Should Advertisers Worry About Google Places Content Strategy?

The Big G seems to be constantly tweeking Google Places, a tweek here and a tweek here. Most of the time these changes fly under the radar and are just look and feel type changes that people dont really care about. Some of their most recent changes imply that they are making a play to try to monetize this service in the future.

Google Places used to have a section where they could add additional location details and owner comments. This section doesnt seem to be there anymore. These missing sections used to provide a great SEO benefit to Local Businesses. Merchants used to take advantage of this section by really beefing up their location listings much more than other local directories and review sites offered. This prior feature used to be free and it only cost merchants the time it took for them to enter this data. Also third party reviews or at least most references to these are being removed from the search results. Do you think that this means Google will start charging extra for enhanced Google Places listings?

Google Places Content Strategy

I think that its in Googles best interest to let local merchants write their own review on a Google Places page. It will give Google a chance to finally build up their own review database like Amazon is doing with its customers. Google using Places like the Amazon model would be a smart move for them. Think about how good Amazon products rank in the search engines. Amazon makes billions of dollars per year just selling products. If Google uses Places as their chance to build a massive customer review database, they will be a force to be reckoned with in the near future.

Its very important for Local Businesses to team up with a Local Internet Marketing Consultant and put together a good review strategy. If you cant formulate a solid review strategy, a generic one will be assigned to you. So its imperative that you as a Small Business Owner become proactive and formulate a great review strategy.

Google Places doesnt have as much pull in the local space as some of the other directories have, but nevertheless they do carry a big stick. If you already had a review strategy, you need to decide how effective this strategy was and if it needs to be shifted based on Googles latest changes. Google+ and the addition of Google+ Business Profiles will also likely have some impact on where the future of Google Places is heading.