Google just launched an interesting update to its Google Local Business Center that makes Place Pages more interesting and interactive. After claiming their business through the Google Local Business Center, business owners can now easily post short updates about their companies on their respective Place Page. In addition, businesses that have been claimed by their owners will now feature a badge that highlights the fact that the actual owner of this business has claimed and improved the page.
With Place Pages, Google aims to offer “a webpage for every place in the world.” Most users access these pages through searches on Google Maps.
As Google points out in today’s announcement, business owners can use the new “post to your place page” feature to post updates about their businesses directly from their dashboards. This gives local businesses the ability to send out updates about new products or – in the case of local restaurants – to highlight daily specials and new menu items.
It’s also good to see that Google is now giving local business owners the ability to make it clear that they have claimed their Place Pages and improved them with updated information (opening hours, phone numbers, etc.). Even though Google is quite good at generating this information automatically, getting the information directly from the business owners is likely to improve the quality of these listings and will make the information more trustworthy.
