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2011 Google Places Updates

Posted by Colleen Frye

Google Places listings are looking different from week-to-week, as Google actively tests different profile displays.

Last week, Google axed 3rd party reviews from Places listings (reviews from sites like Yelp.com), and removed the “More About This Place” feature where business citations were listed.  What’s next?

After researching and following these changes closely and anxiously anticipating what will happen in the near future, we stumbled upon a forum post by a Google Places Community Manager (i.e. Google employee) that confirms additional display changes in Google Places profiles.

Vanessa from Google states:

Seeing a lot of questions in the forum, let me just clarify a couple things about the new Place pages. The following info you provide may not appear on your Place page, but it’s all still used to help us understand more about your business:

  • Email address
  • Menu
  • Reservations
  • Optional attributes / Additional details
  • Service area toggle “Show service area”

So just because we’re not showing it, doesn’t mean it’s not helpful for us to have – it helps our system ensure that your organic listing appears and ranks appropriately on Google and Google Maps when potential customers perform searches related to your service.

At this point, we can only theorize as to why Google would un-display helpful data provided by business owners. Mike Blumenthal, a known Google Places guru, seems to think Google is making room for more paid local features. Whatever the case may be, we expect more changes to surface. Until then, as they say: “keep calm and carry on”!