Google + Business Profiles and Updates to Place Pages

Small businesses should be aware of two major developments from Google.

For starters, I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with all of the Google+ news, but the company has been shutting down the profiles of those that have been created for businesses. Right now, Google doesn’t want businesses using the service in its current incarnation (which is still in testing mode).

The company has been letting business apply for early testing of business profiles, but it has since announced that while we may see a few testers in the wild, it will start letting all businesses create profiles in the coming months. Google’s Christien Oestlien wrote:

With so many qualified candidates expressing intense interest in business profiles, we’ve been thinking hard about how to handle this process. Your enthusiasm obligates us to do more to get businesses involved in Google+ in the right way, and we have to do it faster. As a result, we have refocused a few priorities and we expect to have an initial version of businesses profiles up and running for EVERYONE in the next few months. There may be a tiny handful business profiles that will remain in the meantime solely for the purpose of testing how businesses interact with consumers.

In the meantime, we ask you not to create a business profile using regular profiles on Google+. The platform at the moment is not built for the business use case, and we want to help you build long-term relationships with your customers. Doing it right is worth the wait. We will continue to disable business profiles using regular profiles. We recommend you find a real person who is willing to represent your organization on Google+ using a real profile as him-or-herself.

Separately, Google has made some changes to its Place Pages for local search. They’ve dropped third-party reviews (from sources like Yelp and the like) in favor of all Google-based reviews. It will be interesting to see how they integrate Place Pages with Business Profiles in Google+. It’s hard to imagine that they won’t do so in some capacity.

With the new version of Place Pages, there is a prominent "write a review" button at the top, encouraging users to participate and talk about businesses. If your customer service isn’t top notch, this could hurt you.

“Rating and review counts reflect only those that’ve been written by fellow Google users, and as part of our continued commitment to helping you find what you want on the web, we’re continuing to provide links to other review sites so you can get a comprehensive view of locations across the globe,” said Google’s Avni Shah.

The company says its long term goals include making local results more personalized, integrating information from Place Pages into web search, and providing more ways for users to rate, discover, and share place.

Make your customers like you, because it sounds like what they think about you may be appearing in search results more in the future.

There are 16 Comments. Add Yours.

Use A Deals of the Day
July 27, 2011 at 6:59 pm

dunno how google will do the differentiation of accounts but last time i heard they are removing business accounts at google places which tells me they do know how to differentiate accounts.
Upgrade Software
July 25, 2011 at 2:46 am

Very interesting. I can’t wait for the Google + Business option to avail…….
Oneal Degrassi
July 25, 2011 at 8:46 am

Google says no business profiles, but then suggests "you find a real person who is willing to represent your organization on Google+ using a real profile as him-or-herself."

Question:

How does Google differentiate between a business account and the account of someone representing a company? Is it simply the username? Is it the way the account is set up?

I would think that in most cases, the posts would be about the same, dont you think?

Thanks,
Oneal
Simply Clicks
July 25, 2011 at 9:33 am

I have a Google plus page but can’t justify another social media site drawing on my time. If they set up Google plus page for business I would definitely change my mind.
Paul
July 25, 2011 at 10:37 am

Very interesting and very informative.
At the present time we see a sort of facebook versus google plus stand off! What will it bring us – users? I see to possabilities – one – we will be forced to pay to stay a float. Secon – the third alternative will come up – for users to search and to communicate. The same what we see is happening with RIM (Blackberry) – once a leader – loosing its market share – to other smart phones. The same might happen to F and G – those letters stand next to each other in the alfabet… I am betting on a new alternative something with a flat subscription fee for all users… Small one but for all …
Tony Short
July 30, 2011 at 9:16 am

I really like the changes to google places. we should be able to help local businesses get listed better as more relevant searches. Do you think that local search will require more traditional seo as in backlinking in the future?
Drehteile
October 11, 2011 at 8:32 am

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waterboom
August 10, 2011 at 11:48 pm

Nice info brother

by waterboom
Susanne
July 25, 2011 at 5:03 am

It will be interesting to see how the business pages are going to be, will it be more like linkedin or will it be the fanpage format look forward to finding out more.
Gina
July 30, 2011 at 2:08 am

I am holding out to see what the service will be after the beta testing. Google Places was always a topic of discussion for those of us who work virtually, have no ‘local’ office except a coffee shop and our businesses are not location dependent. That may be one reason they are considering dropping sites such as Yelp, because in a global and interconnected world – limiting their revenue based on if or when local small brick and mortar businesses use the service for free doesn’t make sense. I’d think the new model may be based on if you want your business listing displayed for a certain location, say Seattle and that’s where your business is physically found – then paying for that privilege makes more sense. After all, Yellowbook/Yellow Pages are including a ‘places’ type model with their advertising packages as standard. Speculation is fine, but I’ll take a wait and see attitude.
Madeleine, Psychotherpist and Counsellor in London
October 18, 2011 at 7:17 pm

Very interesting, thank you.

Well, I am a great believer in "top notch custumer service", but sometimes, as a psychotherapist and counsellor, I have to say challenging things in order to do a good job. I recently found a scathing, if not slanderous review on google of a very senior, trusted collegue by an angry ex-client. What is one to do?

http://www.MaidaValeCounselling.co.uk
amarildo
July 24, 2011 at 1:15 pm

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October 27, 2011 at 4:16 am

How does Google differentiate between a business account and the account of someone representing a company? Is it simply the username? Is it the way the account is set up?
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Guest: dr. Robert
July 24, 2011 at 4:28 pm

I think it is, keyword “IS”, important that Google assures businesses that they remain on Google. Now as to all the affiliate and yes I said affiliate links need to exit. I see way to many affiliate links which are not websites or businesses perse. I see those links all over the web. How many links can cash411.com take up or warrior forum ? Its one thing to sell it off a website but its another when it is URL 125 … We can cloak our affiliate programs over and over but why contnually submit it to a SEARCH ENGINE when it is in a SEARCH DIRECTORY / MarketPlace already, just send them to ClickBank via your affiliate link NOT Google, Yahoo, Bing, or so on… Blogs and social media are great for promoting and selling your projects, products, and services. We can index our services under our businesses. But we should review how we use our mediums. Are we looking for a business that provides certain things or are we looking for a project or product and heard about it via social media or blog and want to find it.
waterboom
July 24, 2011 at 10:57 pm

nice info

—-waterboom—



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Google + Business Profiles and Updates to Place Pages

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