Google Issues “Places” Reminder

Small business owners who haven’t claimed (or even checked) their Google Places listings have been given another nudge to do so by Google.  The search giant posted a sort of walkthrough late yesterday, encouraging owners to verify that everything’s correct and add some special touches.

It’s hard to stress the importance of at least confirming that Google has the correct address and phone number of a brick-and-mortar establishment.  Since many, many people use Google as their first step to everything else online – its share of the search market is in the neighborhood of 70 percent – a mix-up can have a huge effect.

So if something’s wrong, a post on the Google Small Business Blog suggested, "[Y]ou can make updates to listings directly on Google Maps. . . .  Once we’ve reviewed your edits, updates to the listing will go live within several hours."

Or you can go a step further by claiming the listing, and the post said you can do this "by adding it at http://www.google.com/places or by clicking ‘Business Owner?’ on the Place page for your business."

Then it’ll be possible to do stuff like add photos and videos or promote specials.

Anyway, the basic steps of either process should only take a few minutes at most, and the sooner, the better, considering that the holiday season is approaching fast.