Google Places – Do I REALLY need to Claim my Place?
You have probably been very busy with all of the day to day tasks of running your business (Marketing, Sales, dealing with Staffing issues and the 100 and one other issues) which likely does not leave a lot of time for keeping up with what is going on in the internet world.... but we do.
Google is the largest search engine in the world with nearly 70% of the market share. This single fact alone makes it vitally important that your business claims its Google Place Page. It’s the most important directory listing you should have and it’s free. Secondly it should be correctly optimized so it will get found on the first page of Google. Then when prospects are looking for your products and services from their desktops or smart phone it’s you they are find and not your competition.
Google has gone through some recent changes that have a direct bearing on your business. They changed their algorithms of search results and are becoming more focused on “Local Search Results” for their users. Part of their mission statement is to provide the best search results for their users. What that means to you and I is that when we search for a Roofer or a Life Coach and we live in Atlanta, we don’t want to see search results for a Roofer in another country or even county for that matter. So they are shifting to emphasis on “Local Search”. That's why they have moved to geo-targeted results and created “Google Places”. In turn they are giving priority ranking to “Google Places” results to help people find a business in their city that provides that service or product that they are looking for. For example, if you search for “pizza” plus your local area you will get a list of pizza places around you. If you do this search on your mobile device you’ll even get them sorted by geography, with the search giant utilizing your location to help refine your results. As you can see, a places listing can be quite beneficial to a merchant.
So why haven't you claimed your Google Places Page?
There's likely 3 reasons why this is the case
1. Time 2. Technology and 3. Why - and this is really the point! In spite of whatever your reason for not doing it - you really should. 1. You should control what is on your Places Page. Google gave it to you but they didn't ask what your hours of operation are, what phone number to use, is that address correct and they sure didn't put up any pictures or video that pertain to your business. 2. And this kind of a biggy. You get a very influential link from Google to your site. In the internet world this is a great feature for you to have. There are a lot of techy reason's for this but it's like a trusted personal source who's opinion you respect and trust giving you the name and number of a person to call. Not convinced you need to be on Google Places yet?- ▪ Google is the preeminent site used to search for products and services for local business and it shows - they have 74% market share.
- ▪ 97% of consumers search for local businesses online. (as per Google).
- ▪ 59% of consumers report using Google every month to look for a good local business.
- ▪ 71% of searchers report they value the information provided in local search results.
- ▪ 60% of online searchers report that they notice images and logos on local search results more. Sadly less than half the businesses are not aware of this because for the ones that have claimed Google Place Page, they haven't included them.
- ▪ Only 20% of businesses have added a video to their local listing.