Google

Google Places Marries Google+, Gives Birth To New Google+ Local Pages

Filed in Google, Local Search by Matt McGee on May 30, 2012 22 Comments
Google Places Marries Google+, Gives Birth To New Google+ Local Pages

Say goodbye to Google Place Pages, and say hello to Google+ Local Pages. That’s the name for Google’s new baby — a result of the marriage, or merger, of Google Places and Google+. It’s the main part of several related announcements today from Google. As I’m writing this late Tuesday night, there’s no link yet […]

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Why I’m Not Sure Google Will “Nail” the Places-Plus Integration

Filed in Google, Local Search by Matt McGee on May 18, 2012 3 Comments
Why I’m Not Sure Google Will “Nail” the Places-Plus Integration

David Mihm wrote an epic post earlier this week about the eventual merge/integration of Google Places and Google Plus. (It would help if you read that post before continuing on here.) He lays out a number of ways the two could be combined and suggests how the integrated product could benefit small and local business […]

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Google’s Freshness Algorithm in Action

Filed in Google, SEO by Matt McGee on May 11, 2012 3 Comments
Google’s Freshness Algorithm in Action

Real quick post here (I hope) about fresh content in Google’s search results. Background Google has been emphasizing fresh content in its search results for some time now. That link goes back to November 2011, and when I write on Search Engine Land about Google’s monthly search quality changes, they often include something about fresh […]

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Google & Portland State are Violating Google’s Review Policy

Filed in Google, Local Search by Matt McGee on March 21, 2012 12 Comments
Google & Portland State are Violating Google’s Review Policy

Hey @Portland_State students! Remember that today’s the last day for you to review to win a tablet: goo.gl/niu5k — Google Portland (@GooglePDX) March 21, 2012 That’s one of a couple Google Portland tweets today promoting the latest violation of Google’s own review policy. The policy is spelled out pretty clearly in Google’s help system: Conflict […]

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Traditional SEO Now More Important to Local Search

Filed in Google, Local Search by Matt McGee on February 27, 2012 7 Comments
Traditional SEO Now More Important to Local Search

Google says it’s relying more on regular search rankings — ergo, on traditional SEO — to influence its local search results. This is from Google’s latest monthly roundup of search changes and covers what’s been happening during February: Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local […]

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Slowly Making Progress on Unmerging a Triple-Merged Google Places Listing

Filed in Google, Local Search by Matt McGee on February 9, 2012 3 Comments
Slowly Making Progress on Unmerging a Triple-Merged Google Places Listing

Time for this week’s update on my wife’s merged Google Places listings nightmare. This is the third installment, and things have gotten slightly better since the last update. You may recall that this began in mid-January when Google emailed to let me know that it would un-merge her Places listing and then re-merge it again. […]

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