We have some great news about Google Places listings! If you haven’t already noticed, Google has made some recent changes to their Google Places pages. The SEO team here at Comit wants to let you know what you can expect from these changes so that you can keep your competitive edge.
What’s Changed about Google Paces?
Google has incorporated Google Places into Google+ by creating a tab called Google+ Local. Users will be able to write reviews for businesses straight from Google+, making it easier to write reviews for services.
User Review System
Google has made a few changes to the user review system. Instead of giving a star rating based out of 5, users will rate a business based on the Zagat 30-point rating scale. They will have the option to choose 0 – 3, and your average between reviews will give you a rating between 0 and 30. You still have all of your old star reviews, but they have been translated into the 30-point scale.
A business that has a rating of 23 / 30, which is rated as being “Very good to excellent”. From now on, the listing would have a rating out of 30.
What’s Changed about My Google Listing?
There are four major changes to Google Listings:
- Google Places listings have been moved to Google+ on a tab called Google+ Local
- Reviews written by Google+ users will be integrated into their circles as business recommendations
- Ratings are now based on a 30-point scale, allowing for more flexible business ratings
- Users who find your listing can now reserve services straight from Google+
What Hasn’t Changed?
- Your Places page is still managed through Google Places
- Your business will still show up on Google Maps
- Your Google listing has retained all previous reviews and search engine strength
How Can We Take Advantage of These Changes?
Now that your listing can be accessed through a user’s Google+ account, your listing will be easier to find and more accessible for users to write a review. This is great news! Generating lots of reviews generates better rankings, and with rankings come sales. This is too good of an opportunity to pass up.
Ask customers for reviews:
- Follow-up emails with a link to your local listing
- Employees ask for a review on a portable, hand-held tablet after a service is complete
- Request a review on customer receipts and emails
We are very enthusiastic about these Google Places changes. The time is now to plan for a course of action to take advantage of these changes. We believe this is a potential home run for generating reviews for your business listing, and could result in an explosion of sales. We look forward to putting these steps into action and producing results. If you don’t have Comit’s SEO services, contact us to take charge of managing your Google Listings so that we can get your business seen by consumers.
-The Comit Team
