What is Google Places?

Google Places has become the phone book of the Internet. According to Google, 97% of consumers search for local businesses online. Getting your business registered and verified with Google Places is essential to being found in the search engines.  Setting up an account is easy and free!

Why add your listing with Google Places?

Once you’ve verified your listing, you can enhance the Place Page for your business by adding photos, videos, coupons, and even real-time updates like weekly specials all on your Place Page. Verifying your listing gives you the opportunity to share even more information about your business with Google.

How it works

Google uses data from many sources to compose local business listings. Each listing includes information from one or more sources, such as third-party providers, user edits, and verified business owner records. To make sure the basic information you submit is accurate, we’ll ask you to verify it first by entering a PIN that will be sent to either your business address or phone number.

You can add other information to your listing too—such as a description of your business, photos, reviews, or information about hours.

Before you get started, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Right now, Google Places is available for businesses in only certain countries.
  To find out if your country is one of them, click Add new listing when signed in to your Google Places account. Check the country drop down at the top of the sign-up page. Or, just see the list below.

Country availability

Andorra	Ethiopia	Latvia	Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates	Finland	Morocco	Solomon Islands
Afghanistan	Fiji	Madagascar	Seychelles
Angola	France	Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of	Sweden
Argentina	Gabon	Mongolia	Singapore
American Samoa	United Kingdom	Macao	Slovenia
Austria	Ghana	Northern Mariana Islands	Slovakia
Australia	Gambia	Malta	Sierra Leone
Bangladesh	Greece	Mauritius	Senegal
Belgium	Guam	Maldives	Sao Tome and Principe
Bulgaria	Hong Kong	Malawi	Chad
Bahrain	Croatia	Mexico	Togo
Burundi	Hungary	Malaysia	Thailand
Benin	Indonesia	Mozambique	Tajikistan
Brunei Darussalam	Ireland	Namibia	Turkmenistan
Brazil	Israel	New Caledonia	Tunisia
Bhutan	India	Nigeria	Tonga
Botswana	Iraq	Netherlands	Turkey
Canada	Iceland	Norway	Taiwan
Democratic Republic of the Congo	Italy	Nepal	Tanzania, United Republic of
Central African Republic	Jordan	New Zealand	Ukraine
Congo	Japan	Oman	Uganda
Switzerland	Kenya	French Polynesia	United States
Côte d’Ivoire	Kyrgyzstan	Papua New Guinea	Uzbekistan
Chile	Cambodia	Philippines	Viet Nam
China	Republic of Korea	Pakistan	Vanuatu
Czech Republic	Kuwait	Poland	Samoa
Germany	Kazakhstan	Portugal	Yemen
Djibouti	Lao People’s Democratic Republic	Palau	South Africa
Denmark	Lebanon	Qatar	Zambia
Algeria	Liechtenstein	Romania	Zimbabwe
Estonia	Sri Lanka	Serbia
Egypt	Lithuania	Russian Federation
Spain	Luxembourg	Rwanda

• It’s free.
  Adding your local business listing to Google Places is free, and Google doesn’t accept payment to include particular listings or sites in our search results. However, we do offer locally-targeted advertising through our AdWords program.
• Every business listing must have a mailing address.
  This is the physical address where mail can be sent to your business. If you work from home or you are a mobile-only business you can specify service areas and choose to hide your physical address later on!
• Check out Goole’s quality guidelines.
  In order for your business location to be approved to appear on Google, it should follow their quality guidelines. Be sure to familiarize yourself with them.

When creating your Place page, make sure that your internet browser is Chrome, Firefox, or Safari to ensure that it publishes properly.

To start creating your free local business listing, go to the Google Places and sign in with your Google account. If you don’t already have a Google account, click Sign up now to create a new Google account. You can also use an AdWords login and password, if you have one.

How to create a Google Places page:

1. Go to www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/‎.
2. If you already have a Google Account, sign in with your email and password. You can also use an AdWords login address and password, if you have one. If you don’t have a Google Account, click Sign up for an account now, or go straight to the sign-up page.
3. On Google Places homepage, click Add new business.
4. On the “Find your business” tab, search for your business by phone number to see if Google already has information about your business.
   • Select the country of your business location from the drop-down.
   • Enter the phone number of your business listing.
   • Click Find business information.
5. Review the search results, if any, to see if one of them describes your business.
   • If none of the results are related to your business, you will be prompted to add business information on the Edit Details page.
   • If none of the results is your business, click Add a new listing. You’ll be prompted to add more information on the next page.
6. Fill out the basic information about your business. This includes:
   • Company / Organization:
     This is the official / registered name of your business.
   • Address:
     Add the street address, suite number, city, state, and zip.
   • Phone Number:
     Make sure to include the area code.
   • Website:
     Your website URL can be up to 255 characters.
   • Description:
     Try to make the description engaging and include a description of your business, the solutions you provide, etc.  Add targeted keywords to the description.
   • Categories:
     These should be keyword-focused.  Try to use the standard (pre-existing categories suggested by Google) rather than creating custom categories.  You can add up to 5 categories that best describe your business.
   • Hours of Operation
   • Payment
   • Photos:
     You can post up to 10 photos.
   • Videos:
     Upload the video to YouTube and copy and paste the URL to your Places listing. You can add up to 5 videos to your listing.
   • Additional Details:
     This is great opportunity to enter in your top keywords, brands, products, services, etc.
   • Share an Update on Your Place Page:
     You can add an update about events, specials, and more.  Example, “Live music tonight at 7pm”.  The update will stay on your Google Places listing for 30 days, if you do not remove it manually.
7. Preview the listing and click on “Submit”.
8. Verify Your Google Places Listing.

In order to have a listing on Google Places, your business does need to have a physical location.   You will need to verify your business with Google Places. Verification lets Google know that your business is real and that Google needs to start displaying it in the search results.  You should use a business email account and, if possible, an email account that matches your business’ website domain. Google has three options to help you verify that your business exists.

• Verification by Phone
• Verification by SMS
• Verification by Mail

You will be able to see your local business listing live on Google by signing into your Google Places account and clicking “See your listing on Google”. This link will take you to your actual Place Page, as seen by users.

Encourage Your Customers to Add Reviews to Your Google Places Page

Reviews will set your listing apart and help increase your ranking in the search engines.  Ask customers to post reviews on Yelp!, CitySearch, and similar review sites to help boost your Google Place’s ranking even further.  It’s best to get a steady stream of reviews, rather than having a bunch appear all at once.

Monitor Your Google Places Page Analytics

You can review statistics by going to your Google Places Dashboard.  Here you will find activity info, impressions, actions taken by users, top search queries, and where driving directions request are coming from.

Need more information?

Take a moment to read more about Google Places on Google Support

 

Would you prefer to have us set your Google Places page?

 

Contact us for a free consultation and start implementing your new strategy today!

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