Find Insurance Online

[Cross-posted from the Google Merchant Blog]

Every day we hear from business owners who think they need special skills to reach new customers online. Often they’re just overwhelmed by the seeming complexity of online marketing options. So they sit on the sidelines, eager to get in the game, but confused about where to start.

Sound familiar?

Google and Ink from Chase have teamed up this year to help small business owners get off the sidelines and into the game! As part of this commitment to helping small business owners, we jointly hosted the first Google-Ink from Chase ‘Grow Your Business Online’ event on March 15, 2011 at the JP Morgan Headquarters in New York City.

Over 200 Ink small business customers attended the program, living proof of how an incredibly diverse array of small business touch our lives every day - from chocolate shops to online gaming and private medical practices. The evening featured welcome comments from Richard Quigley, President of Ink from Chase, expert advice from AdWords evangelist Frederick Vallaeys on four ways for SMBs to market their business online and also included the Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s executive director, Daniel Gallant, talking about how online advertising helped their business grow.

One small business owner remarked that the tools and tips from Google experts on how to market small businesses online gave her “a new perspective of how to reach out to customers.” Another attendee found the Google Places page so compelling he went back to his business afterwards and “immediately verified my business’ Google Places page.”

[Cross-posted from the Hotpot Community Blog]

[Cross-posted from the Hotpot Community Blog]

[Cross-posted from the Hotpot Community Blog]

With this blog post, we’re concluding our three part series about the Google Places quality guidelines. Today, we’ll discuss how to choose the best fitting categories for your business listing as well as how to provide a useful description. In case you missed the first two blog posts, you can find here the first post about business titles and here the second part about business types.

Adding useful descriptions

As a business owner, we encourage you to add a specific description of your business in the “description” field. This gives potential clients more information to understand what your business is about and see if your business matches what they are seeking. You can also use this field to provide further guidance about the location of your business which might be useful in some cases where it is hard to find, e.g. if the entrance of your business is only accessible via the rear.

Keep the description clean and concise, so it is helpful to users and catches their attention. A series of repeated keywords or categories may turn off potential customers, but a crisp and catchy summary of the services you offer help users determine if your business is right for them.

Choosing relevant categories

If you provide appropriate and accurate categories, we can better match your business listing to relevant user searches. We recommend choosing specific categories that describe the core of your business well instead of broad ones. A good way to find representative categories for your business is asking yourself the question “What is my business?” Be sure to capture what your business is as opposed to what it offers or sells - in that sense, “bakery” would be a good category as opposed to “cakes” or “bread”.

Also, do not include location information in the categories field. If you would like to provide such additional information about your business, you can use the description field and, if appropriate, the service areas feature.

You will be asked to choose at least one category from our standard list - just start typing in the categories field to see what is available via the auto-suggestions.

We recommend always choosing the best matching and most specific category for your business - for any specific category, Google will be able to automatically determine the more generic category as well. That means, if you are a Mexican restaurant, you should go for ‘Mexican Restaurant’ and not ‘Restaurant’ - Google then automatically knows that if you are a Mexican restaurant, you are also a restaurant.

You can provide up to five categories for your business listing. After picking a standard category, you can add up to four customized categories. To add another category, just click on ‘Add another category’ and an additional field will be triggered. Put only one category per entry field. Entering more than one category into a category field is not compliant with our quality guidelines and could result in your listing being suspended and not appearing in Google Places. In case you find it difficult to find an appropriate standard category to start with, just pick a category that fits best and add more specific custom categories. If you are uncertain about categorizing your business, you can also ask for advice in the Google Places help forum and discuss with other business owners.

We hope that this information helps you add a concise description and accurate categories to your business listing in Google Places. This gives potential clients more information to determine if your business matches what they are seeking. For further questions you can visit our Google Places help forum.

Posted by Sabine Borsay, Consumer Operations

Back in October we announced Google Boost, a new advertising solution to help local businesses connect with potential customers in their area. Today we are excited to announce that Boost ads can appear on Google Search results pages on Android and iPhone devices.

Consumers increasingly use mobile devices to search for products and services, and Boost will give advertisers the opportunity to reach these customers exactly when they are looking for local businesses on their phones. This feature will automatically take effect for current and future Boost advertisers.

In case you aren’t familiar with Boost, it’s Google's new advertising product that helps business owners quickly create an online advertising campaign that targets local customers. Using information from the business’s free Google Places listing, Boost automatically suggests and creates text ads that appear on Google Search and Google Maps results pages.

Google Boost is now available in all U.S. cities to select business types. To find out if your business is eligible, sign in to your Places account (or create a free one if you haven’t yet) and visit the Dashboard. If Boost is not currently available to your business, fill out this short form and we’ll notify you when it is.

Posted by Kiley McEvoy, Product Manager

Last month we launched an improvement that makes more than 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. Since the launch, we’ve featured posts from product teams across Google to showcase how you can benefit from the new services.


Our colleagues working on Google Reader, Google Alerts, Google News, and Google Finance described how their products give you new ways to discover content on the web. The Blogger and YouTube teams shared how their services can be used to connect with your customers and communicate information about your products and brand. We also featured posts from the Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, Google Custom Search, and Google Translator Toolkit teams to highligh tools that help your company build and optimize your web property. Posts from Google AdWords and Google Places showed how you can make it easier for potential customers to discover your business when they are searching online, and a post from Google Checkout described how you can let visitors purchase products from your site once they arrive. And if your business isn’t built around an online transaction model, the Google AdSense and DoubleClick for Publishers teams outlined tools that you can use to efficiently monetize traffic to your website. We also featured posts on Picasa Web Albums and Google SketchUp & 3D Warehouse that highlighted use cases for sharing and editing photos and 3D images at your organization. Finally, posts from Google Voice and Google Chrome Sync featured products that leverage the power of the web to allow you to work seamlessly across multiple devices, so you’re not tied to your desk phone or desktop PC to be productive.

This series has highlighted a few ways that you can use these additional Google applications, and we’re confident that you will discover many new and interesting use cases that fit your business. You can explore even more exciting Google services now available with your Google Apps account at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

All of these new services can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). Your domain administrator can grant different groups of users access to different sets of applications, so your company can get up and running today with more than 60 productivity-boosting applications matched to those users that will benefit from them most.


Posted by Jeremiah Dillon, Google Apps team

Note: Some products may not be available in all areas.

[Cross-posted from the Hotpot Community blog]

Many of you have asked how you can help us keep the information about a place up to date. As a local expert, you can tell us about outdated information, or even change it yourself on the Place page.

Edit details on an unverified listing

There are two ways to fix business information on Google Maps. For unverified listings, you can click the Edit Details or Edit this place links on the Place page to correct the address, homepage, location, phone number, or business categories of the place. Once you’ve made an edit, we’ll verify that it’s correct and make the change on Google Maps.


Add a place

Finally, you can also use the Report a Problem link below Maps search results to add a new place. If you search for the business on Google Maps and can’t find it, click Report a Problem at the bottom of the search results. From there, choose A place is missing from Google Maps and follow the steps to add a new place to Maps. Once the place is added, you can easily rate it on the Place page.

The place editing features are not currently available in all countries. Don’t worry, we’re working hard to make this available in more places. In the meantime, if you don’t see the Report a Problem tool in your Google Maps viewport, we encourage you to get in touch

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Places
You already know that Google Apps is a great way to run your business and ensure that your employees can collaborate and work effectively. But are you also taking advantage of Google’s other online tools that can help your company build a strong external presence and customer base? Our recent infrastructure upgrade has made doing so much easier: now you can access Google Places with your existing Google Apps account.

Google Places offers business owners a free and easy way to make sure that potential customers can find their business when searching online at Google.com and in Google Maps, both from desktops and mobile devices. With your free Google Places account, you can:

• Be found: Verify your business’s information to make sure people can find you on Google.


• Stand out: Engage customers with photos, coupons, custom posts, and more on your Place page.


• Get insight: Use feedback about your listing to make smarter business decisions.

Claiming your business listing with Google Places is easy and verification methods are in place to make sure data is accurate. Once you’ve claimed your listing, you can update it through Google Places at any time using your Google Apps account by signing in at google.com/places. In addition to creating your listing, you can also enhance it by highlighting special offers with coupons, sharing photos and videos of your location or products, marking your service areas, and responding to reviews from customers.

Once your business listing is up and running, you can use the Places dashboard to gain valuable insights about your listing’s performance. For example, you can view top search terms for your business, which can help you set up a more targeted AdWords campaign. Or, you can view an interactive map showing the origin of customers who request driving directions to your current location, which could help you decide where to open up a new location.

Learn more and get started
Google Places can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Places at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Brianna Brekke, Google Places team

Note: Google Places may not be available in all areas

[Cross-posted from the LatLong Blog]

We recently announced that our new search advertising program, Google Boost, is available to local businesses in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago. Based on the great feedback and results from early participants, the beta is expanding to additional U.S. cities. Starting today, select local business owners can sign in to their Google Places account and try Boost if they’re located in San Jose, Seattle, Wichita, Charlottesville (VA), Atlanta, Chapel Hill, Orlando, Washington D.C., Boston, Cross Plains (TX) and Portland (ME). We’ve also made Boost available for all local businesses in Illinois.

For those of you who are not yet familiar with Boost, it’s a quick and easy way for local businesses to market themselves and connect with potential customers in their area. Based on the information you’ve already provided on the Place page for your business, we provide a suggested ad description, a web or Place page, your business categories and a monthly budget. Once you’ve confirmed these four simple elements, our system automatically creates an ad campaign. Your ad may start appearing almost immediately when people in your area search online for products and services related to your offering. And what’s more, you’ll only pay when a potential customer actually clicks on your ad. To be clear, the ranking of Boost ads in the “Ads” section of the Google.com and Google Maps search results pages are based on relevance and quality factors; and Boost ads do not impact the ranking of your free, organic business listings.

Over the next week, eligible businesses in the cities mentioned above will see an invitation to try Boost when they sign in to their Google Places account dashboard. Business owners located outside of these areas can fill out this form to be notified when Boost expands further to their regions.

Posted by Kiley McEvoy, Product Manager

New York City’s Spanierman Gallery encounters challenges typical of businesses that rely on foot traffic and long-term relationships with clients.

For more than half a century, Spanierman Gallery has dealt in some of the finest works of American art, including works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Winslow Homer and James A.M. Whistler. But because of the abundance of nearby galleries, connecting with a small, discriminating clientele requires continual effort. A strong online presence that helps drive foot traffic to the gallery is essential in today’s art market.

Challenge

Spanierman embraced the Internet early, launching a website in the mid-1990s. For several years, this helped give the gallery an edge, enabling potential clients to easily find it when they searched for artists who had works on display there. That changed as more competitors ventured online.

“As more people embrace the web, we’ve had to step up our game,” says Marketing Director David Spanierman.

For a business that relies on patrons with discretionary income, the sluggish economy has only heightened the need for more visibility. Spanierman knew he needed to do more.

Action

After using Google Places to manage his free business listing on Google.com and Google Maps for two years, Spanierman decided to try Google Tags in July 2010. Adding a distinct yellow marker to his business listing, which calls attention to his gallery amongst a list of similar businesses, made immediate sense. He uses the photo tag to emphasize to potential customers that they can view artwork from the current exhibitions.

“Our goal has always been to help users find what they want,” he says. “The Google Tag helps get our information out to potential customers.”

Results

Since the gallery began using Google Tags, interactions with its business listing have increased nearly 10 percent.

“When you compare the $25 per month for a tag with the amount of money you could spend on other forms of marketing, I think it’s very reasonable,” Spanierman says. “Having that additional avenue enhances the chances that Internet searchers will come and visit you.”

Spanierman sees Google Tags as a wise addition to his marketing mix not only because of its affordability, but also because it enables him to quickly and easily edit his tag to match the gallery’s changing exhibitions.

“When it comes to performance, price and flexibility, Google Tags is the winner,” he says.

Make your listing stand out with Google Tags, try it out now www.google.com/help/tags.

Posted by Bernadette Cay, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Chris O’Neill, Managing Director for Google Canada, recently spoke at the 10th annual Small Business Forum organized by Enterprise Toronto. In his address, he highlighted a few essential steps all small businesses and entrepreneurs should be pursuing to grow their business and reach new customers.

So before you get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the holidays, take the opportunity to make sure you’re using every online tool available to you that can help you make the most of this shopping season. There’s no time like the present to engage in these five things:

• Establish an Online Presence: 20 percent of searches on Google are related to location, so it’s important for local businesses to have a presences on the web. A website does not need to be complex to serve its purpose. Creating a user-friendly, well-structured website will also help search engines like Google find and index it easily. Google Webmaster Tools provides a free and easy way to make your website more Google-friendly.

• Use Free Marketing to Reach Customers: People search Google.com and Google Maps to find local business, so make sure your customers know where you are and what you’re all about by claiming your free Google Places business listing. In addition to sharing your location, phone number and business hours, use Google Places to engage with customers by providing photos, video, coupons, public responses and more. You can also take advantage of free marketing opportunities by posting content to social networking sites, such as YouTube.

• Know Your Customers: To understand why some visitors aren’t converting, get website analytics data and learn what potential customers are doing on your site. Google Analytics is one of these analytics products, and it’s a free and powerful tool that can help you answer questions about the effectiveness of your content, how engaged your users are with your site, where they abandon your shopping cart and much more. With the right data in your hands, you can make smarter website design decisions and also make sure that the money you spend on advertising is actually delivering the results you want.

• Advertise Online: Online advertising is targeted, measurable and flexible. Products such as Google AdWords allow business owners like you to connect with your target audience at the exact moment they search for your products or services online. With AdWords, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad is taken directly to your website. You also get actionable analysis and performance information, so you know how to refine your ad copy or the keywords that trigger your ad to appear on the search results page. Plus, any business can be up and running in 15 minutes.
• To find out about all our advertising tools and products, visit our Google for Advertisers site for Canadian businesses.

• Embrace the Cloud: Web-based applications, such as Google Apps, are helping to streamline productivity and ensure that your business is running efficiently. Your employees can collaborate on documents in real-time and access them from anywhere, whether they’re on the road or at the office. This suite of online products also helps businesses spend less time and money managing email and other IT services, giving them the ability to focus more on what they do best: creating quality products and services, and sharing them with customers. Best of all, you can get started with Google Apps for free!

Posted by Andrew Swartz, Small Business Blog team

[Cross-posted from the LatLong Blog]

People often use the Internet to look for businesses in their nearby vicinity. For example, a mother in Karachi might be trying to find a dentist for her teenager, or a young professional in Colombo may find himself in need of a computer repair shop. People also go online to research places they might visit when traveling, such as a dive shop in Palau, a backpacker hostel in Kathmandu, or a cooking class in Phnom Penh.

Because of this increasing trend in which people search online to find local establishments, business owners all over the world are realizing how simple and easy it is to reach their target customers through free business listings on Google.com and Google Maps. We’ve been gradually expanding access to our online database of local information, called Google Places, and it has recently become available to businesses and locations in 30 additional countries in Asia.

If you haven't already claimed your free listing in Google Places, doing so can help ensure that customers see accurate information about your business, and increase your likelihood of being found from desktop and mobile devices - even if you don’t have a website. With your free Google Places account, you can:

• Be found: Verify your information to make sure people can find you on Google
• Stand out: Engage customers with photos, coupons, custom posts on your Place page and more
• Get insights: Use info about your listing to make smarter business decisions

Any business located in a region where Google Places is available (now more than 100 countries) can sign in to Google Places at any time to claim or update their listing. And for those of you specifically located in South Asia (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives), Southeast Asia (Macau, Cambodia, Myanmar, Brunei, Laos), Western Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan), North Asia (Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Mongolia), and the Pacific (Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Guam, Papua New Guinea, Northern Mariana Islands, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa and Palau), we warmly welcome you and invite you to check it out!

Posted by Andrew McGlinchey, Product Manager

[Cross-posted from the LatLong Blog]

As a local business owner in today’s day and age, you know that it’s important to have an online presence because that’s where your customers are. In fact, research shows that 97% of people conduct research online before buying locally. Hopefully you’ve gone to Google Places to claim your free business listing that appears on Google and Google Maps. That enables you to share accurate information about your business such as your hours of operation, photos and videos - and now you can do even more.

Today, we’re announcing the availability of a new online advertising solution to help local businesses connect with potential customers in their area. Boost enables business owners to easily create online search ads from directly within their Google Places account. No ongoing management is needed after the initial set up, and this beta is currently available to select local businesses in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago.

Boost ads are eligible to appear in the “Sponsored Links” section of Google.com and Google Maps search result pages. For example, if you’re a restaurant owner in San Francisco who has signed up for Boost, your ad may show up when someone does a related search like the one below, indicating a cuisine and location that matches yours. Beyond the basics like your company name, address, phone number and website, your ad may also include the number of reviews you’ve received, an average star rating and a link to your Place page to help potential customers find additional useful information about your business. When a map appears alongside the results, a blue pin will help folks quickly find your location on the map. Businesses using Google Tags will also see their yellow tag appear in the ad.


To create your ad, all that is required is a short business description, a web or Place page, your business categories and a monthly budget. From there, our system automatically sets up your ad campaign - figuring out the relevant keywords that will trigger your ad to appear on Google and Google Maps, and how to get the most out of the budget you allotted. You’ll only pay when a potential customer actually clicks on your ad, and you can also view basic ad performance data from your Google Places dashboard.

Here is an example of the simple sign up page within Google Places, which takes just a few minutes to complete. To make the process even easier, the “description” and “categories” fields may be pre-populated with suggestions based on the information you provided on the Place page for your business.


We hope Boost provides busy local business owners with a quick and easy way to share information about themselves with the people who look for them online. Placement in the “Sponsored Links” section of the page will, as always, depend on factors such as your ad’s relevance and quality. Boost does not affect the ranking of the free, organic business listings in any way.

As we do with all beta features, we’ll carefully review the data and effectiveness of this trial and may make changes before making decisions about any future expansion. In the meantime, business owners can sign in or claim their listing in Google Places, and select businesses in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago will see an invitation to try Boost in the account dashboard. Interested businesses outside these areas can sign up to receive notification when Boost comes to their area by filling out this form.

Posted by Kiley McEvoy, Product Manager

[Cross-posted from the LatLong Blog]

Users search on Google.com and Google Maps because they’re looking for relevant, high-quality content that answers a question or fulfills a need. This useful information often appears in the form of business listings on the search results page, and these free listings are an important way for local business owners to connect with potential customers. We want to help you make the most of your business listing, so this is the first post in three-part blog series about how to set up a clear and effective business listing via Google Places. This first installment delves into the specific topic of business listing titles — also known as your company or organization name — and highlights some of the common issues business owners encounter when creating a listing.

Accurately list your basic business information

If you already have a business listing and want to tweak it, or if you haven’t yet claimed your business listing, sign in or visit Google Places here. The “Company/Organization” field will also serve as your business listing title, so you’ll want to enter in the exact name of your business. For example, for a business called “Fly Fishing Frankie’s Ltd.” the following would be its correct business and contact details:

Company/Organization: Fly Fishing Frankie’s Ltd.
Street Address: 88 Fish Road
City/Town and Postal Code: Fishtown, CA 90210
Main Phone: (555) 555-5555
Website: www.example_for_flyfishingfrankies.com

A clean, easy-to-read title

The title of your business listing should reflect the exact name of your company or organization as it’s used in the real world. While it’s acceptable to leave off company extensions like Ltd, GmbH or Inc, since those identifiers aren’t helpful to users, be sure to avoid adding any descriptions that aren’t part of the official business name or making any modifications to the official name. Your business listing title must match the business name you use in the real world (e.g. on signage, letterheads or business cards) in order to comply with our Google Places quality guidelines. Listings that are in violation of these guidelines may be suspended and won’t appear in Google search results.

Here are some additional reminders about business titles based on some of the offending listings we see and have to suspend. We also let you know how and where to include specific information you want to provide potential customers, while complying with our quality guidelines.

• Descriptors and keywords — The following are common examples of modified business titles. These are instances in which either descriptive phrases are used in lieu of the correct business name, or additional keywords and phrases have been added to the business name. These examples are not in accordance with our quality guidelines:
• [Example title violation] Professional fishing travels
  
• [Example title violation] Fly Fishing Frankie’s Ltd. - fishing, cutter travels, eating crabs
  
• [Example title violation] Fly Fishing Frankie’s Ltd. entertaining cutter travels
Note: While the “Company/Organization” field may only contain the name of your business, if you’d like to provide more information about your business’s classification or industry, you can do this by selecting the appropriate categories. You can also provide a more detailed description of your business - such as what you do and the the services you provide - in the “Description” field or on your company website.

• Location names — Unless the official name of your business includes the name of your city, town or other geographic indicator, adding superfluous location terms to the business title violates our guidelines:
• [Example title violation] Fly Fishing Frankie’s Ltd. Fishtown
  
• [Example title violation] Fly Fishing Frankie’s Ltd. in Market Place Shopping Mall
Note: To indicate the location of your business, please use the appropriate fields marked “Street Address,” “City/Town” and “Postal Code.” Adding location-specific information in the title of your listing is not necessary since our system automatically uses your address details to determine the search queries for which your listings would be geographically relevant. If you’re concerned that your business is difficult to find or part of a shopping mall or complex, you can provide users with further guidance about where to find you by adding that information in the “Description” field.

• Phone numbers and websites — Phone numbers and website URLs should not appear in your business title. These details should only be entered into their respective fields in your Google Places listing. The following examples of titles violate our quality guidelines:
• [Example title violation] Fly Fishing Frankie’s Ltd. (555) 555-5555
  
• [Example title violation] Fly Fishing Frankie’s Ltd. www.example_for_fishingfreddys.com

• Capitalization and Punctuation — Some users may be tempted to use special characters or excessive capitalization in the business title to draw attention to their listing. However, this practice is not compliant with our quality guidelines:
• [Example title violation] FLY FISHING FRANKIE’S LTD.
  
• [Example title violation] **!!**Fly Fishing Frankie’s Ltd.**!!**
Note: In order to ensure that the Google Places business listing results are useful and easy to read, please refrain from using visual gimmicks. Business titles, as well as addresses, should always use standard capitalization and punctuation.

The above examples may not cover all cases of business title violations, but we hope we were able to highlight some of the common mistakes we’ve seen. By avoiding these errors when setting up your business listing title, as well as reading through the rest of our Google Places quality guidelines, you should be in good shape to create an optimal and compliant listing.

If you realize that your existing listing is not compliant with our quality guidelines, we encourage you to sign in to your Google Places account to make the required changes and avoid getting temporarily suspended for violating the guidelines.

We hope you find this information helpful, and if you have further questions about business listing titles, visit our Google Places help forum.

Posted by Claudia Pfalzer, Local Search Quality

As the holidays approach, we’ve put together five quick and easy ways Google Places can help your business reach customers.

But first things first: claim the Place page for your business on www.google.com/places. This unlocks your ability to take advantage of all of these useful ideas:

• Create a coupon highlighting holiday specials: Are you offering a package of products or services to your customers this holiday season? Let people know by creating a coupon for your special on your Place page. From your Places dashboard, click on the “Coupons” tab and then “Add a new Coupon.” Fill out a few details and watch your coupon go live! You can also give the coupon an expiration date, so it only runs for a set time period. Coupons are also a great way to track how many customers found you through Google Places. For more details on creating a coupon, check out our Help Center.

• Link to a menu of holiday offers and prices: Manage the holiday rush by providing a link to your menu of products and services, or even your reservation page, on your Place page. To add your link, sign in to your Places dashboard, go to your listing and click "Edit." Scroll down to "Additional Details," add a column by typing in the label “Menu,” and then enter the URL of where you host your menu! If your website also handles reservations, then you can link to “Reservations” too. Check out this example and sign in now to add your links.

• Make your business listing stand out with Google Tags: Show customers your holiday offer or menu when they search on Google and Google Maps. Tags are yellow markers that allow business owners to highlight important or unique aspects of their business, such as that coupon you’ve just created, a video, photos and more. To create a tag, go to your Places dashboard and click on “Add a tag.” Simply choose your tag type and let it run. To get you started, we’re giving business owners 30 days free!

• Update your holiday business hours: Are you extending your operating hours on some days to accommodate the holidays? Update the business hours listed on your Place page for the days you’ll be open early or late. This helps local customers, especially last-minute shoppers, who may be interested in visiting your store take advantage of your extended hours.

• Write a post to engage with your customers: Whether you’ll be closed for a certain holiday or open on days when most businesses aren’t, a post is the perfect way to let your customers know. You can also use it to tell people about your latest shipment holiday inventory. Posts are short custom messages of up to 160 characters and appear on your Place page. For more details on writing a post, check out our Help Center. You can also highlight your post with a Google Tag.

Posted by Bernadette Cay, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Hope you had a great summer and are ready to jump into fall! Here are a few tips to further engage with your customers, and we've also shared the experience of Dr. Jeffrey Prager, whose use of Google Places to connect with potential clients for his dental practice sheds light on how other businesses and professional services can achieve similar success.


Post to your Place page

Connect with your customers through Place page posts. These 160-character posts allow you to share a short update or special with users. Check out some examples and sign in now to write a quick post!


Make sure your free listing has everything it needs

You can update your business hours, add photos and make many other edits through your Google Places account. Some of the information you can update includes:

• Photos and videos
• Business hours
• Description
• Address and service areas
• Much more

Use the Report a Problem tool in other cases, such as:

• Duplicate listings
• Inaccurate information, including personal contact information or information about another business, that appears on your Place page

See more examples of updates and sign in now to edit your page.


Success Story

Through Google Places, Dr. Jeffrey Prager's Bellinghamsmiles.com Dental Care has a continual influx of new customers, reduced marketing costs, and a high ROI.

As his practice continues to evolve, he updates his Place page to reflect any new services he offers. He might add a new video or update his business description. The listing also helps him market his business niche - laser procedures to help patients avoid painful gum surgery. Read more.

You can update your Places account at any time by signing in at http://google.com/places with your email address and password.

Posted by Bernadette Cay, Associate Product Marketing Manager