’t find something in your existing photo collection it thinks is suitable. It makes the choice of generic image based on the listing’s category.

If you add an image of your own, Google will display it as 1080×608, so work on a 16:9 image ratio. You don’t get a chance to crop or centre the image. Google seems to fit the image to that size, aligning your image at the bottom. This means the top of the photo gets chopped if oversized.

The images go into your GMB photo library. As with the other photos, you can only add here. Images added here may be seen in the GMB photos collection or the upper right hand corner of the Knowledge Panel “see photos.”

Also, the cover photo here may go into the Knowledge Panel. Think carefully about what you choose for an image. Ideally, it should reflect what you do or sell.

Depending on the device, the banner image may display above or below the header text, description & action button. Generally on mobiles the image is above; on desktop & tablet it’s below.

Services

There are two ways to add your services. Use the “info” option on your main dashboard menu OR by viewing the draft version of your website.

Testimonials

Feb 2019 – Google appears to be testing populating a section for customer reviews with just 3 from your listing. At time of writing, it’s 1-2% of sites seem to be affected. This does not appear to be a section you can control.

The “write a review” and “read more” both take you out of the website and to the knowledge panel display of your listing.

Gallery

Google pulls the 9 random photos from your GMB listing and places them in a 3×3 grid. Videos and 360° views are not yet included.

The images are clickable and take people to your listing in maps.

Let’s Publish!

At this stage anything you have done remains private. This is handy if you start putting the site together and it’s time for dinner.

In the upper right of the screen is a big blue “publish” button. Press it and your site goes live. By default, Google creates a web address (URL) based on your company name. You can change it, but choose wisely. Google does have some name protections in place to prevent copyright issues and such. In other words, you can’t create starbucks.business.site if you’re not Starbucks.

The default URL Google will use is the name of your business followed by .business.site. If your business name is multiple words, Google inserts a hyphen between the words.

This is a free domain, just for you.

In the congratulations pop-up, you’ll see the site’s default web address. If you want to change it, there’s a pencil icon next to the domain name so it can be edited then and there. The maximum number of characters you can enter is 64. Please don’t use that many – if you do, people will bet dollars to donuts you’re a spammer.

If you don’t already have a website in your GMB listing’s “URL”, Google will auto-fill it with this now-published website.

~~Google gives you the option to buy your own domain (doesn’t end in .business.site). This is not necessary to publish your site.~~

When you publish Google will show a message “Not listed on Google Search and Maps” under your new website domain. This does *not* mean your listing is not on maps, only that you have not assigned this website to the listing.

Your site updates automatically whenever you, Google or a member of the public changes your business info on your Google My Business listing. That includes Posts, services, photos, and general business information.

Want to remove your Google Website?

In this area you can change the URL, change the language setting and remove the site from public access. Google also adds a link to cross sell their Google Domains service.

You can publish or un-publish at any time. If your site sits in an unpublished status for a while, you may get a reminder from Google via email.

And there you have it!

In a matter of minutes you’ve just published your very first Google Website Builder site. Congratulations!

More Settings

Your Site Address

If your site is not yet published, you won’t see the URL, only an option to publish the site.

If your site is published, you’ll see a few options. These change periodically depending on the emphasis of the powers that be. For a long while there was an option to buy a domain, now there are links for tips to optimise your GMB website.

If the site is already published, follow the instructions below in How to fix the website URL, starting at step 7.

If you make the GMB website your listing’s primary website (usually because you don’t have a website of your own), Google adds some tracking code to the end of your website address. This has a few of us scratching our heads, since at present we cannot add Google Analytics to the website.

Is this an indicator they might provide Analytics for these sites in the future?

Site Language

Check the default language setting – the version of your language may not be the correct region for the language. As an example – the site default language is English (United States), but you live in Australia. There isn’t a English (Australia) setting, so the next best option would be English (United Kingdom).

While this is one tiny, tiny signal, it’s part of the bigger picture about your website and its location.

Extra Styling Images

Occasionally when you visit one of these websites, you’ll see a special image coming out the right hand side of the page.

These appear to be added somewhat randomly by Google. Business category is a key factor for triggering an image. Also necessary is having your summary headline & body filled out. The body doesn’t need to be lengthy, and having phrases in the text that align with the business category may be helpful.

A small sample of 32 feature images spotted so far is shown below.

Limitations

The Google My Business website is a real-live website, and competes with all other websites out there on the Internet. As stated earlier though, it’s designed for non-technical people. So there are limitations to what you can do with it.

You cannot change the:

business name, address, phone & hours to be different from what shows on your listing.
testimonials come from your listing. These are chosen by Google.
sequence of zones on your site.
posts. These come from the most recent 9 posts.
navigation options. Google decides which actions it will display in the top section based on your business type, the primary action you choose, and the business category.
gallery. These come randomly from your photo library.
template fonts, colours & sizes.

You cannot add external applications such as email forms.

Troubleshooting

Grey figure in photo spot

banner missing image

photo album missing image

Sometimes when you delete photos out of the gallery, the system doesn’t always reflect that change instantly. When there’s a delay within the system, Google substitutes the grey circle with a minus sign in it. This normally clears itself within 24 hours.

Google “404. That’s an error” message

Has your listing been suspended? Check your dashboard for messages. Correct whatever has triggered the suspension, and you should be able to re-verify your listing and republish the site.
Has your site been unpublished? Did you (or a staff member) select the option to unpublish?
Has your site address changed? While the site at a new URL may be published immediately, Google sometimes keeps the old URL of the websites in its memory for a while. It typically flushes out within a week.

Fix the website URL

Google My Business dashboard.
Go into the listing in question. If you have multiple listings, go to manage location; otherwise it should show up when you enter the dashboard.
If you have a desktop display, you should see a menu on the left side. If not, click the hamburger menu in the upper left corner.
Click Website
Depending on your screen size, you’ll see 4 icons down the side or across the bottom.
Click the gear icon for More.
Underneath settings, it will show the current URL (the one your listing is currently going to). Click Update.
Untick the blue tick box that says “Make this my website address on Google Search & Maps.”
Click Change.
Close the settings (if needed – depends on screen size)
Click the hamburger menu in upper left hand corner to see the left-side menu
Click Info
Scroll down until you see the website URL
Click the pencil to edit
Correct the URL, Click Apply

There are many more features in the pipeline for Google’s Website Builder, so stay tuned…

25 April, 2017 By margaret ornsby

Reviews from the Web – Best Sites (2019)

When you’re evaluating which online review sites to include in your reputation strategy, it makes sense to go for those that will give you the best “mileage”. Google provides a section in the knowledge panel titled “Reviews from the web“.

Once you start looking around, you’ll soon realise there are a squillion customer review sites on the web, each one claiming they are the site you should direct customers to. Some have big names, others are quiet achievers worth noting.

So how do you choose?

One of the tips I give business owners is to look in Google’s Knowledge Panel. In it, you will often see not only Google’s reviews, you’ll see other “third party” sites as well. And for those of you with a good memory – yes, Google had this years ago then dropped it and now they’re back. And while not perfect, they’re far, far better than they used to be.

Table of Contents

How to Find the Best Review Sites

Well, you could do what I did with my team, and spend hours scouring the web looking up different businesses in different categories.

Or, you could use the reference tables below.

Some of the sites are available to businesses world-wide, but I haven’t spotted them in the knowledge panel in all countries. So by all means if you’re looking to build out your citations consider these. However, if you’re wanting to get the most mileage out of your reviews, then stick with ones that are either global or listed for your country or region.

Not all sites listed under a country are exclusive to that country; it means we haven’t yet found a review score for that site in other countries.

There are cases (such as BeerAdvocate), where a site does have ratings for places around the world. If your customers are likely to use that app because it’s well known in your industry, then include it in your review sites.

While these sites may be available in the stated countries, whether reviews show in the Knowledge Panel is up to Google. You can encourage Google to make the connection and possibly add these sites in two ways:

Use the schema.org “same as” property markup
Link to these sites from your website – for example “see our reviews on xyz.com“

Global or Multiple Countries

Site	Industries	Countries	Comments
Own website	Any	Global	How to put Rich Snippets for Reviews on Your Website
123pages (.fr, .ch, .at, .es)	Most	Europe	may be more sites undiscovered
Beanhunter	Coffee Shops	Global	not seen in US but does list US shops. Spotted in Australia, New Zealand, UK
Bimmershops	BMW repair shops	2 countries	Spotted in US & Canada
CoWorker	Co-working / office spaces	Global
Facebook	Any	Most countries	Countries where Facebook is banned/censored
Fleamapket	Fleamarkets	Many Countries	Top 300 fleamarkets in the world. Fed by info from fleamarketinsiders.com. Looks as though you need to submit an article about the fleamarket & go through a vetting process.
Foursquare	Any	19 Countries	Foursquare Countries (scroll to bottom of page)
Gay Cities	LGBT community friendly	Multiple Countries	List of cities around the world
Groupon	Most	28 Countries	Groupon Countries list domains can be per country
Houzz	Related to housing or a home	15 Countries	Countries selection at bottom of screen
Leafly	Cannabis & related products	Multiple Countries
Nearby Now	Any	4 Countries	Spotted in US & UK, but lists Australia, Canada, UK, USA
mylocalsalon	Salons and Spas	Multiple Countries	Run by Shortcuts Software. Each country has with different domain. eg UK version is …co.uk, US is ….com, etc
OnTheSnow	Skiing & related	Multiple Countries	Has country specific domains (eg .com.au, .co.uk, etc)
OpenTable	Restaurants & reservations	20+ Countries
Powderhounds	Skiing & related	Multiple countries
Proven Expert	Any	USA, UK, Germany	Paid Review Management Service
RateABiz	Any	2 Countries	Canada & USA. Claims reviews are verified.
Restaurant Guru	Restaurants	Global	Pulls reviews from Yelp, Tripadvisor, Foursquare, Google and Facebook plus its own
The Knot	Weddings & related	2 Countries	Canada & USA (for suppliers). Weddings can list from seemingly anywhere.
Treatwell	Beauty	11 countries	United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Austria, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Latvia. Each country has its own domain (eg treatwell.co.uk)
WeddingWire	Anything wedding related	Multiple Countries
weedmaps	Cannabis dispensaries, doctors and related products	Multiple Countries
WHTop	Web Hosting		Have only spotted in KP in Australia, yet takes listings for companies around the world
Vagaro	Beauty, Fitness, Some alternative health, Pet grooming	4 Countries	Australia, Canada, UK, USA
Vaniday	Beauty and wellness	5 Countries	Australia, Brazil, Italy, Singapore, UAE
Zomato	Restaurants	23 Countries	Zomato Countries
Happy Cow	Restaurants - Vegan	Most countries
Rentalcars.com	Rental Cars	160 countries
RateMDs	Medical Practitioners
Publocation	Hotels, Pubs, Bars and Taverns	Australia, Ireland, New Zealand	domains per country AU, IE, NZ
Mapp...	Any	USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Austria, Turkey	differing domains per country United States \| Australia \| United Kingdom \| Canada \| Germany \| Austria \| Turkey
Clutch	Professional Services	Global	Only login with LinkedIn profile
Campendium	Camping, RV Parks, Dump sites	3 Countries - US, CA, MX
Menu With Price	Restaurants	2 Countries - US, UK
SureCritic	many	global	only seen in US yet site has listings globally
Justdial	most	US, CA, IN, UAE	only seen in IN so far - site has subdirectory sites for different countries
Cylex	most	most	only seen in DE so far, but listings are worldwide
Skyscanner	global travel incl: hotels, restaurants, museums, flights, car rentals, etc.	many countries	paid
Bark	professional services	many countries	pay per lead
Dental Departures	Dental	many countries	international dental
Medigo	Healthcare	many countries
Sirelo	Movers	many countries
theFork	Restaurants	18 countries	formerly Dimmi in Australia.
	Veterinarians	7 countries - AU, CA, IE, NZ, UK, US, ZA	poor quality site. Scrapes reviews from other sites, incl (now defunct) G+, Facebook. Does have it's own ability to add reviews - can be anonymous

↑ back to countries

Australia

Site	Industries	Comments	Country
Aged Care Reviews	Aged Care		Australia
AroundYou	Any
EatNow	Online Takeaway & Food Delivery		Australia
Farm Jobs	job marketplace		Australia
Happiest Hour	Food, Beer & Drinks		Australia
Judge Your Lawyer	Legal		Australia
ProductReview	Any	Paid to manage	Australia
RateMyAgent	Real Estate agencies and agents		Australia
Sitejabber	Any		Australia
True Local	Any		Australia
Untappd	Beer, bars, breweries		Australia
WeTeachMe	Live classes		Australia
Yellow Pages	Any	You can list your business free, pay to manage.	Australia
Word of Mouth	Any		Australia
LocalSearch	Any		Australia
Auto Guru	Auto Mechanics		Australia
Whitecoat	Healthcare		Australia
Funeral Directors Australia	Funeral Homes		Australia
Easy Weddings	Weddings		Australia
Venuemob	Venue bookings		Australia
HostAdvice	Web hosting services around the world.	Only seen in KP in Australia so far	Australia
Serchen	Cloud service providers (hosting, software, managed services, etc.)	Only seen in KP in Australia so far	Australia
iSeekGolf	Golfing		Australia
easy weddings	weddings & honeymoons		Australia
SolarQuotes	Solar Panel Installers	Application req'd	Australia

↑ back to countries

Canada

Name	Industries	Comments	Country
BeerAdvocate	Beer, Microbreweries & Breweries		CAN
BlogTO	Any	Toronto specific	CAN
Bookenda	Restaurants		CAN
Chickadvisor	Beauty, Shopping, Restaurants, Wellness	Targeted at women, products and local places. Has a brother site "XY Stuff" aimed at men - have not spotted reviews in the knowledge panel for that site.	CAN
HomeStars	Home improvement, home contractors, home services		CAN
RestoMontreal	Restaurants	Montreal specific, site is in French	CAN
SkipTheDishes	Restaurants	Home delivery & takeaway	CAN

↑ back to countries

France

Name	Industries	Comments
HERE maps		Confusing, as reviews shown are actually on TripAdvisor, not maps	FRA
L'Internaute	Restaurants, Hotels	Site covers a wide range of topics.	FRA
Mariages.net	Weddings & related		FRA
Pages Jaunes	Any		FRA
TUV-DCTA	Automotive		FRA
Zankyou	Weddings & related		FRA
Name	Industries	Comments
HERE maps		Confusing, as reviews shown are actually on TripAdvisor, not maps	FRA
L'Internaute	Restaurants, Hotels	Site covers a wide range of topics.	FRA
Mariages.net	Weddings & related		FRA
Pages Jaunes	Any		FRA
TUV-DCTA	Automotive		FRA
Zankyou	Weddings & related		FRA

↑ back to countries

Germany – Deutschland

Name	Industries	Comments
HERE maps		Confusing, as reviews shown are actually on TripAdvisor, not maps	FRA
L'Internaute	Restaurants, Hotels	Site covers a wide range of topics.	FRA
Mariages.net	Weddings & related		FRA
Pages Jaunes	Any		FRA
TUV-DCTA	Automotive		FRA
Zankyou	Weddings & related		FRA
Name	Industries	Comments
HERE maps		Confusing, as reviews shown are actually on TripAdvisor, not maps	FRA
L'Internaute	Restaurants, Hotels	Site covers a wide range of topics.	FRA
Mariages.net	Weddings & related		FRA
Pages Jaunes	Any		FRA
TUV-DCTA	Automotive		FRA
Zankyou	Weddings & related		FRA

↑ back to countries

Netherlands – Nederland

Site	Industries	Comments	Country
Smokers Guide	Cannabis & hash & other mind-altering products, coffee shops, pubs, hotels, etc.		Netherlands

↑ back to countries

New Zealand

Site	Industries	Country
AA	New Zealand Automobile Association. Things related to cars, trips, driving, etc.	New Zealand
Finda	Any	New Zealand
Happy Camping	Campgrounds, Holiday parks	New Zealand
NoCowboys	Tradies	New Zealand
Rankers NZ	Camping, Rental car companies, Attractions	New Zealand
YellowPages® NZ	Any	New Zealand

↑ back to countries

Singapore

Site	Industries	Comments	Country
HungryGoWhere	Restaurants		SGP
inSing - Singapore Business Directory	Most		SGP
Site	Industries	Comments	Country
HungryGoWhere	Restaurants		SGP
inSing - Singapore Business Directory	Most		SGP

↑ back to countries

Thailand – ประเทศไทย

Site	Industries	Comments	Country
Bangkok.com	Tourism & Hospitality (part of Hotels.com)		Thailand

↑ back to countries

United Kingdom

Site	Industries	Country
192.com	Any	GBR
5pm	Restaurants, Health and beauty salons, Hotels	GBR
allAgents	Real Estate	GBR
Checkatrade	Trades	GBR
FreeIndex	Any	GBR
GetAgent	Real Estate agents	GBR
iWantGreatCare	Health Care	GBR
Trusted Traders	Trades and Home Services	GBR
Site Jabber	Any	GBR
SolicitorInfo	Solicitors	GBR
WhatClinic	Doctors, dentists, beauty and cosmetic surgery, physiotherapy, fertility, holistics and more	GBR
Who Can Fix My Car	Auto repairs	GBR
Yell.com	Any	GBR
All in London	Any	GBR
Salon spy	hair salons, hairdressers, barbers and beauty salon	GBR

↑ back to countries

United States of America

Name	Industries	Comment	Country
Customer Lobby	Any	Paid	USA
Demandforce	Any	Paid	USA
Doctible	Healthcare		USA
Find Me Gluten Free	Restaurant	Gluten free friendly places to eat	USA
Rate A Dentist	Dentists		USA
ConsumerAffairs	Any	Paid	USA
Rehabs	Healthcare / Rehab Centres		USA
Fixr	Home Services	Primarily home renovation	USA
GrubHub / Eat24	Restaurants	Online and mobile food ordering	USA
Guild Quality	Remodelers, home builders, home improvement contractors	Paid	USA
Healthgrades	Healthcare	physicians, hospitals and health care providers	USA
HomeAdvisor	Home Improvement Contractors		USA
Kudzu	Home Services, Automotive, Health		USA
Lawyers.com	Lawyers, of course		USA
Listen360	Many	Paid	USA
My Reputation		Suspect this is an installation of a paid review management service. The site shows no ability to contact anyone other than the business being listed. Pages on the site are only business listings.	USA
Locality	Many	Initially health, now services many industries. check the site for the specific industries. Pulls reviews from Yelp.	USA
MyTime	Many	Services many industries. check the site for the specific industries. Pulls reviews from Yelp.	USA
Porch	Home services		USA
Recreation.gov	Tourism	Trip planning, information sharing and reservations using federal agencies for information sources	USA
Review Buzz	Many	Paid	USA
Road Trippers	Tourism	Trip Planner	USA
Staten Island Live	Any	Specific to Staten Island NY	USA
Spa Finder	Health, fitness and beauty		USA
Thumbtack	Any		USA
Superpages	Any		USA
YP.com YellowPages	Any		USA
TravelPod	Hospitality, Travel	not accepting new listings	USA
Zillow	Real Estate, Home Services	- agents, lender, brokers, property management, builder, home improvement products & services	USA
Zocdoc	Doctors		USA
Credit Unions Online	Financial (Credit Unions)		USA
Great! Schools	Schools (K-12)	education resources, including links to real estate near schools	USA
Orthopaedic Associates of Central Texas	Physicians & Physicians Assistants	part of PatientPop network	USA
Integris	Medical		USA
WebMD	Medical	Paid?	USA
Flower Shop Network	Florists		USA
Vitals.com	Health Care		USA
Martindale-Hubbell	Legal	client reviews as well as peer reviews. Related to Lawyers.com, Nolo.com, Avvo.com	USA
BirdEye	Most	Paid	USA
DoorDash	Restaurants	Paid?	USA
DoorDash	Solar Reviews		USA
Golf Advisor	Golf Resorts		USA
Apartments.com	online apartment listings	network includes Apartments.com, ForRent.com, ApartmentFinder.com, Apartamentos.com, ApartmentHomeLiving.com, ForRentUniversity.com, After55.com, CorporateHousing.com and WestsideRentals.com.	USA
Apartment guide	online apartment listings	network includes rent.com, rentals.com, LiveLovely.com	USA

↑ back to countries

Caveats

Paid vs Free

Many of the sites listed are paid services for businesses to manage the listing. So if your business has a listing with reviews and that site is popular, it may be a good investment. Many times your business can appear in sites without your knowledge. This can be because a customer has added your business, or because the review platform owners picked up your business information freely on the web, and added it to their site. No permission is required.

Do your “due-diligence” with the paid reviews platform/services. Some of the sites claim ownership over the reviews left for your business, and do not allow you to use “their” reviews in your marketing. Many of them also do not allow you to download the reviews when you leave their service.

Listings which have “any” listed as the industry does not necessarily mean adult, firearm or substance businesses are accepted. Check the site terms & conditions.

Sites not listed

Yelp & TripAdvisor – These two notable “big players” in the online review space you won’t see listed in “reviews around the web”. Both stop Google from showing “their” ratings and reviews as .

And yet, TripAdvisor should certainly be on the list for any travel / experience / tourism businesses.
Yelp should be on your list for almost any business (several sites pay to show Yelp’s reviews on their pages). And for some reason Eat24 (takeaway/home delivery) which is part of Yelp, does show occasionally.

You also won’t see Bing listed, for obvious reasons. But if you have a portion of people that visit you using that search engine, it helps to know a wee bit about it. Bing doesn’t “do” reviews like Google does – they instead leverage off of Facebook, Foursquare and Yelp.

You may be wondering why I didn’t include sites such as Angie’s List, BBB, Epinions, and so on. These may well be good sites to list your business and they do provide online reviews. However Google doesn’t seem to display reviews from these sites in the Knowledge panel, so they’re excluded from this article.

WebpageFX did a nice list of 20 of those kinds of sites. A few of theirs cross over with this list.

If you find more out there I haven’t yet catalogued, or have a country to add, please let me know.

One final note.

All this is done algorithmically, and algorithms have no “common sense.” Occasionally Google’s bots get something incredibly wrong, as you can see here with the “Pissed Customer” site showing in the Reviews from the web. Sites like this will only ever show very poor ratings for businesses.

If you see something like this, report it in the forum. It is Google’s intention to give a fair showing of reviews, not just negative ones.

* Flags by Muharrem Şenyıl

3 March, 2017 By margaret ornsby

What do people not see when they’re looking for a business like yours?

If you’re anywhere near Meeniyan on Thursday evening, the 16th of March, you’ll be able to find out!

I’m speaking at the Meeniyan Town Hall, giving a presentation for the Southern Business Womens Network.

This session is for you if:

You own now or are thinking of starting a local business
You care about someone who does, or
You work for a local business and you want to help attract more customers

If you’re thinking this is about websites, this evening is about a much bigger picture where websites are only one part.

You used to rely on the Yellow Pages as a source of new customers, and a way to make it easy for existing customers to contact you. Now most of your potential customers carry “the yellow book” in their handbag or pocket – a mobile phone.

While the local papers and what’s left of the Yellow Pages™ is still a good way to get customers, it’s not enough. Research shows people “look you up” before they call or visit. This happens if they have never heard of you, and it happens EVEN IF their friends or family said you were good.

I’ll explain how to shine a spotlight on your business so you can be found when people are searching for a business like yours. I’ll boil the huge range of options out there, down to the most essential.

There will be some “get real” moments where I bust myths and hype you’re used to hearing from SEO agencies, digital marketing agencies or website designers. In short, you’ll get a roadmap for building your visibility at a pace and rate you can afford.

This is an interactive session so if you can, bring a device that will let you do a couple of quick things online. A mobile phone with a little bit of data plan is enough. If that’s not an option for you now, come anyway and someone will share with you. And bring a question or two!

Book Here

3 August, 2016 By margaret ornsby

Local Search & Website Review – SJB Architects

Last update: 29 May 2017
In addition to the specific updates mentioned below, they’ve also rejigged the site a little bit since the initial review. Some of the locations/items mentioned on this post may be out of date. Due to time constraints I will not be re-reviewing the site.

Today’s website review and local search review is for an architect in Sydney. The business is SJB Architects, and was at the top of page 2 in my search results.

Let’s dig in…

First we’ll look at the the good points, then we’ll review what could use a hand. We start with the website and move through different areas of local search for this particular business.

Top Marks!

What’s notable about this site and deserves applause:

Analytics

aaThe site has Google Analytics installed. This is a free service from Google that allows you to better understand how your website performs. You get valuable insights on your visitors and marketing efforts including:

where they come from (geographic & online places like facebook)
what they do while on your site
how many take a specific action you want them to take (such as an email opt-in, or click a specific budget on the page),
how they move around the site
what information they’re looking for
and so much more.

Blog (aka News)

The News section is active and full of personality, images and content. This adds value to the site and makes a more enjoyable experience for visitors. It also helps with the search engines.

Noted around the web

They have a great range of quality citations from industry publications online. They do appear to be good at getting the word out and being published. Nice work!

Website Review – areas for improvement

The quality of the website is still the single biggest factor in having a website that performs well for visitors and search engines. The items below are a random extract of 7 action points that will have an impact on visitor experience, business goals, SEO or all three..

1. Analytics

While it’s great they have Analytics installed, they’re running the older version also known as Classic. The standard today is what’s called Universal, and was available to the public in 2014.

Time to update.

2. Flash

One page on the site uses Flash. Unfortunately, the glory days of Flash have come and gone, and the images below are one reason why.

First, here’s what the page looks like on a desktop:

And here’s what it looks like on a mobile ->

Most mobile devices do not support flash technology well. The result is a sub-standard experience for visitors. Fortunately, this flash video is not on a main page of the website, so its impact should be minimal.

Given that worldwide more than half of searches happen on mobile, business owners need to have sites designed with mobile in mind.

Remove Flash and change to HTML5 for videos and any other interactive functionality.

3. Mobile user experience

Let’s loop back to the mobile perspective for a moment.

Unfortunately, the site is not “mobile friendly”, and this will be hurting its ranking.

You can see in the screenshot at the top the menu is tiny words. It’s not the normal “hamburger menu” that expands to a tap-friendly size. Instead, visitors have to zoom out to see what’s on the page or click, which makes moving around in the site a bit of a pain.

Google recommends responsive design websites for businesses on a smaller budget and who only want one site to maintain. Most commercial website themes today have this as standard.

4. Spreading the word

Most website owners who invest the effort in a blog would like to think someone finds their articles interesting. On a good day they might even share it with friends or colleagues. It’s a great way to get informal word-of-mouth type of advertising. It’s also a great way to keep providing value to customers beyond the business transaction.

This little black dot is too cryptic for visitors. And I couldn’t share this on LinkedIn or Twitter if I wanted to! The cursor just can’t get there.

Make it easy and obvious if you want people to share your content.

5. Sitemap

I wasn’t able to find a sitemap for the website. Sitemaps help search engines know what pages you consider important and where they are. They help search engines process websites. Things that make life better and easier for search engines is good for website owners.

Create an XML sitemap for the website, register it in Google’s Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and add to the robots.txt file. (Unfortunately that statement has to be a bit geeky, because it’s precisely what needs to be done. Even if it makes no sense to you, it should be crystal clear to a website administrator.)

6. Page Titles & Meta Descriptions

Title tags are often the first impression your website has to make on a visitor. They show as the big blue line of text in the search results. You have around 64 characters to get their attention – make the most of it! They are also an important element in helping websites rank pages for phrases, and should reflect the content on the page.

It also helps them decide to click on the link. None of the pages have meta descriptions predefined. This means you’re leaving it to the search engines to decide to fill that area out with whatever they want. It’s a missed opportunity to:

a) to set yourself apart from competition and
b) give people a reason to click on your link.

Here’s an example of what could be:

Craft a title and description that includes words or phrases people might use to search for your business. Be sure it reflects what’s on the page and make it enticing. Dress to impress!

7. Contact page & Local landing page

The contact page is nice looking and contains important information. However, it is missing key information such as business hours or parking information. It is also another missed opportunity for the business to have individual pages rank in their local areas.

Creating individual pages for the offices gives those pages a chance to show in the organic listings. It also support the business appearing in the local packs.

Local landing pages (also known as “location pages”) are pages highlight and target an area for a business. They contain information specific to that location. They include information that people can use to do business with you and become more comfortable with your team or your services.

Create a unique location page for each of the offices.

Include things like the city name in the title tag, the meta description (see #6 above), and the body of the text.

Remember to embed a map for that office – ideally embed the Google Map.

Online Footprint – areas for improvement

Google My Business

The listings are unclaimed and the information may not be accurate. This may mislead people about your business. It also presents a risk – leaving the page wide open to activities by not-so-nice folks.

The name on some of the google listings does not reflect the biz name on the website or the many citations.

~~Claim the listings and update the information. There is also an extra page that needs to be marked as “moved”, as it has an old address and wrong information.~~

Update: The listings are now claimed. Yay!

Apple Maps

The Sydney listing is correct, but the Melbourne office locations are not. Given the number of people who use both Google Maps and Siri for navigation, this will be sending people to the wrong places. And like the Google listings, may contain incomplete or incorrect information about the business.

Claim the listings, update the information and add listings that match your current locations.

Citations landscape

The citations show a similar level of neglect to the GMB listings including:

varying names,
differing addresses,
non-existent in several key directory sites,
incomplete information.

A few citations could be deleted as they come from low-quality and irrelevant sites. Since this is not always possible, it would be wise to disavow any links to the site from those domains.

Email

There is an email capture at the absolute bottom of the page. It simply says “subscribe”. Okay… what would visitors be subscribing to? Why would they want to subscribe? How do you answer the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) question?

I signed up to see what happened. The subscription box turned into a thank you message, but I didn’t receive any kind of confirmation email. I’m left wondering if the email functionality is even used.

~~Remove the sign-up box from the footer.~~

Update: Today I did receive an email from SJB, so they do send emails after all. Congratulations SJB, winning the Belle Coco Republic award for Interior Designer of the Year 2017. Well done!

So perhaps instead of removing the subscribe box, look at improving the sign-up experience.

Social Media – areas for improvement

No link to the company LI page – I wasn’t able to find one. Given so many of the team are on LI, why not support their client-getting efforts by having an active presence there?

Create a page and fill out the profile, then share your blog posts and other good content into this community.

Facebook

Several other businesses have posted about SJB. They’re popular enough to have their own hashtag! Yet they have no official company page or managed presence in the channel. The traction they could be getting in this platform is untapped and ignored.

As a minimum: claim the page, complete the profile, and respond when people mention the business, projects or team.

Twitter

Similar to FB, other people and pages have posted about SJB. Quite a few positive comments there; a pity they don’t respond and say thank you (especially when a former employee compliments!).

At a minimum, create a profile and respond when people mention the business, projects or team.

Houzz

Surprise! The firm did make a start here, with a couple of images of projects loaded on the architects’ page. There’s an interior design page that looks like it may have been automatically generated. One of their images is being used in an article by another company. Again the traction they could be getting in this platform is untapped and ignored.

Houzz is such a brilliant platform for businesses like this. Get back in the game – the basics are already there!

Conclusion

The business already has so much traction in their online presence, it’s a shame it’s not being maximised. Clearly the business is good at promoting themselves already and good at what they do, or they would not have this solid a foundation. And that could be the main reason behind the neglect. But ignoring the online component of a business or brand is a risky strategy today and leaves the business exposed.

The website does need a complete refresh. The look might still appeal, even though it is a touch dated. The technology underlying the site does need to be brought up to date. The devices people use is rapidly changing, as is the way people research and interact with companies.

Most of the rest of the online presence is there. The business owner just needs to be gathered up and managed – and that would be a relatively small effort.

So – what did you find most helpful for your own digital marketing review? Leave your comments below!

Please note:

This article is part of a series. Periodically I go in search of websites for businesses that could use some help being found by potential customers.
My target is a random website positioned at the bottom of page 1 or at the top of page 2. The idea is with a little effort and time these sites should be performing much better for their owners. They are also the types of businesses that generate a local search pack – the special list of 3 businesses with the map above.
I do not know the business owner nor is this a pitch to them. I will not be advising the site owner of this review. However they may discover this article about their site if they are monitoring for brand mentions, check their Analytics or Search Console data.
This article is for educational purposes only. Comments are based on my own experience and research.

19 May, 2016 By margaret ornsby

10 Reasons Why Your Google Listing Gets Suspended

Joy Hawkins did a really good article recently on 9 reasons why Google might suspend your business listing. Please take a moment read it – will help make the rest of this article make more sense.

There’s a 10th common reason I can think of:

10. Multiple Related Businesses at the Same Address

This is subtly different to Joy’s point 4 about multiple listings. What she’s referring to there is multiple listings for the exact same business.

Let’s say you have an accountancy firm. You have another business that specialises in financial planning and another that is a mortgage broker. They started off as sidelines but became so successful you decided you’d be better off with three entities.

Or maybe you have a jewellery retail store and a watch repair business. Or an architecture firm with an interior designer on staff.

Either way, the businesses all share the same street address, have a common entry door and a common business owner. Sometimes they even share the same phone number.

Solution:

Whether they’re set up as separate legal entities or not, Google requires you choose one, just one, listing to represent your business. So select the category that best fits the major part of your business.

And there’s one more reason that usually applies to agencies but business owners need to be aware of. Okay this makes it 11 – you get one for free.

11. If one listing on an account gets suspended, all listings can be suspended.

The key detail here is the page owner. And it’s just one more reason not to let your agency be the “owner” of your Google My Business listing.

One way how it could happen:
An agency claims or sets up your GMB listing. You trust them to do it as part of their overall Local Search services package, as they seem to know what they’re doing and you have hired them to lift your visibility in the community.

They use the same Google account address they use for all their clients – makes sense – keeps things simple for them.

This same agency has done work for businesses that fall into any of the 10 reasons listed in Joy’s article or this one, or has a client who is desperate to get into the local pack any way they can. Like they did with you, they claimed or set up the listings for those businesses too.

And then one day, it happens. One of the listings they have set up runs foul of a Google filter and suffers a hard suspension (removed from Google maps). Because the agency is the owner of the listing, all the pages on the account get suspended at the same time.

Solution:

Insist the agency claim your listing using an email address you have control over. Use an email that includes your website domain, not a gmail or hotmail account. Once claimed, you can then add the agency’s email address as a manager of the page. That way they can keep their systems simple (one login to rule them all), and still do the page management you’ve hired them to do.

Further to Joy’s point 9…

You’ve done nothing wrong, but the industry you are in is cluttered with spam

The most common industries high in maps spam include (and not limited to) are below. This doesn’t mean you need to screen the agency you’re working with to make sure they haven’t worked with any of these kinds of companies. Lots of good agencies work with genuine, honest business owners who are in these industries.

Bail bonds
Carpet and other cleaning services
Carpet Restoration Service
Escort Service
Fire Damage Restoration Service
Water Damage Restoration Service
Upholstery Cleaning Service
Drug Rehab Center
Air conditioning repair/installation
Appliance Repair
Auto glass repair and installation
Commercial chimney sweeping
DJs
Duct cleaning
Electrician
Handyman
Home security installations
HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) contractors
Landscapers
Mobile auto repair
Mobile detailing
Party rentals
Pest Control
Pool Cleaning
Garage door suppliers
Lawyers, Attorneys
Limo & taxi companies
Locksmiths
Moving companies, removalists
Painters
Plumbers
Towing companies

If you are in one of these industries, you need to be sure you dot your i’s and cross your t’s when it comes to complying with the guidelines.And know that even if you do, your listing may still get caught up in a filter. So you’ll need to monitor your page more closely. And if it does disappear from maps, contact your agency or seek assistance in the Google support forum. Pages in good standing can be reinstated.If your are not in one of these industries, your best protection is to follow the guidelines and follow the suggestion above to add the agency as a page manager.

Google’s guidelines: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177

2 May, 2016 By margaret ornsby

How to verify your Facebook Page

If your Facebook page is a Local Business or a Companies & Organisations type, you might be able to get a grey verification tick. It’s a similar process to verifying your Google My Business page, and is done over the phone like you do with Bing, Yelp or Apple Maps.

Benefits of a verified Facebook page

Credibility

Having the little “verified” tick helps customers know they are visiting the genuine page for a local business or brand. It’s an extra level of credibility online and [Read more…] about How to verify your Facebook Page

1 March, 2016 By margaret ornsby

Quick Tip: How to keep people on your site

(while using YouTube videos)

Have you noticed when you embed a video, at the end you get a box of “related video” tiles? This is YouTube giving customer service of showing people what it thinks are related videos. But it gives a big distraction to visitors.

The fix is quick, easy and powerfully good at keeping people focused on your content, even if you’re using someone else’s videos.

Well that’s nice when you’re surfing YouTube, but not when people are reading and learning on your blog. You went through the effort of getting them to your blog, you don’t need YouTube to offer them another shiny object for them to follow and go away from your site!

There’s a really simple change you can make to the embed code YouTube gives you that stops the tiles.

Here’s what the embed code looks like straight out of YouTube.
In yellow, you’ll see the URL of the video. This is where we’re going to add just six characters.
Simply add the question mark, then rel=0. Remember to do this inside* the quote marks.
Now when readers reach the end of the video, they’ll see the start of the video, like this:
And now, they’re more likely to read anything you’ve put after the video and stick around on your blog.

Want more?

There are a few other changes we can make to the video display and function. As with the related videos, these go at the end of the URL. To put multiple parameters together, simply add a & between them.

parameter	comments	set value to
loop	cycle the video – when it finishes, it starts again. Use with caution	1
modestbranding	reduces the amount of YouTube branding	1
start	start the video at this time offset	positive number in seconds
end	end the video at this time offset	positive number in seconds, from the start of the video

Here’s an example of using multiple parameters together. Using this code:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/aaaaaadaaaa?modestbranding=1&loop=1&rel=0&start=44&end=92" frameborder="0"></iframe>

This is the result:

If this seems a little daunting, there’s a handy tool here: http://www.classynemesis.com/projects/ytembed/ to help you create these modifications to the standard display, and a whole lot more than I’ve mentioned above.

17 November, 2015 By margaret ornsby

How to add or claim your business page on Google

Google have recently published a video to help take business owners through the process of adding or claiming their complimentary business page. It’s good if you’re just starting out. Personally I found it missing a few really important details that would be useful for a beginner.

0:40 – the “are you the business owner link” – doesn’t show an example of where you’d see it, so here’s a screen shot of where to find it:

1:08 – in the example, they show someone signing in using a gmail account. For Local Business listings, always use an email account from your own domain – not a gmail one. It’ll save you endless headaches in the future.

2:00 – also add phone numbers to the list of things not to make changes to while you’re waiting on the verification postcard. Any change, even adding an additional phone number will invalidate the code that’s on its way to you.

3:04 – see 1:08 above.

3:22 – I don’t see a “are you the business owner” link anywhere on the page, only the business itself. Click on the business, and you’ll see a box where you can confirm you’re the business owner. At 4:01, that’s what she’s showing too.

Of course, read the guidelines first. We all hate to “read the manual” before we try to put that new gadget together, but trust me. This is one “manual” you want to read. Not because doing a page is difficult, rather because one simple, little mistake can keep your page from being published. And Google seldom tell you what that little mistake is – because you’re supposed to read the guidelines first…

12 November, 2015 By margaret ornsby

Divorce is messy, esp when it’s Google

Right now, before you do anything else, please go check your Google Local page. Check each of the details, very carefully, including the link to your website. Then go to Google Maps and type in your business address. Is there just one of your businesses listed below the street view or more?

Over the past several weeks I’ve been seeing a range of weird things happening in Google Local – claimed pages disappearing, old pages that had been done away with resurfacing, and URL’s getting reassigned or reset. What on earth is going on? Why is a local business page fine one day and then broken the next?

What’s going on is Google is divorcing two products it had brought together with a shotgun wedding several years ago. If you had a business on Google, you received (whether you wanted it or not) a profile on the social media platform also called Google+. That created a lot of confusion and despite efforts to get everyone on G+, masses of people did not defect from Facebook and switch to Google. It did not catapult Google+ to be “the” social media platform on the planet as hoped.

After Vic Gundotra resigned as Senior Vice President, Social, Google decided to break up the Google+ brand into Streams, Photos and the social platform. As part of that breakup, Google also decided to pull Local out of the social side of things and tie it more closely to Google Maps. A good move in my opinion. And if they can get better consistency in the guidelines between Maps and Local, I’ll consider it a very good move.

Unfortunately this break-up has not gone entirely smoothly for those of us who rely on the services they’re separating. It’s at times of transition you can see just how loathe Google is to throw data away. Bad data comes back – sometimes replaces good data, sometimes mixes with the bad, and sometimes sits along side it.

So why did I ask you to check on your listing? Why does it matter if Google has multiple listings for your business?

It’s all about sending a clear, simple, single signal. You see, the programs that decide which businesses to show in the local pack are written so they don’t show the duplicates. They do this to discourage spammers who are trying to cheat legit businesses. But these same programs can’t tell the difference between a duplicate a spammer might make and one that other Google programs have made.

With many of my clients, not being in that local pack can make a significant difference in the number of new customers that walk through the door or call, and anywhere from 5-35% of the visitors to their website. Not being in the local pack has a distinct and immediate financial cost.

So check now –

If any details of your listing are wrong – log in and correct it, and then check back in a few days to make sure your change has taken.
If your page has become magically unclaimed, reclaim it and check the details.
And if you have a duplicate page that popped up, report it via maps to get it taken down.

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