Google Places

Google Places is the latest free service that allows you to claim a business listing on Google.  Creating a free account on Places helps you position your business on Google’s listing so that people can find you.  Google thinks it can actually make your business stand out as it gets customers engaged with features that allow you to promote your business through photo uploads, promotional offers, public responses and other great features.

You can make smart business decisions by using information about your own business listing to get insights.  To get started, you can add and verify your own listing.  Once verified, you get to enhance your business page on Places by adding videos, photos, coupons and real-time updates such as weekly specials on your page.  Simply verifying your own listing opens opportunities for you to share more about your business with your prospective customers through Google.

Google Places Promise: Today’s Giant Business Directory Online

Google Places works like a giant directory of business online, similar to the Yellow Pages or other business listing providers.  What you will be submitting through Places is what people and Google will trust the most.  What you submit to Google will be what will appear as your basic information instead of what it gets from somewhere else.  To ensure accuracy of the basic information, Google has a verification system through its usual PIN that is sent to your mailing address or phone number.

You also have the option to add more information to your business listing like description of business, reviews, photos, and other relevant information like parking costs or business hours.  These pieces of information shall appear on top of similar information found from other providers.

Google Places Availability And Features

Google Places sounds promising to most businesses in today’s highly connected and competitive world.  However, it is not yet available in all territories.  You can check if the service is available in your country through its page on Mapping tool availability.  In addition, when you click “Add new listing” while you are logged in Google Places, you can check out if your country is listed as one of the locations.  Otherwise, you have to wait a bit longer for Places to be available in your territory.

This service is free to use at the moment, and Google does not accept any kind of payment to have specific listings indexed in search results.  So how does Google earn money from this?  When  you add your listing to Places, you will get offers on locally-targeted advertising with the AdWords program, and this is where Google hopes to make money from.

In addition, every business listing needs to have a specific mailing address.  This will serve as the physical address where all your business mails can be coursed through.  However, if your business is from home or if you operate a mobile-only business, you can choose to hide your physical business address on a later time.

You can’t have multiple listings in one physical location.  Even if your profession requires you to be in multiple places, you should never have more than one listing.  You can rather use your business description or categories to describe the different services offered by your business.  It will help a lot if you read the quality guidelines stipulated on Google Places for you to better understand how to ensure that your listing will be approved to be on Google.