google ^ google places
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What is Google Places? You wish to drive more traffic, sales or interest in your business? Google
Places might just be the tool to making that happen.
Check the online video : What Is Google Places? http://www.quickregister.net/wordpress/2011/05/08/what-is-google-places-and-why-is-it-important-for-your-business/
Google Places has been launched last September (2009), it is a part of
Google Maps. This tool was made for any places around the world to help
people make more informed decisions about where to go.
The tool enables the people to get information about about a special business
they are looking for. It provides pictures, reviews, real-time updates as well as
offers from business owners.
Advanced features, including coupons and impression statistics, allow
business owners to enhance and monitor their online presence.
By using this free service, it’s very easy to showcase your services to new
customers in the neighborhoods you serve.
What are the benefits of Google Places?
For you & me:
• Discover good addresses in your neighborhoods, according to what
you like.
• Get detailed information on every places, go through) the reviews from
your friends, get the address and phone number, check the itinerary,
the Street View etc.
• Grade and share your favorite places and benefit from personal
recommendations.
For businesses:
• Be visible on the most widely used search engine Google – for free.
“97 % of the consumers look for on-line local companies. Be visible
when they look for you”
• Get more costumers by promoting features that make your business
unique: add photos, videos and special offer, promotions or create
coupons that will help drive potential customers to your business.
• Know your costumers better: track how many people are looking at
your listing and how many people visited your page, check where
they’re searching from and what key words brought them to your page.
• Control your reputation by responding to reviews.
• In bilingual countries, it is possible to add your listing in each language
spoken in that respective country.
How Google Places works?
Google compiles business information from a multitude of public sources as
third-party providers and creates a listing for each business. All of this is done
on behalf of a business.
However, as the information is compiled from third-party sources, the listing
may be inaccurate. It’s important that businesses claim their listing so the
information reflected is information that the owner provided and not someone
else.
This is your local business listing with Google Places. Important : it comes before organic and paid listings!
What about rankings? There are four known factors Google uses to score and allocate rankings:
1. Your Proximity: how close your business is to the place of the user’s
search.
2. An effectively optimized listing: submit your business categorically
correct, and benefit from exact category searches and category synonym
searches too.
3. The Quality of your Citations: a well-organized citation management
campaign is a reference to your business, it will greatly boosts the overall trust
Google has in your Place.
4. The Quality of Reviews: to see what people are saying about you, Google
scrapes well-known review sites, such as InsiderPages, Yelp, SuperPages,
and others, the collected information is then used as part of the overall
ranking process.
Google Places iPhone App
Google Places is also already optimized for mobile searches as most people
are now looking for local needs through their smartphones, so if they want to
find out how to get to your business, make sure you have taken possession of
your Google local page and full optimized it.
Google Places is part of Google Maps app.
Include also a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to directly
view the mobile Place Page of your business.
Google Places Concurrent AroundMe is a similar location based App as Google Places.
Its locates you through GPS and helps you make decisions about where to
go, what to do and how to find the best local resources through personal
recommendations, experiences, viewpoints and reviews.
The only weakness I would highlight is the fact that you have to download
either the US version or the European one. Both in one does not exist yet.