Google Places: Have you claimed your business listing?

There’s one thing about marketing your business on the Internet which is indisputable: The job is never done!

So you’ve got a website, you’ve added a blog to it, facebook – tick, twitter yup doing it in your spare time – all the bases covered right?

Here at The DMA we do all of this for a living and I can tell you, even when you live and breath it on a daily basis it’s hard to keep up.

New technology, new opportunities, older things that you didn’t really pay attention to but now they’re getting popular, there are just so many varied ways to market online it really is a full time job – and then some.

Just when you thought you had all of your bases covered here’s something else for you to be looking at.

Enter Google Places.

You’ve probably seen this relatively new tool. It’s the business listings that sometimes shows up as a result of a google search. Have a look at the screen shot below, this is the Google Page for Garfish Restaurant in Manly.

What you will find is that Google get basic information from a number of sources, but in this example the address is not entirely correct (granted you’d find it) but more disturbing is the opening hours are way off. Garfish doesn’t open until midday!

When you click on “Place page” you’re then taken to a full page of information about the particular business listing, it can include much more detail:-

• accepted methods of payments
• price point (in the case of a restaurant average price for mains)
• opening times
• coupons and special offers for visitors

Upon viewing the full page of information there was more work to be done.

There was a selection of photos but none of them very representative. Pulled from other web sites like truelocal.com.au, urbanspoon.com.au etc.. it certainly does not show the restaurant at it’s best.

The Menu link, clicks through to a 2 year old link on another restaurant web site – again not the best thing to be floating around on such a widely used tool as Google.

If you own a business that operates from a specific location, it’s very much worth your while updating and maintaining your page on Google Places. The process is a little detailed, you have to have a google account, then move through the Google verification process to demonstrate ownership of the business. Once all of this is in place you can start curating your own little space in Google.

Alternatively, talk to us here at The DMA, we’d love to hear from you and will certainly assist in getting your Google information update.

(As of writing this we are well on the way to updating the Garfish Page – one of our clients at The DMA)