Today the Local Business Center is becoming Google Places. Why? Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real world, and we want to better connect Place Pages — the way that businesses are being found today — with the tool that enables business owners to manage their presence on Google.
We launched Place Pages last September for more than 50 million places around the world to help people make more informed decisions about where to go, from restaurants and hotels to dry cleaners and bike shops, as well as non-business places like museums, schools and parks. Place Pages connect people to information from the best sources across the web, displaying photos, reviews and essential facts, as well as real-time updates and offers from business owners.
Four million businesses have already claimed their Place Page on Google through the Local Business Center, which enables them to verify and supplement their business information to include hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons, product offerings and more. It also lets them communicate with customers and get insights that help them make smart business decisions.
Google Places will continue to offer these same tools, but the new name will simplify the connection with Place Pages. This reflects our ongoing commitment to providing business owners with powerful yet easy-to-use tools.
We're also introducing several new features:
Service areas: If you travel to serve customers, you can now show which geographic areas you serve. And if you run a business without a storefront or office location, you can now make your address private.
A new, simple way to advertise: For just $25 per month, businesses in select cities can make their listings stand out on Google.com and Google Maps with Tags. As of today, we’re rolling out Tags to three new cities — Austin, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. — in addition to ongoing availability in Houston and San Jose, CA. In the coming weeks we'll also be introducing Tags in Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder and San Francisco.
Business photo shoots: In addition to uploading their own photos, businesses in select cities can now request a free photo shoot of the interior of their business which we'll use to supplement existing photos of businesses on Place Pages. We've been experimenting with this over the past few months, and now have created a site for businesses to learn more and express their interest in participating.
Customized QR codes: From the dashboard page of Google Places, businesses in the U.S. can download a QR code that’s unique to their business, directly from their dashboard page. QR codes can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials, and customers can scan them with certain smartphones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for that business.
Favorite Places: We're doing a second round of our Favorite Places program, and are mailing window decals to 50,000 businesses around the U.S. These decals include a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to directly view the mobile Place Page for the business to learn more about their great offerings.
Over the past few months we've also added the ability for business owners to post real-time updates to their Place Page. You might want to promote a sale, a special event or anything else that you want customers to know right now, and this feature lets you communicate that directly to your customers. You can also provide extra incentive by adding coupons, including ones specially formatted for mobile phones.
To keep track of how your business listing is performing on Google, we offer a personalized dashboard within Google Places that includes data about how many times people have found your business on Google, what keywords they used to find it and even what areas people traveled from to visit your business. With the dashboard, you can see how your use of any of these new features affects interest in your business and make more informed decisions about how to be found on Google and interact with your customers.
One out of five searches on Google are related to location, and we want to make sure that businesses are able to be found and put their best foot forward. We’re excited to announce Google Places today, as it’s just the beginning of what’s to come from our efforts to make Google more local. If you want to learn more about Google Places, we’d like to invite you to an upcoming overview webinar, or you can visit our newly updated Help Center. We’ll also be posting on the Lat Long blog throughout the week to give a deeper dive into many of our newest features. To get started now, go to google.com/places.
Posted by John Hanke, VP Google Maps, Earth and Local
Businesses which verified their listing prior to October 2009 were already considered for the first wave of Favorite Places on Google, and won't be eligible for another decal at this time. However, if you were already recognized as a Favorite Place and your sticker has since been lost, damaged, or otherwise misplaced, you can request a replacement with this form.
Third, use the new updates feature in Local Business Center to post real-time messages about your participation in your local restaurant week, including menu items, specials of the day and more. Learn more here.
Why is this important? If a potential customer is searching on Google for a type of restaurant that matches your restaurant description, your listing will be up-to-date with news that you are participating in Dine About Town or any other events you are participating in. Afterwards, a personalized report allows you to see how often your listing was found on Google, and how people got there. For more information or to answer questions, please go here.
We hope restaurant weeks go well all over the country and happy dining. If you are involved in a resturant week and would like to see how we can partner up, click on this form and we can contact you.
And if you're in San Francisco or looking for an excuse to visit, you can see all participating Dine About Town restaurants for San Francisco now on a Google Map:
Holding a special event today? Want to post a coupon for 5-7pm tonight? Have a new product in stock? You can now get the word out by posting to your Place Page directly from your Local Business Center dashboard. Once you've logged in and are on your business' dashboard, post an update and it will go live on your Place Page in just a few minutes.
To see an example, check out the Place Page for Mission Mountain Winery which posted to introduce a new wine.
Badge for Your Claimed Place Page
We are also introducing a badge for listings that have been claimed in the Local Business Center. This helps our users identify listings that have been updated and improved by their business owners, helping them to trust that the information about your business is as accurate as possible. We are also making it even easier to claim your listing directly from the Place Page by following the "Business owner?" link.
We're excited about how Place Pages can help business owners connect with the large number of new and existing customers who visit these pages each day. These users come to Place Pages to easily find basic information, photos, and reviews about your business, as well as a map, Street View photos, and nearby transit information to help them get to your doorstep.
If you haven't been keeping up with our latest improvements for business owners, you may also want to check out the new mobile coupons feature in Local Business Center as well.
We hope you find these features useful in reaching out to your customers and providing them with even more relevant and timely information about your business.
Posted by Jana Urban, Nick Dower, and Lori Meiskey, Google Place Page team
We’ll also have a booth in the Expo Hall (Booth #365)so attendees can chat with us directly about Google Maps and Local Business Center. Any question is fair game! Look for the Google logo on our booth wall and a big map of Manhattan at the floor of the booth. We hope to see you there.
Posted by Andrew Chang and Ryan Hayward, Product Marketing Managers
First up, with more and more people using their mobile devices to find local businesses, we've added a new option for Local Business Center users in the US to display their coupons on mobile devices. Additionally, we've made it simpler to find and print coupons from your desktop, so now it's easy to get discounts wherever you are.
Coupons on a mobile device If you add a new coupon to your business listing in Local Business Center, by default it will now be available on mobile devices. To make your existing coupons available on mobile, edit them and check the box for Mobile Distribution, as shown here:
When users pull up your business listing on their mobile phone, they'll see a section that lists the available coupons. They can then click to find a specially-formated page which shows all the coupon details they need for redeeming it. Now even when customers are on the go, they can see all the great values and offers available from your business.
Improved interface for desktops We've also overhauled the printable pages that people visit from a business' Place Page. Now you can be confident that every Google coupon customers bring to your store will look the same, helping you and your staff easily recognize and redeem them. In addition to the re-design, we've made sure that the coupons print out correctly and consistently across all major browsers and operating systems.
To create a coupon now or to claim your business with Local Business Center for the first time, visit google.com/lbc.
We want a lot more businesses to be able to have this "Aha!" moment, getting insights on data that they could never see before. So, building upon our Favorite Places celebration of local businesses back in June, we're launching new efforts to make sure that business ownersknow about Local Business Center, and that users know how to take full advantage of the statistics in their dashboard.
First, all Local Business Center users in the U.S. who opted into receiving newsletters will now receive a monthly email report on how their business listings performed on Google in the previous month, including how many times the listing was seen, how many people clicked to the business' website, and more.
We'll also provide tips for optimizing business listings, such as advice on adding photos, uploading videos, and creating coupons (coming up in the next newsletter!). We'll also highlight successful businesses of the month and let businesses know about other Google products and offers that can help grow their business. You can find August's newsletter here, but make sure you're on the list to automatically receive future installments by opting in to newsletters in your account. Once you sign up, watch for the latest newsletter with your own customized business stats and all sorts of tips to be arriving soon.
Second, with lots of positive feedback on our Local Business Center introduction video, we decided to make a 30 second version to air in places where business owners are looking. We launched it earlier this week on television with Google TV Ads, and on various websites across Google's content network. In the video, you'll hear an overview of all that the Local Business Center has to offer, directly from Carter Maslan, our Director of Product Management for Local Search. So keep your eye out for the video (and pass it along to any business owners you know!).
Businesses can claim their listing and get started at google.com/lbc. It's been great to get to talk to people like Geof and other business owners, and to hear their feedback. If you have any interesting ideas for other types of outreach or partnerships, let us know.
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