Realty World Northern California & Nevada

We’ve all done our own Google searches and seen the mini-bubble that pops up with the “more info” link. After clicking on it you see just what you would want to see. Hours of operation, local transit, menus of restaurants, Street View previews, online reviews, etc. But how does this all get there?

Google Place Pages for Google Maps was launched in September of 2009 giving a webpage for more than 50 millions places around the world including, restaurants, businesses, points of interests, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks, and cities all over the world. By April of 2010 over 4 million businesses had already claimed their Place Page through the Google Local Business Center. In April 2010 Google renamed the Local Business Center to Google Places.

Claiming your listing on Google Places is a breeze. Start by going to http://www.google.com/places and fill out your business’ information including company name, address, phone numbers, etc. Google then checks their system if they already have your listing in their system and allows you to “claim” that existing listing or create a new one. So long as the name and address is the same, just claim the listing so you don’t create a duplicate listing.

Once you have claimed the listing you can correct anything that is not accurate as well as add detailed information including specifying hours of operation, adding of photos, adding of video, plus additional details that you want to add such as parking availability or specialties.

Google requires you to validate that the listing you claimed or added is in fact yours and requires validation by phone or by postcard which contains a unique identification number and activation instructions.

All of this is FREE for all business owners.

For $25 a month Google offers a way to make your listing stand out with Google Tags. Tags are yellow markers that allow you to promote important aspects of your business. Tags do not affect the rank of search results; they simply add more information when someone is searching. Google is also offering a 30 day trial of Google Tags as well.

So, have you claimed your listing in Google Places?

Tags: Google, Google Maps, Google Places, Google St, Local Business Center
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