The new changes in Google local space are creating a lot of confusion for the time being. For now, businesses and marketers need to give Google time to settle. No matter what the changes are, local business search continues to dominate the search engines and there are plenty of review sites for finding out about a particular business in your area.
There is a interesting thing of note that marketers will now pay attention to (or at least they should)--Google+Local pages of businesses now pop up in search results for local searches. We already know about popularity of Google plus results in search engines. Google Plus is supposed to be collecting fresh content from everywhere, and hence gets preference over other search results. This means now Google Local plus results will be in top results for all the local queries. This is a great for 2 reasons:
1) Google+ Local page is like a new website for all businesses.
2) The search result can now be used to displace any bad review site on the search results page.
It is not necessary that it will displace your bad reviews listing from search results, but there is a good chance that it will. So how can business owners and word of mouth marketers take advantage of it? By encouraging customers to be part of the circles on local pages, we can increase relevant content on plus page and use it to our advantage. More the content and more engagement will almost guarantee plus page to show up in search results.
There is a interesting thing of note that marketers will now pay attention to (or at least they should)--Google+Local pages of businesses now pop up in search results for local searches. We already know about popularity of Google plus results in search engines. Google Plus is supposed to be collecting fresh content from everywhere, and hence gets preference over other search results. This means now Google Local plus results will be in top results for all the local queries. This is a great for 2 reasons:
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| Google plus local pages on search results |
1) Google+ Local page is like a new website for all businesses.
2) The search result can now be used to displace any bad review site on the search results page.
It is not necessary that it will displace your bad reviews listing from search results, but there is a good chance that it will. So how can business owners and word of mouth marketers take advantage of it? By encouraging customers to be part of the circles on local pages, we can increase relevant content on plus page and use it to our advantage. More the content and more engagement will almost guarantee plus page to show up in search results.
