Google Places has become a significant Social Media destination that your business needs to pay attention to. Here’s why:
- It aggregates content and reviews from around the web about your company and will be a big draw for those interested in you and your business.
- Local and global source content is all included.
- Inclusion of real-time updates from business owners, a powerful new feature.
- Favorite Places. Over 100,000 business have window decals that can be scanned from cell phones to read or (soon) add reviews, remember a business, and more.
- “Near me now” feature. Consumers can find your business when they are nearby, including your content and reviews.
Google has been moving into the consumer generated content social space for some time. They tried unsuccessfully to buy Yelp as recently as last month, which would have been a key component of their small business marketing portal.
Google now appears to be going it alone without Yelp, and without Yelp’s community of avid enthusiasts. Not withstanding the more sterile feel of Google Places, I prefer it simply based on its breadth of information even at this early stage. As an aside, Yelp still has its share of problems, including a tarnished image as a result of trying to coerce businesses to advertise. Yelp also does not permit Google to index its reviews.
Here’s what I suggest you do:
- Don’t ignore sites that talk about you. Even those you might consider as minor and unimportant may now have their content appear in Google Places and thus attain far more prominence.
- Claim your business on Google Places though the Google local business center. This gives your presence added credibility plus the opportunity to include your own content (like business hours and contact information).Most importantly, business owners can now add real-time updates or posts. These can include offers, promotions, coupons, announcements and more.
What’s next?
- Incorporation on Google Places of additional, important real-time content including Twitter and Facebook updates.
- Better features for parsing results.
- RSS and email feeds from Google Places pages so that you can subscribe to updates about those places that are of interest.
[...] There’s a huge shift afoot in travel reviews; one you won’t want to miss. Today’s post covers what it means to the travel consumer. If you’d like to see my analysis of what it means for your business, I invite you to read more about it on my other site, TechSpokes. [...]
As a librarian, one of the drums I beat repeatedly is don’t trust any one or small group of reviews of any product, service, or place. Unfortunately, like Yelp, ePinions, and other aggregations of “consumer” reviews, Google Places is going to be compromised by several factors:
1. Lack of comparative expertise of many reviewers.
2. Sham reviews by owners, friends and family, or renting agency.
3. Lack of objectivity or relevance of perceptions by many reviewers.
4. Few reviewers with confirmable expertise (though even Rick Steves and Lonely Planet and Moon Publications reviewers have biases).
The only thing anyone can do is look at as many reviews as one can, assess the reviewer’s language and expertise, read between the lines, and make one’s own best judgment. The problem, though, is that many think this is too much work.
Hi John,
Thanks for the comment and good points, with which I concur. At this point Google Places is primarily content aggregation, and there’s a lot of content to choose from. That doesn’t of course speak to the credibility of the content and review corruption. I will be writing another post on Beat of Hawaii this week that discusses those issues further.
Jeff