Google Places – Are You on THE Map?

Have you searched for yourself lately on Google Maps? If you own a business and you haven’t, you should.

Google Places is an area where Google aggregates what it can find about any given business into a single location: physical address, website, contact information, reviews, etc.

Consider it a separate area for searching. If you’re searching for a business type, Google will give results from the Places database first. For example, if you’re on your mobile device and search for the nearest restaurant, it’s going to find restaurants out of its Places database, rather than from the database of all websites. This way the user gets faster and more accurate results.

For the business owner, there’s an opportunity here. If your business appears on the map, you can claim that listing and then add data to it yourself. (If you’re not, you can create a new listing.) This information you add supersedes the information that the Google spider is picking up off the web.

So even if you don’t have a website, or only have something out of date, you can tell Google (and therefore everyone else) what type of business you are and what you offer. The Google Page Rank system still plays a part in where your business will appear in a search, but the information in Places will ensure that you show up in the right spots.

And if you’re a new business, you’ve got the opportunity to leap ahead and get all your information into Google Places, so that you’re showing up almost immediately, rather than waiting for Google to spider your website.

Take a moment to search for your business name on Google Maps. If your business is in Google Places, you’re going to show up.

You can see a lot of basic information: address, website, phone, etc. You can get even get directions. Here’s how we appear on the map.

If you click through the “more info” button, you get a lot more detail. 

You get a lot more information—down to business types and service area. Note that it’ll show your location on the map, as well as on the street view.

In the middle (right above our logo), you can see that it’s an owner-verified listing. That means we’ve reviewed, made changes, and approved the page. This gives the information on the page more ‘weight’ in the Google ranking system. So when people are searching for us (or someone who does our sort of work), we will appear sooner.

Farther down the page, you get a lot of other information about the business – reviews (if they exist), company photos, similar businesses, and then a list of websites related to the business.

Google knows a lot about you. You should find out what they know, and what they’re telling people. And then, sign up (if you haven’t already) and get a little more control over what Google has to say. The payoff is more people coming in your front door to do business.