Google Places & Maps
-
Hi
I'm preparing a confernce in France to explain Google Places & Maps to an audience interested in promoting local businesses but mainly hotels and other tourism related.
As you know, searches such as Hotel + City are giving a lot of visibility to Google Places results. Being in the top results is as important if not more important than organic ranking.
I'm going to be looking into the new presentation of Google Places results in the SERPs and maybe underlining a difference in results between Places and Maps which I've just recently spotted.
Can anyone recommend some good ressources online to explain the changes that came about with Google Places and ranking factors I should be talking about ?
If you have a pet theory on what triggers the different presentation of Places results in the main SERPS or what factors make one local business rank better than another in Google Places then please discuss below too
Ah ! Almost forgot, any feedback on Google Boost use also interesting for us ; although it isn't in France yet
Thanks
- Neil
-
Thanks Andy
That was a great tip
- Neil
-
Thanks for the 2 replies to my question ; Wissam gave a selection of good links and although I'd visited them all before it got me into the right frame of mind for preparing my conf (late one night!)
The conference went well and the slides (in French) can be seen here : http://fr.calameo.com/read/000121207eff44339f40f
Just to give back something to the community here is a resumé in English of what I presented
Introduction showing classic Google Places (Google Adresses in France) at the top of in Google's results for a search for Hairdressers in the town of Urrugne (where the conference was held). Google Places gives the best visibility on this page
The same results as Google Places results
None of these results show a web site or a verfied owner
But there is a choice from 1 to 8 and an order which is important. Being number one is important
The Google Places page and a point on the detail in the data that Google has found: address, telephone number, geo-localisation, Street View and references in other sites
Google Places pages for hotels have added features: prices from booking.com, hotels.com and availability search
Back to hairdressers, the same results in Google Maps (link from the top of Google.fr rather than the link in the left hand column). Some confusion as to what the difference is beteween Places and Maps (the Maps logo is shown on the Places business page)
Why is Zen Cut hairdressers first?
Rather ask why another is only 14th. The screen shot shows that Google found a lot less information on this company.
(Turns out that this person is a freelance hairdresser without a salon in Urrugne)
How could this hairdresser get from 14<sup>th</sup> to the top of the results? Understand why Google hasn't found more information about her on the web. Claim the Places page. Create a web site and link this into the Places page
All of these actions should be enough to claim first page in the results. One action may be enough to get in the top 8
I then explain how to claim a Google Place page. The verification process.
Now a more complicated case: Hotels in Biarritz. There are over 100 hotels in the town of Biarritz. Being first in Google means a lot of direct business for hotels who may otherwise depend on Booking.com or other commission based booking systems (there are ranking issues there too)
The results are presented differently in this cas. My take is that is that these are mainly organic results complemented by info from Places, after or instead of classic snippets. In general we're in SEO territory: a large dataset and the need for sorting results with the “best” first. Best being the most relevant to the person searching.
The results in Google Places are NOT the same as Google Maps
We're looking at Google Maps being an application for geo-localising data and Places being a database of business organisations (the yellow pages); Places data can be shown in Maps but there is some other algorithm in action here - possibly with more weight to geographic data but also possibly based on availability information specific to hotels. The Maps results seem to based on an arrival and departure date
How can you be #1 in a more competitive situation ?
1st solution and the easiest: PAY for it. The screen shot shows Adwords with a Google Places extension. Boost is not available in France yet. Not many businesses are using the Adwords option
Now a question on SEO statergy. It's the first time I've addressed the issue in a conference to business owners. Once you know a lot about how Google can select and the order results (this bit to follow), what do you do with the info? White Hat or Black Hat. I'm strictly White Hat but you see a lot of good results from ignoring Google Places' quality guidelines so I can understand that people are tempted to cheat. A lot of people “cheat” un-intentionally
Judgement day is coming though
We're seeing a lot of activity from Google's quality team at the moment, so I think that Google France are beginning to take Places a bit more seriously. During my research I came across companies with listings refused or removed. One company with 93 Places listings for his 1 company for example!
A lot of what follows is from the Places Guidelines at http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528&rd=1 and official Google blog posts that have recently been translated to French
The first easy thing is to do is complete your Places page as much as possible
Be CAREFUL to respect the guidelines; Google says that companies that don't could be suspended from Places
I then show a hotel, in total disrespect of these guidelines, getting a good ranking for an important search by putting keywords in his company name. But my advice is still to correct his business name to respect the guidelines. He may be happy with this exploit now, but he will be less happy if he disappears from Google completely. Don't take the risk.
There is also another example of a hotel using all uppercase letters in his company name ranking well. Again this is against guidelines and should be corrected. We are possibly not facing a suspension for this but it is not impossible that it could affect some quality rating.
In the detail of other Google guidelines, I'm also recommending companies to select just one category in Google's list and then add their own categories if they think it is relevant ; Use service areas rather than creating false listing for nearby towns. Feedback from the audience on company actually doing this successfully though: company with one real address listed in most French towns at the same street address.
Use custom attributes to add links to your web site and keywords. If you're a hotel or restaurant, follow the examples that Google has given. These links are not direct as redirections are added.
You can also add news to your page. These posts can contain links and these are neither nofollow nor through redirections
black hats rush out of the room
Leaving the Places page, understand where Google is getting your data from, what trusted sources could there be in France? I’ve no fixed idea but Axciom exists here; Google originally got its data from Infobel. Official resources exist and these are more or less up to date.
Google is also matching address information in general business web directories and from your own site. Be sure to always use the same address in all your listing. Forgetting your address on your own site is a common mistake.
User reviews are part of the equation. Google has its own reviews (HotPot) and also gets info from other sources. Some are taken with the sources permission, others not. Use the service the review comes from to complain about a review
Reply to review where you can. Create accounts with the sites that give you reviews and give reviews to your competitors.
Is it a good idea to invent your own great reviews? Do you think that Google can spot that? Strange that some users only ever leave one review on the web, ever ... a brilliant one for your business. All using the same IP address. Hmm.
Google Hotpot was launched in January ... No one in the room had ever seen it before
Other review sites can be found by looking at other sites in the same sector. Examples of Hotels and Restaurants. Some reviews are machine-translated from international sites. The quality is questionable. Cases of organisations being attributed reviews from other companies.
Do reviews have to be positive? Here I translated some results from http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml ; general opinion is that no, but a 4 or 5 star listing will look better in the results and will attract more clicks ; improved CTR can improve ranking - possibly
Looking forward, France can expect Boost and Tags to be available soon
Google Real Estate exists in the UK but this is a separate data base
More Google developments on the travel business are expected. The new reservation feature is possibly one step in this; reaction from the room that it only forces hotels to pass through booking.com. Hotels can no longer be independent.
I ended with copy of the Web Equity wheel from http://www.blumenthals.com/index.php?web-equity-infographic which shows that Places is just one of the things that you should be doing to make your local business visible online
Hope that is useful for people on here
-
Hi Neil,
I have had very good success with Google places for customers by adding them into more local directories (for one part). Open any places page and go down to the bottom and look at the local results where the site is being found. You want to get yourself into more of these - find out which sites others are being found in and drop your customers in there
Regards,
Andy
-
Dear Neil,
I wish you good luck @ your Conference, here's a couple of reference for Local Results
- David Mihm (http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml)
- Danny Dover (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-basics-of-local-seo-whiteboard-friday)
- David Mihm and Rand Fishkin (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-local-search-inclusion-with-david-mihm)
Concerning Google Boost, I think it very valuable, here is more details about discussed by Mike @ blumenthals
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2010/10/25/google-boost-more-details/
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google images not showing on SERP
Hi, I recently noticed that after a specific name search, Google images on the 'Web' SERP are no longer showing up. About a month ago, there were atleast 4-5 headshots of this particular person showing up whenever his name was searched. Now no images are showing, just the ten organic links and two links from adwords campaign we have going. The images are still optimized and some are even from editorial sites. Does anyone know what may have caused the images to disappear and what we can do to bring them back to the main SERP? (Not sure if it matters but we are in Canada) Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | Lorne_Marr0 -
Google Places Creation
Hello, I am currently managing 200 clients for which I have to create Google Places. Can I create 200 different places for each client, and manage all them from one Gmail account? If one client doesn't want to continue the contract, can I transfer the managing of the place to another account?
Image & Video Optimization | | cvissi0 -
Multiple Store locations Google Local
Hey there, Is it best to create an individual page for each store location? Or is it best to create one page and plot different locations? Thanks, Dan
Image & Video Optimization | | Sparkstone0 -
Google images indexing on no-index html page?
Hi, I wonder if a image can get indexed, included in google images if it is located on a html page with a no-follow tag? Thanks for your help.
Image & Video Optimization | | wildnis0 -
Consolidating mulitple Google+ Local pages with one Google+ Page
Hello All, I have trawled the internet, but can seem to find the answer to this question: "How will Google integrate multiple Google+ Local pages with one Google+ Page?" A bit of background to this. I work for a company that started online, but has since moved into retail stores. We currently have 14 stores around the UK. Now each of these stores has a Google+ Local page which were automatically converted over from the old style Google Places pages. I have read that these pages should be integrated with our regular Google+ account. All of the examples I have read about seem to relate to offline businesses that have moved into online, rather than online business that have moved into physical retails stores. And these examples are just one store, one Googe+ Local listing & one Google+ business page. That seems simple enough... but what about multiple locations?! Do I just need to sit on my hands and see what happens? Or are there things I can be doing now? Cheers for any help! Rich
Image & Video Optimization | | JBGlobalSEO0 -
Google Images in Normal Search
If you search for the term, "Crappie". Listed 4th is a row of images. These kinds of images always seem to grab my attention above the actual search results-- or at least they do for a moment. These images seem to be in order of google images rankings. I may try to take a swing at ranking for these images. Is there anything else I should know before I start? I can't seem to find any guidance on the topic. Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | terran0 -
What are the best practices for Google Places for a manufacturer?
A manufacturing client has distributors around the world. Can I add these distributors to my client's Google Places account through the bulk upload feature? Is there a better way to ensure that people searching in the company's various territories see a Google Places entry for the appropriate distributor?
Image & Video Optimization | | joshfialkoff-778630 -
How to Track Traffic from Google Places Pages
Hi, Is there anything I need to do in Google Analytics to setup tracking for traffic coming to a site via it's Google Places page? I can see some traffic from maps.google.com in the Traffic Sources > Referring Sites report, but it does not appear to marry up to the data reported in the Google Places dashboard. Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | WCR0