Google Places: Showing up for local search results

If Google is the first place you turn to find a local auto repair shop, coffee house or antique store, you’ve probably noticed a major difference since January 2011.

In the spirit of social media and location based marketing, Google started getting up close and personal by incorporating Google Places in with organic search results. What does this mean? If you are a local business who’s been going after certain keywords on Google, you may need to update your approach to also compete within the Google Places results which, in many cases, are now showing up just underneath the Pay-per-click ads.

As you can see, if you Google “Denver Photographers, Google Places results show up immediately under the Google search box as results A-G. Effectively, this makes the #1 organic position held by www.KelliNixon.com, come up #8 in the Google search results despite owning the #1 organic position.

Will the Google Places results override the organic search results?

It’s hard to say for sure, but think about it this way. The larger the percentage of customers who come to you within your local area, the more important Google Places will be to your business. Also, think about the major increase in location based marketing such as Foursquare, Yelp and Facebook Places. What about the role reviews on sites like Amazon have been playing for years? The more location based marketing becomes part of our daily lives and the more reliant upon “peer” reviews consumers become, the more irrelevant Google Places will make your current organic ranking.

How do I get placed in the top Google Places Positions?

1. Set up your Google Places, Yahoo! Local, Yelp, Merchant Circle Accounts. There are many different online location based business review services. The ones listed above are some of the most popular. Visit these providers and set up your free business account so customers can find you on their favorite review sites.

2. Reviews. If you do a few searches for local businesses, you’ll see right away that, more or less, businesses with the most reviews are at the top. There are plenty of exceptions, but this is general rule. Start by contacting your current and past customers and asking them to visit you on their favorite review site and share about their experience working with you. Google aggregates reviews from across the web, so it doesn’t matter on which site they place their review. (with the exception of sites like Angie’s list that require a log-on. Those won’t work.)

3. Citations. If you have previously focused on competing with other businesses within the Google organic search results, one of your focuses has probably been building valuable back links. If so, don’t worry – this work hasn’t gone to waste.

Revisiting our previous search for Denver Photographers, our top local result is Julie Harris Photography. Looking at Julie’s Google Places page, we can see that she has 16 citations (see image below). Many of these citations are from directory websites, some are from her own site and others are from partners linking back to her website.

The difference between A and B

While Google Places results aren’t as formulaic as Google’s organic results, there are some takeaways when comparing #1 vs. #2.

Looking back at the earlier image of Google places results, Option B is Pink Fog Photography. Pink Fog actually has 7 more reviews than Julie and has only 1 less citation. So, why does Julie have better placement? For starters, Julie has almost 3 times more reviews on Google Places itself, 4 reviews on Yahoo! Local and 4 on Yelp. Pink Fog has only 6 reviews on Google Places, 8 on Yelp and 17 on City Voter. I think it is safe to say, if you are going to have the bulk of your reviews go to one site over another, try to steer your clients toward Google Places.

Second, looking at the citations, 9 of Pink Fog’s 15 citations are on www.decidio.com, a general wedding and party vendor directory. On the other hand, only 6 of Julie’s 16 citations come from a directory called Photographik. The difference is a broader range of citations for Julie AND the fact that her directory likely holds more relevance with Google as it is a directory known as “the elite photographers network.” Remember, not all links are equal, so it can often pay to emphasize quality over quantity.

Hopefully this will give you a greater understanding of how to get involved in local marketing via Google Places to drive more traffic to your site. What about you? Has your local business seen an increase or a drop since Google changed its results? Have you personally utilized this new method in your own searches?

1 Comment

1. Adwords Express really helps support Google Places + Maps as well!

   Jim
   October 7, 2011 at 8:03 pm