Major Changes to Google Places Listings

I wanted to share with you a major change from Google that may have an impact upon our SEO efforts. (You may have already noticed the changes – one highly-visible aspect is the “black bar” at top of all Google pages & the integration with Google +, their new competitor to Facebook). All these changes mainly affect Google Places. So far we have noticed no major difference to the way Google ranks websites (beyond the many OTHER changes Google has instituted in last few months).

The new Places pages look a little different, but the more important difference in the new version is the lack of third-party reviews. Due to the threat of a lawsuit from Yelp, Google no longer shows reviews from other IYPs like Yelp, Citysearch, Avvo, etc. They do not appear to be using these reviews as “ranking signals”, either. This means that reviews _ON_ your Places page(s) are suddenly much, much more important to good ranks & traffic! Another issue other SEOs are noticing is large variances in their Places traffic. We are confident that this will stabilize with time.

There are other changes, but most of them are irrelevant for small business owners who have an SEO firm keeping up with the technical aspects. More info:

Please be thinking about ways to send more satisfied customers to your Google Maps page(s) in as large numbers as possible. This is truly the #1 ranking signal in Google local now. The next time we talk, we should go over creating methods to get more reviews. Methods may include

Of course be aware that Google’s methods of determining false reviews are extremely effective now. Typically they just delete false reviews, but too many from a single source could cause the Places page to be “Frozen” or even deleted. More info (& tips at bottom)