Google+ Local Starting to Come Together

As announced last month, Google has integrated Google+ with Places Pages creating Google+ Local. Well, the integration isn't complete, at least not yet. Although they've sent emails confirming the complete integration of their local profiles to those who signed up as volunteers to be among the first. Leo's Pet Care shown below was one such business.

Unless you were one of the volunteers you will have to wait until it rolls out to all businesses because they are no longer taking volunteers. Until then check out the profiles that have switched and do what you can to claim, complete and fill out your business's Google+ profile.

Be aware that right now when you make any changes to your current Place Page you can get a message that says "This location is not supported." Don't worry about it as it's just the default message going out right now. Give it a few days and check back to see if your changes have taken.

If you have any questions regarding Google+ Local, and we're sure you do, Googler Vanessa has a great FAQ post in the Google Product forums that is worth checking out.

Enter Zagat Stage Right...

Another big move in Google+ Local is the transition from the 5-star ratings of businesses to the Zagat rating system which in contrast is a 30 point system. Unfortunately, since this change was made, many businesses are seeing huge hits to their traffic, both physically and online. This may be a perfect example of fixing what isn't broken and breaking things in the process.

People naturally understand the 5-star rating system and not surprising, they don't respond as well to a seemingly random Zagat number score. We're trained to look for stars and if instead we see a random number, we just move on. Not only does it sound harder but it instantly feels more complicated...