Google is a wonderful thing – I am constantly amazed at how many freebies Google offers that are great tools for:

• businesses
• schools
• clubs
• not-for-profits

If you haven’t yet discovered ‘Google Places’ then read on to find out how easy it is to profile your business or organisation in Google even when you haven’t got a website.

What is Google Places?

According to Google, more people (about 87%) use online search to find local information than any other media.

One in every five Google searches is related in some way to location. To ensure their search results are relevant, Google has put a lot of effort into developing tools like Google Maps to help searchers find what they are looking for.

To set up your listing in Google Maps you use Google Places. Once you’ve verified your listing, Google will rank your listing based on its relevance to the search terms entered, along with geographic distance and other factors. You may have noted Google map listings appear near the top of the search results.

There is no way to buy a better ranking as you can do with Google Adwords, however I did notice that after I updated Hot PJ’s listing in Google Places with more images, the next day we had jumped up four places in rankings for a specific keyword phrase.

Here’s how you claim your ‘Place’ on Google Maps

1. Visit Google.com/Places and Sign up for a Google Account
   This will give you access to heaps of other useful Google tools – more on those in coming newsletters.Google recommends using an email address that you don’t mind sharing with others or passing along, in case you want to transfer your listing to someone else.
2. Log in and click “add a new business”
3. Start your listing by profiling your business, school, organisation or club
   Enter into the preset fields your contact information, a 200 character description of what it is you do, and choose a category to describe the sector you are in. You will be prompted to select a category which may not fit your business or organisation as well as you hoped. While you must choose one of the categories, you can also add an extra four others of your own making.

   Google takes the location details you input and plots your location on the map. You can change the marker location if it isn’t accurate. The link to do this is under the map.

4. Enter more specific information:
   • are you location based or serve others at their locations?
   • hours of operation
   • payment options (if applicable)
   • Add up to 10 photos
   • Add up to 5 YouTube videos

Plus any other additional info in a series of fields. For instance I used this space to list Hot PJ’s Twitter address, blog, plus info on where to park for free when visiting us, and the offer of our free 45 minute marketing ‘Think Tank’.

In the photo gallery I uploaded a selection of work we have completed for clients. They display as thumbnails which, when clicked, enlarge. This is a great place to show your products, key personnel, photos of your location, your logo, etc.

For best results upload square images no bigger than 1mb and 1024 x 1024 pixels. Unfortunately you can’t seem to specify the order your images will appear.Adding video is easy, just cut and paste the link from www.youtube.com

5. Verify your listing
   Every listing must have a mailing address. This is the physical address where mail can be sent to your business or organisation. To verify this Google will send a text message to a cellphone or a postcard to your mailing address. The text message will be something like this: “Use the following pin to verify your Google Places listing for yourusername: 12345″

   Only after your listing is verified, will it will appear in Google. This can take up to 12 hours.You can then log in the dashboard to see statistics on how many times your listing has been displayed during a search in Google. You can also add coupons to your listing too, as a way to attract interest and customers.

Posted on May 11th, 2010 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: Marketing, Websites