Google Places: Making Information More Visible

Google has just released a new browser plugin (Chrome & IE) tool, Google Related that provides information that Google thinks is relevant to a given website that you are visiting. The tool, while working across a range of e-commerce, information & local websites, is of particular interest in the local space as it provides direct access to information drawn from your Google Places page.

When Google noted last month that they would be making buried information in Places more visible, they were not kidding. The plug-in presents maps, reviews and related places front and center in a tool bar at the bottom of your website. It may also reference videos and additional web sites and will show these if 1)the info is available AND 2)the viewing screen is wide enough. The video, unlike the other options, plays in place and offers no click through option. As the screen resolution drops fewer options are displayed.

The new plugin provides a user with two additional links to your Place page, one link to your Google Places review page, links to 3rd party review sites and links to the Places page for businesses that show up in the Related Places section of your Place Page.

The feature set, while of likely use to the searcher, is most likely to benefit Google and their properties, driving page views and ad revenues.

In pushing Google Places information out to the greater web, Google is once again putting review management at the fore of both the searcher and the business’s mind. The use of Related Places is sure to raise the ire of many an SMB, much as it did when the feature was rolled out in early 2010. At the time it was referred to as Places Nearby You Might Like and was the first obvious indication to SMBs that they did not control their Places page but that Google did. It also demonstrated that Google was developing a sophisticated “business graph” that was capable of mapping out a web of similar local businesses across the local market.

It also raises a number of other questions. Will Google provide any analytical information about the information that is attached to your website? How many times folks viewed the review summary? How many visited your Place page or better visited a competitor site? If Google is going to attach this sort of information to a business website, they should have the analytics in place to help the business understand how to improve things.

Here is the same screen shot as above captured on a wider screen. Note how the web pages and videos now show:

Interestingly if you click on the Map pop up it will take you to a new Map view that by default shows reviews and related places as you scroll down the page:

If there are no reviews it shows related places in the new map view:

If you click on one of the last 4 reviews highlighted in the reviews tab it will feature that review in a custom view of your places page, elevating that specific review:

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This display of hours is something that I have only seen on a few of the websites and it is not clear why it shows sometimes and not others.

If You are Hit by Competitor Spam Review

Barbara Oliver & Co. Jewelry’s Google Place page was hit with what appears to be a competitor spam review. The review is rather bizarre with racial innuendo and unfounded accusations. It would appear that the reviewer had not ever visited the store.

The timing of the spam review is interesting. There have previously been review complaints against other businesses in her market for having posted their own fake reviews. With Google no longer counting 3rd party reviews as of July 21st, there was a radical shift in the number of counted reviews showing for businesses that were returned in key searches in the market. Barbara fared well with the new review count totals while others in the market did not. Whether these facts are related to the spam review is unclear but I thought they added context and certainly raised suspicions.

The review is in technical violation of Google’s review guidelines although it is not at all obvious that it will be taken down by Google or if they will take it down, when. And like all reviews of this type, it points to a process failure in how Google handles review take down requests by SMBs.

Because of Barbara’s many positive reviews it had no impact on her star rating. Fortunately the best of all possible events occurred when a client responded to the bogus review directly and came to Barbara’s defense and another review was posted pushing the spam review down the page. It certainly points to the benefits of having happy clients speaking on your behalf in the on-line conversation.

I have been of two minds in regards to an owner response and have more questions than answers at this point. Would the review be somehow legitimized by any response? Would it bring unwarranted attention to it? Can a response be written, focused on future customers, that would stand the business and Barbara in good stead? Or is steady at the helm, garner new customer reviews the overall best, singular tactic? Barbara of course was calling for blood but was willing to take my advice and she recognized the power of having her customers speak on her behalf once that occurred.

The question at hand that I would like help answering: Should Barbara provide an owner response? If so why and what should the response look like? And if not why not?

P.S. a few simple Google Places Reputation management tips:


– With the new Places layout on the desktop, Offers (aka coupons) push reviews below the fold on both the desktop and mobile.
– The Share an Update (available from the analytics view) also pushes reviews down the page albeit not as much as a coupon
– Also if a previous reviewer simply edits/re-saves their review it will ascend to the top of the list pushing more recent reviews down.

Google Places: “We currently do not support the location”

 

When working in Places the message that we all dread to hear: We do currently do not support the location is a Google message that instills the fear of god in the most expert of us. In normal situations it will show when a newly created listing has not yet been integrated in the Maps index. Give it 48 hours and the message goes away.

However there has been a more sinister occurrence where it will show up all of the sudden on a long claimed and stable record and it’s the bane of who ever runs into it . Until now it was not known what caused it or how to fix it. It is a message that shows up all too often in the forums raising its head there 3 or 4 times a week.

Fortunately for all concerned, a frequent contributor to the German Places Forums, Spinatmensch has discoved a work around for this most devastating of Google Places Bugs. Here are the instructions as detailed by EHG, another frequent contributor:

1. go into the GooglePlace account containing the “unsuported” location.
2. click the name of the entry to get the URL of the analytics site of the entry opened in a new tab of the browser.
Its URL should look like:
http://www.google.com/local/add/analytics?storeid=[the numbered Place identifier]&hl=en&gl=US
3. Now enter any  content into the field below the line “Share an update on your place page” and hit the button Share” to publish the new content.

I have tested this recently with Andrew Baker whose Places Page was experiencing the problem. This solution may actually recover some of the listings that were edited during the Pending problem as well.