Small Business Trends

Google Maps Provides Direct Link To “Find Yourself”

Small Business TrendsOctober 29, 2009By Lisa Barone

Planning with pushpinsI’m about a bit late on this (welcome to my life), but I thought it was important enough to still warrant a mention. It was announced in the Google Maps forums and on Search Engine Roundtable that, as of last week, business owners will be able to see a Maps link for every one of their businesses listed in the Local Business Center via their personal dashboards.  According to Google, the feature is designed to help business owners to easily find their listings on Google Maps.

It’ll look something like this:

Google Maps photo

[screenshot lovingly taken from Mike Blumenthal]

It’s not a particularly shiny update, but it should be helpful to a lot of small business owners who before had problems locating listings once they were published and would post threads in the forum asking for help.  It’s also a good way for business owners to keep track of their business listings if they have multiples, as well as serving as a constant reminder to update your business information if it’s not accurate.

There was a minor bit of confusion when it was found that some of the links in the “See your listing on Google Maps” section didn’t actually go anyway.  Mike Blumenthal noted that he had seen and heard cases where a business listing appeared to be missing without a way to bring it up via the engines.  There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer as to what’s going on there. If you find that your site isn’t showing up in the Local Business Center, you should definitely seek help in the Google Forums. It’s possible you accidentally hit off some type of filter and are being penalized.  Of course, it may also be nothing, as one business owner in the Google Maps forum thought she had “lost” her listing, when in fact, she hadn’t.

Obviously, anything that can help small business owners manage their local listings is a good thing.  The engines rely very heavily on this information for ranking so it can’t really be stated enough how important it is that it’s both correct and consistent. Hopefully, the new addition from Google will allow SMB owners to not only ensure their information is accurate, but to locate their listings once they’re live and on the Web. A nice add from Google.

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63 Responses to “Google Maps Provides Direct Link To “Find Yourself””

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  1. Robert Brady says:
    October 29, 2009 at 11:39 am

    Better late than never Lisa (and most small business owners could probably use a reminder to go and check their LBC).

  2. Sean says:
    October 29, 2009 at 1:18 pm

    Basic marketing and communications information can be found at Marketing Communications

  3. Clicks Internet Marketing says:
    October 29, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    Thanks for posting, Lisa. I’m looking at this now for a small business client. Her site IS in local listings for certain keywords, but it does not appear when I click through from the dashboard — Google goes to Maps and searches for a “*”, not the business website. Not sure what is going on with Google there.

  4. Martin Lindeskog says:
    October 30, 2009 at 1:02 am

    What are “impressions” and “actions” standing for?

  5. John says:
    October 29, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    Mike,
    Thanks for the heads up, and great post. I have a question regarding the merging of 2 listings. I had a listing that was showing the correct address, and this particular listing had roughly 6 customer reviews. a Few weeks ago I noticed a duplicate listing. I claimed it, and verified it with a PIN. Now Google is showing the correct address, but all 6 reviews have disappeared. I have 2 listings in my LBC, the old one and the new one I just claimed, both with the correct address info. Will Google eventually merge these together and start showing my customer reviews again?

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  6. Mike says:
    October 29, 2009 at 3:05 pm

    If the basic listing info (NAP+ url + 1 category) on the two is exactly the same then eventually they will merge. You can tell if they are merged when the impressions etc are exactly the same. When that happens the reviews should show back up in the merged listing.

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  7. nickg says:
    October 29, 2009 at 10:00 pm

    off topic questing @ MikeB

    mike does creating a user map of all locations I have for a client…help in score of relevancy I have seen these become all of the rage as far as the bigger companies go..your thoughts

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  8. Mike says:
    October 29, 2009 at 11:38 pm

    My thoughts are that they might play a role in ranking but I have no proof.

    They certainly can, if done properly (see Chris Silver Smith’s recent article at SearchEngineland) provide long tail traffic in their own right regardless of their benefit to ranking.

    I find them also useful as an add on to client’s websites.

    So given that, I usually create them for clients and figure I have nothing to loose as they are quick and easy to make.

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  9. Alie says:
    November 2, 2009 at 10:32 am

    Mike,
    I have a listing (in canada) that is showing up without a pin point . Where is this ‘report and error’ feature you mentioned in step 3. I couldn’t find it in the LBC, the google help forum, or in our online listing. I would be delighted if you could point me in the right direction.

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  10. Mike says:
    November 2, 2009 at 10:47 am

    It is in Maps proper on the lower right hand corner of the Map itself

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  11. John K. says:
    November 6, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    Can the “report a problem” link also be used to report problems with the name listing or just the features of the map itself?

    A local computer repairman hijacked our Google Maps listing and put his website on it under our name. I threatened to sue him and he removed it but in doing so he put the name of the company all wrong.

    (I still don’t know how he was able to do this. The listing is supposed to be claimed and he is still able to fool with it.)

    I tried to edit the listing to correct it (before he removed his website link) but as soon as I tried to edit it the listing was marked “flagged-waiting for content check” and it has been that way for over a month.

    Not to even mention that before we were always on the opening page of results and now we are not.

    I have put this on Google Maps Forum twice with no results. Can the “report a problem” link be used to bring this to Google’s attention or does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can correct this?

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  12. Mike says:
    November 6, 2009 at 10:18 pm

    The report a problem link is just for geocoding and map errors.

    Usually records of this sort are merged not hijacked but anything is possible.

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  13. John K. says:
    November 7, 2009 at 1:27 am

    How can this problem be reported to Google?

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  14. Mike says:
    November 7, 2009 at 7:20 am

    If it is a hijacking then through the forums, if it is a merging then you need to increase the prominence of your listing so that Google can distinguish from the listing with which it is merging.

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  15. John K. says:
    November 7, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    Thanks for your help! But can you explain the exact difference between merging and hijacking?

    We hired this guy one time and were not all that satisfied with him, but he put our name on his web site as one of his so called “clients”. Not long after that his web site appeared under our listing on Google maps.

    Our listing was all completely the same as before EXCEPT THE GREEN LINE at the bottom which was the computer business’ URL.

    As I said, when we contacted the computer business, almost immediately his URL disappeared (in a few hours) and the listing was back to normal EXCEPT that after that the name was wrong, written exactly the way the individual who runs the computer business writes it.

    We have been trying to get it changed and so far no luck. What does this sound like to you? Any suggestions? Thanks.

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

  16. Mike says:
    November 7, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    Merging is an outcome of Google’s clustering algo when they think that two businesses are the same so they merge the information into one shared record. Search my blog on “merge” and you can read about it.

    Hijacking is the complete takeover of a record by malicious means by another business. Search on “hijack” to find out more.

    It is nigh on impossible to diagnose let alone fix this sort of problem within the constraints of this blog. Thus I can’t really say.

    This comment was originally posted on Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search



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