Google Local Business Listings are either a fantastic opportunity or a really annoying barrier stopping a site in 4th place from getting any traffic.
For example when Google displays a map for the query mobile phones it’s annoying for the poor site in 4th place because they get a massive drop in traffic but it’s also not an opportunity really because most people are not looking for a local phone shop they want a national online retailer.
If you are lucky enough to be in an industry where local search matters then 2010 could be HUGE for you.
Google is reporting that in the US one in every 13 searches now shows a map. That’s pretty huge when you consider the proportion of searches that are for terms such as “facebook” where a map would never show. This means maps received 868 million impressions in December in the US alone.
With all this good news there has to be some bad news too and in this case it’s with the fact that to get a local business listing in a lot of cases you need the help of a human at Google to manually approve your listing even after telephone or postal verification. We are finding that this takes at least 2 months for the approval and then a further 1-2 months for the listings to start showing up on the search results.
As you can expect normal small business owners who don’t understand Googles support policy are getting pretty frustrated at the lack of responses in the forums.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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This sounds like good news all round to us, potentially, we are a small local heating business in our area. Fortunately our partnership is very two-sided, my partner is a qualified gas engineer and I am an internet and WordPress nut. I logged our business with Google many months ago which is listed and has been for some time, I am planning a new WordPress site for the company very soon – as far as I know, none of our local competition has this mix of skills – are you saying there could be a tsunami coming our way??
The rise in local listings may be partially due to the fact that Google is actively asking local businesses to get listed – in the US anyway. Local businesses have been getting invitations by regular mail to log on and add their info.
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For the most part, the rise of the LBC has been great, but I can see how it does put purely online retailers at an unfair disadvantage.
More comments from LuciWhat is google’s support policy for the local business centre – i’ve heard a few times about people not getting responses, but I’ve not had to use the forums myself yet.
Now a days the Google local listing have a good impact while if someone searching using the local medium.
Patrick – I read this bit with interest:
“to get a local business listing in a lot of cases you need the help of a human at Google to manually approve your listing even after telephone or postal verification”
I’ve set some listings up in the past and they display as being active, even with some impressions, but I’ve never seen them! So am curious as to how you’ve determined if they still not live, and exactly how you go about getting this sorted?
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If it says “Flagged, waiting for verification” then you need manual intervention. You need to tag your listings if you want to track traffic, I don’t rely on Googles impressions figures.
More comments from Patrick AltoftI see, I’ve had “Flagged – waiting for content check” before, but found this easier to sort myself than wait for Google to show up and take a look:
http://www.webmarketingadvisor.com/SEO-blog/why-won%E2%80%99t-my-google-local-business-listing-appear
Next question, how does one tag a listing?
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Dave, use this: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
More comments from Patrick AltoftWow, that’s news to me. In Australia, they must use a total different system when it comes to verifying a local listing.
In my city, you can create a listing in Google local business center and it can be found in the search results within 5 minutes of entering the verification pin. I specialize in local business seo and I would go insane if i had to wait months for it to show in the results.
It’s probably like this due to the fact that there hasn’t been a problem with site owners hijacking unclaimed listings that I know of. I would say, 50% of the local listings in my city are still unclaimed. Small business owners haven’t caught on and realized the power of SEO yet.
It is worth the wait and if you can get to the top of the ten pack listing it is really worth it. You need to add content though, get customers to write reviews, add photo’s, maps and check what other sites Google are referencing and make sure your listed on those.
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