Google+ Takes Over Place Pages, Creating Google+ Local

For better or worse, Google Places and Google+ were brought under the same management system on May 31st.

Google Places + Google Plus = Google+ Local

Yes, your Place Page is now completely different. If this is news to you, then we'll wait here while you Google yourself...

What you will find is that your Place Page isn't very pretty now is it. It's bland and it looks a whole lot like your Google+ Business page just minus the images.

It's clear that Google is forcing local business owners to become active in Google+. They will then be used to attract their customers and prospective customers into the fold. We know why Google is doing this...because they can.

You don't have to like it, but you do need to respond appropriately. It's Google's playground and Google's ball, so if you want to play here (and you do), you have to go along with a bit of bullying.

Here's what Google Published on the topic so far.

"What happened to Google Places? As a business owner, you can still use Google Places to manage your business. As a user, you can now rate, review and upload photos through our new local search experience, Google+ Local.

Google+ Local is a new destination for all your reviews, plus much more. You'll get personalized recommendations, see what your friends are up to, and help others find great places. You can also get deeper insights into locations from Zagat's expressive 30-point scoring scale and Zagat's summaries of user reviews, and even make reservations with OpenTable directly from a business's Google+ page. Learn more about Google+ Local.

If you previously wrote reviews or uploaded photos in Google Places, all of your old Google Places reviews and photos are currently public but attributed to, "A Google user." If you want to attribute these reviews and photos to your Google+ name, all you need to do is migrate your old Googl...