Google Places results page when no selection is highlighted.

Results page with mini-Place page expanded.

This is a noteworthy move for Google Local, given the powerful results that the “red pin” logo has attained over the last few years. The mini-Place Page embedded within search results seems to agree with the growing shift toward minimalism the company has encouraged in its recent redesigns, such as the sleek-and-clean new Google Reader. Additionally, the new system serves an important purpose in helping searchers find the things they’re looking for (location, directions, reviews, pictures and details, et cetera) without actually leaving the SERPs. Google is also making it easier on its searchers to review and edit local places listings by placing a feedback link (visible in the second, expanded screenshot) directly in the foldout, thus helping prevent problems like the infamous potential to mess with competitor’s listings via maliciously reporting a business as “closed.” With this error seemingly remedied or at least remediated, it will be interesting to see if other Google bugs such as the appearance of potentially inappropriate photos on Place pages will be given attention as well.

Given the increased power of many browsers and the capability offered by new tools such as HTML5, it’s clear that most users’ browsing capabilities can handle the change — but is it an innovative way to get the data you need without having to trawl through multiple unique pages, or a confusing overload of information? What do you think?

Google is feeding local business owners to the wolves with their latest Places update. Lior Ron, Google Places Product Manger, announced yesterday evening that Google will be “helping” business owners keep their business listings updated by now allowing anyone, mischievous competitors included, to edit your entire Places listing for you. Yes, even if it is verified.

How… thoughtful of Google.

Really, how else would I have booked a hotel room for below $100 per night within 20 minutes of my intended destination only a couple of days before I actually left for a major cultural hub? It turns out that Google actually has an answer, which would’ve been some help had I found it before I booked.

Though relatively quietly, Google has begun to place the ability for customers to book a stay directly on hotels’ Google Places pages. This addition to the site is similar to their “Shopping” section where users can compare prices for a certain product between multiple retailers and ultimately deal with one that meets their needs. Here, however, the customer will not be dealing with a seemingly faceless online retailer shipping out goods but rather directly with a business whose quality of service is readily accessible by a few mouse clicks.

As depicted above, potential guests have multiple options available for booking directly from Google, mostly through a number of popular travel sites, but also directly through the hotel. How exactly does this newish feature affect the involved parties?

First of all, and who I can actually identify with, is the Internet user who’s looking for a hotel room that will totally rule. Places pages have always been a great source to learn more about a business so that you can determine if you’d like to deal with them. With the addition of this feature for hotels, being able to find out how well a hotel presents itself as interpreted by user input and book on the exact same page is pretty convenient. As mentioned above, your options for booking at a particular hotel aren’t limited to any one site, so the convenience of having all of this information presented is much better than the individual travel sites offer on their own.

Realistically, however, the presentation of this information will not change search habits unless Google intends to push this service in a direction similar to that of these big travel sites. My method of booking was looking up “cheap hotels” in general, then going to one of a number of sites to find a place in Austin. This bypassed what Google had to offer on their own and, honestly, netted me a better deal than what Google was advertising. Keep in mind that this is an example only of my personal search habits; searching for “hotel in Austin” or anything similar as a normal person may have will bring the user to the Places page, from where they can choose to book however they please.

Through whichever entity the future guest to a hotel decides to book with is up to that user, but this feature actually gives a foothold for the independent hotel owner to net more profits. According to Mike Blumenthal, by buying pay per click ads directly through Google to place on their page, they can trim the hefty fees associated with listing on such sites as Expedia and Hotwire. By owning a Google Places page, a hotel owner can more effectively drive business directly to the hotel and create a positive connection with the customer base. Though according to Google, the ability to book through Google’s links “will not change the way that hotels are ranked in Google Maps,” thereby having no effect on SEO, an independent hotel is still getting exposure at a better price from Google than with the big travel sites.

What, then, of the big travel sites? Even if it seems that Google’s edging in on their territory, they still have distinct advantages. Services offered by the likes of Travelocity and friends extend beyond just booking hotels and into full travel packages. Google doesn’t offer links to car rental intermediaries if you visit a car rental location’s Places page, nor does it if you visit an airport’s location. They may have something to worry about if Google decides to extend the present booking capabilities to other areas of travel, though strictly in the realm of hotels, this change may shift the power more to the hotels than large booking agencies.

In my opinion, this is not a bad thing. The ultimate winners from this feature are Google, hotel owners, and the individual user. Major travel sites may see a slight decrease in hotel bookings, but the advantages that they have over direct hotel bookings will continue to keep their heads above water. The internet is constantly evolving, and these sites will have to adapt to whatever changes or disappear. Meanwhile, the individual user will be able to benefit from the additional information available through Google’s Places pages, and we, at Search Influence, won’t see any of our clients’ results negatively affected by this. I, however, wish I would have known about this recent Google feature before I decided to book my mystery hotel room for this weekend, but at least it let me know that I saved around twenty bucks per night by booking through Hotwire! Thanks for everything, Google, and I can’t wait to see what cool new things you have coming to us in the future.

Happy Friday everyone! It’s been quite a while since we’ve done this little series, here, but we’ve been meaning to bring it back. Well, after a quiet week of non-blogging, we thought this would be as good a time as any. So without further ado, I bring you the triumphant return of Top 10… err, 5 for the Weekend!

The 5 Critical Social Media Skills You Need to Disperse

Back in the old days, the only people who really needed to understand and effectively communicate your brand were people on your marketing or PR team. With the popularity of social media, that thinking is a thing of the past. As outlined in this article, everyone on your team is involved in marketing, whether they want to be or not.

How to Remove Google Duplicate Listings (Finally)

Ugh. Duplicate listings. The bane of my existence (whoa, totally just got where Bane from the Batman comics got his name from… Mind=Blown). I’m still struggling with trying to get listings removed or merged for a number of clients. It’s apparently supposed to be quicker and easier now.  I haven’t noticed much of a difference, but maybe that’s just because I try my damnedest not to think about it…

5 Must Read Reports on Social Media & Public Relations

Similar to the first post in this string, this article has to do with managing your brand through social media. While author Lee Odden acknowledges that social media reaches across all departments, he decided to focus this list on the ones who probably manage it most: Public Relations.

Regular Expressions – Don’t Use Google Analytics Without Them

I found this article to be particularly important, mainly because I had no idea GA had so may regular expressions (regex) to use that makes using it that much simpler. In this post, Annie Cushing goes through many of them, dividing them up between the major and minor leagues. Take a look and write this stuff down.

5 Ways to Measure Facebook Fan Engagement

I’m starting to notice a pattern here. All posts dealing with social media are lists of five. There must be some connection here… Get Dan Brown on it! Anyway, this handy list teaches five incredibly easy ways to measure your Facebook fan engagement. It’s an incredibly important process that apparently not many businesses follow or even know how to follow. Read and learn.

So that’s that. The latest installment of the top links for your weekend enjoyment, and hopefully you learned something too! You know G.I. Joe says about learning don’t you? It’s half the battle. The other half? Lupus.

The new integrated results combine your organic and local rankings in a new Google algorithm intended to make finding businesses easier.

Old results:

New results:

A site which ranks well organically (below the map) has always had a better chance of ranking on the map. Those who weren’t strong organically could sneak on the map provided a low level of competition.

This update hurts those businesses with strong local/maps presence and so-so organic presence. We do see, in some cases, that local prevails. A business with a strong local listing may be ranked within the organic results with just their listing data – not with any search specific information in the result.   The good news is that clients with strong local presence might get pushed up in the results.  The bad news is there is no search specific information in the result so click through might not be great.

In the past businesses in suburbs who wanted to rank for “the big city” had a hard time getting on the map. This may continue to challenge suburban based businesses with this new Google update. Those with strong organic rankings who previously ranked organically for their targeted “big city” could count on traffic from the searchers who ignored the map and went straight to find what they wanted in organic rankings. This update, though, adds an additional factor to what Google considers relevant in regards to geography, which may pose a problem for suburban-located businesses.

The new Google update stresses the importance of maintaining a strong presence in all aspects of the web.

Rest assured, it appears an extremely strong organic ranking site will remain top of page even without a strong local listing attached to it, as in this picture:

Angie’s List, a directory of service providers, remains strong despite its lack of relation to a Place Page, as seen here for Dallas House Cleaning and Austin Handyman:

The new integrated results shows the importance of reviews, in particular on third party review sites such as Citysearch and Yelp by linking straight out to those sites from the main search engine results page.

As seen in many of these screen shots shared above, If your Google Place page has pictures, your position on the search engine results pages will also be more prominent.

There’s much more to be seen and discovered regarding this update. We look forward to working with our clients sites to be sure they maintain strong rankings.

For further information on the subject, check out these blogs:

Place Search: a faster, easier way to find local information – from the Official Google Blog
What are the implications of the new integrated Local Search results? – by Mike Blumenthal on Understand Google Maps & LOcal Search
5 Quick Impacts of Google’s New Local Search Results – by Matt McGee on Small Business Search Marketing
Meet the New Google Local SERPS – by Andrew Shotland on Local SEO Guide
New Place Search Shows Google’s Commitment to Local – by Greg Sterling on Search Engine Land

I had a team member send out a red flag email about a client’s Maps listing 2 hours ago.  We had successfully squashed a listing created by a competitor who had been spamming with our guy’s business name, but today, it suddenly appeared again, and our guy’s real listing completely disappeared!

I know Google lost an entire city in Florida, which has now been found, but as we dig into it today, this looks like the entire East coast data is in an upheaval.

My concerned team member, Paula Keller, expresses frustration, “I can’t even find the listing. I saw it when I first searched for the phone number, clicked more info, and it said “We currently do not support the location” I logged in and clicked to view the listing and it says “We currently do not support the location” for both the practice’s listing and Dr. Parker’s listing.”

When we search by phone number, we get the totally wrong listing we thought we had squashed:

We thought we had squashed this listing months ago starting in April, and we further confirmed it was gone in May and June.  Haunted by listings of the past!

We logged into the account and clicked on “See your listing on Google Maps” ….

And this is what we got ….

Google must be up to something or rolling out some changes, and I have another team member check in various Place Page accounts to see if we notice a pattern in geography. Melanie Aleman reports in:

“I logged into the Google Places account for the following clients to check up what’s up, this is what i found:

• Dr. A A – no problem
• C C Doctors – “We currently do not support the location” when I tried viewing either listing on Google Maps
• Dr. B B – “We currently do not support the location” when I tried viewing either listing on Google Maps
• Dr M M – “We currently do not support the location” when I tried viewing either listing on Google Maps
• R R – no problems”

One of Melanie’s screen shots:

So far it appears this is on the Eastern time zone.  I see a surgeon’s Place Page listed in maps, but when I click on a Place Page link in Maps (not through the account), I get this:

Oop!  Maybe not just on the East coast!  A doctor in the southern US has a claimed listing, and right now it’s not even showing as owner verified!  And I KNOW it’s verified ….

I had yet another team member, Elizabeth Selasky, check out some client on the West coast to see how far this chaos is reaching.  She reported back that the West coast appears to be unscathed.

We also had some other weirdness happen over the last week.  We had 3 clients report back in that Google had called their business, and a real live person at Google wanted to verify their business address because a user had reported a problem with his address. The first occurrence of a real live Google representative calling a business was totally unexpected.  The 2^nd and 3^rd was just more confirmation that this must be legit Google.  Is Google paying attention to when users are reporting a problem with listing data?

Something is definitely going on with the Google Place Page product today.  Maybe it’s a database clean up on a massive scale.  We’re not sure, but we’re watching it closely.

So, being that I’ve spent countless hours digging in the sofa cushions for lost pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, and still haven’t gotten them all laid out on the table, I can imagine small business owners often have the same issues.

Here’s a rundown of some of our latest challenges of Google Maps:

1. Disappearing Citations

Disappearing citations = drop in rankings. While citations aren’t essential to beating our your competitors in some markets, in others it can make or break you. When a client came to us for help with Maps rankings on particular search phrases, he was ranking for a number of “money phrases,” despite the listing breaking numerous quality guidelines. We rapidly cleaned everything up on our quest to come out in the end with a clean, strong listing. Then, numerous citations were disassociated with the listing – what! We followed the rules and the listing was ultimately penalized.

2. The Importance of a Clean Listing – your listing as well as your competitors’

It is true, the success of your listing can be dependant upon the cooperation of your competitors. In particularly competitive markets, we see a lot of keyword stuffing in titles and all throughout the listing. We’ve learned that the more muddled up the market gets, the less Google trusts the information businesses are including in their listings, and in some cases, penalizes the whole market by removing the map results from the SERPs.

Let’s use the market of hair salons, Frisco, TX:

About a month ago, this is the map that was being pulled by the search “Frisco hair salons”

and now, about a month later:

As you can see, there’s been quite the mix up of whose listings Google is favoring.  Your best bet is to stick with correct information and avoid anything spammy in order to maintain a strong listing.

3. Duplicate Listings

While the recommended strategies have changed over time, one thing is clear: duplicates are bad!  It’s likely that when you search your business’s phone number, you see more than one listing –  they may or may not have correct information, and in either case, you should address the extra listings in order to reinforce your own. For this issue, Google has handed us a couple of pieces to the puzzle, and let us on to the best way to deal with it. First, only claim your main listing. For all others, you should “report a problem” and tell Google that “This Place has another listing.” While it won’t be instant, this should help clean up your market’s cluster of listings AND help your customers find you and your real information more easily.

So, whether you are a single location of a business that’s moved a few times, or Matt Dillard Hair Salons, Frisco, TX, Google Places could be your best friend, or it could make you crazy trying to put together all the pieces of the puzzle.

Thanks to plasticrevolver for the great kitty image!

We worked for months to straighten out a client’s listing and were finally feeling a bit of relief when everything seemed to be working… the address was showing up correctly, as was the URL, pictures, and details. Thank goodness, we thought!

That is, until this morning, when I logged into Google Places to test out the tags that are now available in 29 states. This client has some great videos and we hoped to highlight them to searchers in the 3- and 7-packs that are showing up for various terms in the market. But when I clicked on the listing, alas, it was once again pulling in details from a competitor – just a different one this time. As Places gains popularity, this issue of listing crossover appears to be a growing problem – and clearly, Google recognizes that, and even admits it by giving us the option to report that “some photos, reviews, or details belong to a different place.”

Thank you, Google, for giving us the option to report this… now, let’s see how long it takes for the reported issues to be fixed!

Search Influence is honored to have once again been invited by David Mihm to take part in his annual study on Local Search Ranking Factors. The best part of this collaboration is that the questions have remained fairly constant from year to year in order to study the change from year to year that SEOs have observed in Google’s local algorithm.

The 2010 Local Search Ranking Factors results, which were published early this week, feature input “from 34 prominent bloggers and practitioners.” While my personal local search experience began just a short 6 months ago, it’s been a whirlwind of claiming, verifying, re-verifying, suspending, categorizing, picture-adding, and detail-tweeking. Working with local listings has been an interesting and patience-testing experience, and reading the comments of fellow SEOs has certainly helped calm my anxiety. Luckily, everyone seems to have problems! I also believe it was beneficial after that period of time to sit down and analyze which aspects of our optimization efforts had been working and which may have turned into a waste of time.

The 2010 Top 5 Local Search Ranking Factors:

1. General Importance of Claiming Place Page / Local Listing
2. Business Address in City of Search
3. Associating Place Page with Proper Categories
4. Volume of Citations from Major Data Providers + IYP Portals
5. General Importance of Off-Page / Off-Listing Criteria

My biggest take-away from the report confirms a thought I’ve had for a few months now: there is no end-all be-all trick to increasing rankings. The top two ranking factors: claiming your listing and having a business address in the city in which you desire to rank, each has its respective caveats. While claiming your listing is of high importance (4.40 according to the study), I’ve often seen un-claimed listings trump claimed ones.

In regards to the number two ranking factor, if you’ve been in a business location for 20, or even 2 years, outside the city limits and don’t have a business address in the city for which you desire to rank, you obviously wouldn’t change that just for your listing… or maybe you would?

That said, I wouldn’t assume one distinct factor would influence rankings, because that’s just not how these search algorithms work, but I felt it was worth it to point out for those of you who don’t deal with search rankings on a daily basis. So, when you are working on your listing, follow the rules, all of them, and work with as many elements available. Just remember – when testing out a new feature – keep an eye on your listing, or better yet, check out the blog of anyone who participated in this study and you’ll find some tips on whether or not the feature is ready for mainstream use.

Thanks to myklroventine for the puzzle photo!