By Lee Gientke
For many small- to medium-sized businesses, the Internet is game changing. In the past, you might have won or lost customers based on the size of your Yellow Pages ads, but now given the increasing prevalence of the Internet, even the smallest shops can compete against the largest of companies.
So ensuring a company’s information in Google is correct and prominently ranked is of vital importance.
In mid-2010, Google significantly changed the way local results are displayed on its pages, merging organic listings, which appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to being an advertisement, with local listings.
You can recognize local listings as they display a business’s name, address and phone number. The local listing also has a link to that business’s Google Places page that contains reviews by other Google users, photos, hours of operation and a company description.
Google has created a control panel where you can manage the information displayed in your local listing called Google Places: google.com/places.
If you don’t manage your Google Places page, you run the risk your business information may be out of date or incorrect. For example, a New York Times story cited several examples of businesses that were inadvertently marked as closed. By not being proactive and claiming and/or monitoring their listing, those companies lost thousands of dollars.
