Experts Blog

Google+Local - What’s Really Changed?

By Mary Bowling on Apr 19, 2013 - 01:01 PM

In early April, the big news in Local Search was the announcement from Google about the new dashboard upgrade. The buzz about it spread rapidly and we were all excited about it, but what has really changed?

The more I look at what you can do now compared to what you could do before April 2nd when the announcement was made, the more I'm inclined to say that for most of us the answer is not much.

Perhaps, we should have taken a clue from Google's announcement on blogspot:

"Today, we're introducing an upgrade to the look and feel of Google Places for Business that will roll out to business owners over the coming weeks."

I'm happy to see that Google seems to have settled on a name (at least for a while) and is calling its body of business listings Places for Business. Makes sense!

The dashboard upgrade is mostly to its look and feel right now and most of the shiny new stuff is only accessible to businesses setting up Places listings for the first time via the Plus interface rather than through the crippled dashboard we've gotten used to dealing with.

There's a lot of promise in what Google's showing us and any signs that it's actually ready to start putting the pieces of local back together after the last 10 months of confusion, frustration and turmoil is extremely heartening.

The verified business owner can still edit and control those listings. However, it's important to keep in mind that data only makes up part of what might be published in a Google+ Local for business listing (I'm still not sure what the official name for that is.) The input by the owner is still just one set of data in the cluster of information that Google looks at when creating a business listing. If the listing has been verified, then it's a trusted source of data, but it can be trumped if Google finds multiple other trusted sources publishing conflicting data.

I know of one instance where the verified business owner opted to not publish his hours in Places due to seasonal variations. However, Google found the operating hours elsewhere online and is publishing them anyway, even after repeated requests to support. This just serves to remind us that Google sees business listings as belonging to Google, not to the business, so it can do what it wants with them.

Edits made in this new dashboard are supposed to go live very quickly within 48 hours. This is mainly because from the new dashboard, owner edits being piped directly into Map Maker. User edits accessed via Edit this business and Report a Problem are being suggested via Map Maker, as well. We no longer have to wait for the Places database to sync up with Map Maker.

Apparently, the new interface is also going to make a little more sense for Service Area Businesses and SABs can now get social with a Plus page for the first time (if they have been upgraded).

Google is systematically making this new dashboard available to more listings all the time and promises to email the listing's verified owner once their listing has been upgraded to the new interface.It is still a work in progress and there are some very specific things you should or should not do right now regarding the upgrade process. While some of them don't make any sense to us, they are obviously things that Google is still trying to work out and put the finishing touches on before it can make them available to everyone.

Before you create any new pages, set up any new listings, verify or merge anything or do anything regarding Plus for Local, be certain to read these tips from Joel and Jade at Google support. You'll be glad you did!

google_dashboard_features.jpg

Google is now distinguishing between Free features, which are having a listing, building it out (with photos, hours, categories, etc.) and being social on Plus, and Premium features, which obviously cost something. Right now, those Premium features are AdWords Express (easy pay-per-click advertising) and Google Offers (mobile coupons). We expect many more premium and perhaps a few more free features to be available as Google builds this into an online business services management center with offerings like those shown in this graphic from The Wall Street Journal, which was published last summer.

google_dashboard_bigpicture.jpg

We haven't heard much about this since it was announced that this collection of tools, called Business Builder, would go live in July or September of 2012. Since then, TalkBin has been shelved, AdWords Express has been improved and Delivery is now being tested on a limited scale. But for Google, this is the vision and we're finally seeing it starting to come together on the consumer side. Yippeeeee!

- Mary Bowling, Writer & Lead Local Search Trainer, SearchEngineNews.com