Google have emailed to say that they are REMOVING many unverified and unclaimed Google Places business listings next week, on the 21st February.
When you look for a business on Google, the Google Places listing is the red “pin” that lets your customers know you exist and where to find you.
Most business owners haven’t seen this email – it often went into junk or spam folders – or didn’t believe it.
Jade Wang, Google Business Community Manager, sent out the email saying,
“We’re asking business owners to review and confirm some of the information in their Google Places accounts so we can keep showing it to Google users. We have sent business owners affected by these changes an email entitled “Acton Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing.”
No business owners I ask have heard of this so I’ve decided to make sure you have this information so you don’t lose out. Sorry not to tell you earlier but I’ve been at a Marketing Conference all week in Sydney – you still (just) have a week do do this.
As I keep saying, Google has to make sure it’s trusted otherwise people will start to use another search engine – and Google won’t be worth $300bn any more! That’s why it’s decided to get rid of unverified business listings.
This is very bad news to all businesses and organisations who don’t know it’s happening. So do forward this to your business friends or colleagues who need to know.
Please let me know that all of your Google Places business pages are safely claimed and verified?
It’s not your fault if you don’t already know about this – of the 80m Google+ Local pages which Google created, for instance, 92% of them are unclaimed and most businesses don’t know about either their Google Places or Google+ Local pages.
As Reputation Specialists, we claim and optimise Google Places and Google+ Local pages for everyone we work with. We can do this for you if you don’t have time to do it yourself and want to be certain it’s done properly. As a special offer to help businesses to not disappear, we’ll do this work for you for $297 but you have to be quick and ask us to do this for you now because time is running out.
If you’re not sure if your Google Places page is safe, email us back and we’ll tell you if everything’s safe or if you still need to claim and optimise it. We’ll do this for you at NO CHARGE.
Though this may give out red flags for a lot of business owners, the new changes will make your customers’ search for your businesses more optimised.
It is critical to do an update and save your Google Place listing for your business. If you received an email from Google, then you might be wondering if it is a spam. It’s not. To answer this, Jade Wang who is the Google Business Community Manager sent out a message saying:
“We are making some changes to Google Places for Business and Google Maps so we can continue providing people with the best experience when they’re looking for local businesses. As part of this process, we’re asking business owners to review and confirm some of the information in their Google Places accounts so we can keep showing it to Google users. We know this will be a few extra steps for merchants, and we apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your time.
We have sent business owners affected by these changes an email entitled “Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing”.
You need to:
1. Login into Places for Business
2. Check out your business information.
3. Make sure it’s correct with the EXACT business name, local address, local phone number, the right number of words which are keyword optimised and with calls to action, ten relevant photos and five videos (see our other training for which to use and how to geo-tag them – this is important)
Or we can do it all for you: we’ll check for you AT NO CHARGE that your business is safely verified and if not, we’ll claim and optimise your business Google Places and Google+ Local pages for you for just $297. But you need to act now because we only have a few days left. Google are taking down many unclaimed Business Listings on the 21st February.
What happens if I don’t update my listing before February 21, 2014?
In order for your business to be listed on Google Maps, it is important to update it before the 21st February otherwise you may well have to claim and register your business, add your business information and undergo PIN verification which usually takes three weeks and has to be by post. During this time your Google Places may have disappeared.
Angela
PS to make sure your business doesn’t disappear, we can check for you AT NO CHARGE that your business is safely verified and if not, we’ll claim and optimise your business Google Places and Google+ Local pages for you for just $297. But you need to act now because we only have a few days left. Google are taking down unclaimed Business Listings on the 21st February.
Great heads up and advice. Thanks 🙂