Most Common Local SEO Myths

I regularly hear things in the Local SEO world that many people believe, but which are completely false. I wanted to put some of these myths to rest by listing out the top Local SEO myths that I run into most frequently.

Deleting your listing in Google My Business actually removes the listing from Google.

Business owners will often question how they can get rid of duplicate listings on Google. One of the more common things people try is claiming the duplicate and then deleting it from the Google My Business Dashboard. When you go to delete a listing, you receive a scary message asking if you're sure you want to do this.

Still exists on Google Maps and will often still rank, provided you didn’t clear out all the categories/details before you deleted it. The only time you’d really want to delete a listing via GMB is if you no longer want to manage the listing.

Google confirms this in their help center article:

When you delete a local page, the corresponding listing will be unverified and you will no longer be able to manage it. Google may still retain business information from the page and may continue to show information about the business on Maps, Search, and other Google properties, including marking the business as permanently closed, moved, or open, depending on the information that’s known about the business.

Failure to claim your page means your business won’t rank anywhere.

I’m sure most of you have received those annoying phone calls that say: “Your business is not currently verified and will vanish on Google unless you claim it now!”. First of all, consider the authority of the people who are calling you. I can say with certainty they are not experts in this industry, or they wouldn’t resort to robo-calling to make sales.

The Moz Local Search Ranking Factors does list verifying your listing as #13 for making an impact on ranking in the 3-pack, but this is often because business owners add more data to the listing when they verify it. If they left the listing exactly how it was before verifying, the verification “status” would not likely impact the ranking much at all. We often see unverified pages outranking verified ones in really competitive markets.

"Professional/Practitioner" listings on Google are considered duplicates and can be removed.

Google often creates listings for the actual public-facing professionals in an office (lawyers, doctors, dentists, realtors, etc), and the owner of the practice usually wants them to disappear. Google will get rid of the listing for the professional in two different cases:

• The professional is not public-facing. Support staff, like hygienists or paralegals for example, don’t qualify for a listing and Google will remove them if they exist.
• The business only has one public-facing individual. For example, if you have a law firm with only one lawyer, Google considers this to be a “Solo Practitioner” and will merge the listing for the professional with the listing for the office. Their guidelines state to “create a single page, named using the following format: [brand/company]: [practitioner name].”

In the case that the professional has left your office, you can have the listing marked as moved if the professional has retired or is no longer working in the industry. This will cause it to vanish from the search results, but it will still exist in Google’s back-end. If the professional has moved to a different company, you should have them claim the listing and update the address/phone number to list their new contact information.

Posting on G+ helps improve your ranking.

No, posting on G+ will not cause your ranking to skyrocket, despite what the Google My Business phone support team told you.

Phil Rozek explains this best: “It’s nearly impossible for people to see your Google+ posts unless they search for your business by name. Google doesn’t include a link to your 'Plus' page in the local pack. Google doesn’t even call it a 'Plus' page anymore. Do you still believe being active on Google+ is a local ranking factor?”

"Maps SEO" is something that can be effectively worked on separately from "Organic SEO."

I often get small business owners calling me saying something along the lines of this: "Hey, Joy. I have an SEO company and they’re doing an awesome job with my site organically, but I don’t show up anywhere in the local pack. Can I hire you to do Google Maps optimization and have them do Organic SEO?"

My answer is, generally, no. “Maps Optimization” is not a thing that can be separated from organic. At Local U in Williamsburg, Mike Ramsey shared that 75% of ranking local listings also rank organically on the first page. The two are directly connected — a change that you make to your site can have a huge influence on where you rank locally.

If you're a local business, it's in your better interests to have an SEO company that understands Google Maps and how the 3-pack works. At the company I work for, we've always made it a goal to get the business ranked both organically and locally, since it’s almost impossible to get in the 3-pack without a strong organic ranking and a website with strong local signals.

Google employees are the highest authority on which ranking signals you should pay attention to.

Google employees are great; I love reading what they come out with and the insight they provide. However, as David Mihm pointed out at Local U, those employees have absolutely no incentive to divulge any top-secret tips for getting your website to rank well. Here are some recent examples of advice given from Google employees that should be ignored:

• Duplicate listings will fix themselves over time.
• Posting on Google+ will help your ranking (advice given from phone support reps).
• If you want to rank well in the 3-pack, just alter your business description.

Instead of trusting this advice, I always suggest that people make sure what they're doing matches up with what the pros are saying in big surveys and case studies.

“More links are better than more content”

In the past, building as many links as possible without analyzing the linking domain was how SEO typically worked. By doing this, your website was sure to rank higher. Building links is still a very important part of ranking factors. According to Searchmetrics, it is still top 5 most important rankings factors, but you must build links in a much different manner than you used to.

This is something that often comes along with the question, “Which should I invest in, link building or content generation?” Links are an important part of your website’s authority (even with the changing link landscape). However, if you have budget to invest in your website, I would say, “Hire someone to write for you.”

Too often, when businesses hire someone to do link building, they focus on the quantity of links rather than their quality -- but linking is not a numbers game anymore (far from it, actually). You should focus on having relevant and diverse sources that link to relevant pages.

Setting a huge service area means you’ll rank in all kinds of additional towns.

Google allows service-area businesses to set a radius around their business address to demonstrate how far they're willing to travel to the customer. People often set this radius really large because they believe it will help them rank in more towns. It doesn’t. You will still most likely only rank in the town you're using for your business address.

When your business relocates, you want to mark the listing for the old location as closed.

The Google My Business & Google MapMaker rules don’t agree on this one. Anyone on the Google MapMaker side would tell a business to mark a listing as "closed" when they move. This will cause a business listing to have a big, ugly, red "permanently closed" label when anyone searches your business name.

If your listing is verified through Google My Business, all you need to do is edit the address inside your dashboard when you move. If there's an unverified duplicate listing that exists at your old address, you want to make sure you get it marked as "Moved."

Google displays whatever is listed in your GMB dashboard.

Google gives business owners the ability to edit information on their listing by verifying it via Google My Business. However, whatever data the owner inputs is just one of many sources that Google will get information from. Google updates verified listings all the time by scraping data from the business website, inputs from edits made on Google Maps/MapMaker, and third-party data sources. A recent case I’ve seen is one where Google repeatedly updated an owner-verified listing with incorrect business hours due to not being able to properly read the business hours listed on their website.

“Keyword optimization is THE key to Local SEO”

Until search engines are able to enter our brains and read our thoughts, we’ll always need to use written language in order to make search queries. We need to use keywords to communicate. It used to be important that you write your content with the keyword incorporated exact match, but now Google uses latent semantic indexing (LSI), which was conceived around February of 2004 and became more and more prominent within search through every update.

With this type of indexing, the contents of a webpage are crawled by the search engine and the most common words or phrases are combined and identified as the keywords of that page. LSI also looks for synonyms that related to your target keywords. Today, it’s important to optimize your page for the user experience; this means that you do not have to place your keywords word-for-word in the content. Write the content for the user. By using synonyms and related terms, the search engines will still understand what your goal is.

That being said, it’s important to realize that Google is no longer trying to match the keywords you type into its search engine to the keywords of a web page. Instead, it’s trying to understand the intent behind the keywords you type so it can match that intent to relevant, high-quality content. The bottom line: search engines of the future aren’t going to punish folks for under using keywords or failing to have an expertly crafted, keywordoptimized page title ... but they will continue to punish folks for overusing keywords.

“Local SEO doesn’t matter anymore”

This myth couldn’t be further from the truth. If you’re a local business, optimizing for local search won’t only help you get found, but it will help you get found by people who are nearby and more likely to buy from you.

If you are a local business, having a website isn’t enough to rank well in Google’s local search listings. If you want to rank well you need to unlock, verify, and optimize a Google+ Business Page (referred to more recently as a Google My Business Page). If you want to maximize your search traffic from Google, treat your Google Business Page as you would your website, and optimize accordingly.

Looking forward, Google will continue to take steps to bubble the best local content to the surface of search results. Need some proof? In July of 2014, Google took a major step in this direction with the release of its new Pigeon algorithm. The algorithm treats local search rankings more like traditional search rankings, taking hundreds of ranking signals into account. Pigeon also improved the way Google evaluates distance when determining rankings.

The bottom line: local SEO matters, probably more so now than ever before.

Google’s Five Keys To Success

This week, Google released its five “dynamics” that make for a brilliant and successful team. I wonder if they’ll surprise you.

1. Psychological Safety – Google’s Five Keys To Success

This, in Google’s definition, is the notion that taking risks and being vulnerable in front of others is encouraged rather than frowned upon. Humans aren’t very good at being forgiving, especially in atmospheres that are essentially competitive (you’ve seen The Hunger Games surely). It’s an art to allow them to be open and even themselves as they pursue a collective goal. Some friends at Google tell me that this works in some groups, but not others. There’s still a superiority complex that pervades certain parts of the company. Still, the goal is surely noble. Now, if only we could have the psychological safety that Google wasn’t spying on us 24 hours a day.

2. Dependability – Google’s Five Keys To Success

This one seems obvious. Yet some point especially to millennials as being poor examples of this trait. However, the essence of modern corporate life is that it’s corporations themselves that aren’t dependable. When you know that you could be fired at any moment in some random “rationalization,” there isn’t a perfect balance in the relationship between you and your employer. When you know that your company dedicates itself to quarterly results, you want to hang-and-quarter the system. For Google, however, the important thing is for employees to “get things done on time and meet Google’s high bar of excellence.” The result of this, sometimes, seems to be that Google releases products too soon without sufficient consideration for how real humans might receive them. This, so Google insiders tell me, is that too often the company is trying to solve problems that appeal to its own engineers rather than the world outside.

3. Structure and Clarity. – Google’s Five Keys To Success

You hear this one at every corporation. Everyone should know their roles, understand their goals and sacrifice their souls. That’s the ideal. The practical truth is that this doesn’t happen even half as often as it should. Short-term issues quickly dominate over long-term strategies. Real world events overtake good intentions. And suddenly you’re left fighting fires such as anti-trust lawsuits in Europe, rather than striving to ensure that humans are prevented from driving ever again.

4. Meaning – Google’s Five Keys To Success

This one’s tantalizing. There’s clear evidence that employees are increasingly seeking meaning in their work lives. That craving for meaning won’t necessarily correspond with salary. Google, though, says its most successful employees want their work to matter. To them personally, you understand. If you spend so many hours of your day — and, increasingly, your evening and even night — working on some project or other, you want to find soulful satisfaction in that. But in a corporate world that is becoming increasingly intrusive (in every sense), deciding what means something to you isn’t always easy and isn’t always personal for very long.

5. Impact – Google’s Five Keys To Success

It isn’t just about believing your work matters. It’s about believing that it creates change. The most motivated and successful team members need to see real-world effects. This is very human. You want to believe that whatever you do will have an effect out there, not just in your corporate cocoon. For Google, teams that are working on projects where each member believes they’re “making the world a better place” are likely to be more successful. And then there are the folks who work on Google+.

Original Source: These Are Google’s 5 Keys To Becoming A Success

How to Transfer Ownership of a Single Google Business Page

With the recent update to ownership settings of Google Business Pages the process of transferring ownership of a business page has changed slightly. Previously you had to add a user as a manager of a business, then wait 24 hours before being able to transfer the ownership of the page, the new update allows you to add multiple owners or transfer primary ownership immediately.

Follow the steps to transfer the ownership of a Google business page to a new owner as well as transferring ownership to an existing manager.

How to Transfer Ownership of a Single Google Business Page

1. Log into your account dashboard: https://business.google.com/manage/. Select the location you wish the manage – Manage Location. In the drop down hamburger menu (Top Right) select Manage Users.

2. A Manage Permissions pop up will appear detailing the current permissions. It will list the current Primary Owner and any managers, communication managers assigned to the page. Select the Add Users icon.

3. A new pop up will appear asking you to Add New Users. Add the email address of the user to whom you wish to transfer ownership to. The email address you add needs to be a registered Google user, it can either be a gmail account or their own email, but this needs to be activated as an email account with Google.

4. Assign the new user Owner permission. Then click Invite.

5. The Manage Permissions page will now show the new user as Invited and the assigned role.

6. The invited owner will now be sent an email inviting them to become an owner of the Google Business Page. The user must accept the invitation before permission is activated.

7. Once the invite has been accepted by user, you are now able to switch the permission assigned as Owner to Primary Owner.

The new primary owner can now remove the previous owner and the transfer of ownership is complete.

Transfer Ownership of a Google Business Page to Existing Manager

Transferring ownership to an existing manager follows the same path with the exception of the invitation.

1. Log into your account dashboard: https://business.google.com/manage/. In the drop down hamburger menu (Top Right) select Manage Users.

2. A Manage Permissions pop up will appear detailing the current permissions. It will list the current Primary Owner and any managers, communication managers assigned to the page.

3. Change the permission from Manager to Primary Owner.

4. Confirm you wish to assign Primary Ownership to user.

Once confirmed the previous manager is now the Primary Owner of the business page.

Originally Posted on http://onlineownership.com/

4 Things Small Businesses Should Know in A Mobile-First World

At the Google Performance Summit, we announced several new trends and product innovations that highlight mobile opportunities for advertisers. Here are the main takeaways for small businesses looking to make the most of the new mobile world:

1. Every year, there are trillions of searches on Google and over half of those searches happen on mobile.

More searches happen on mobile than on desktop computers – which is no surprise when we think about our own behavior as consumers. Throughout the day, whenever we want to buy, learn or go, we turn to our phones first.

2. Mobile is local. Nearly one third of all mobile searches are related to location, and that number is growing.

Whether they’re researching pizza delivery on Friday night or trying to find an orthodontist near their pre-teen’s middle school, consumers are using mobile to direct their actions in the local world. Thirty-two percent of consumers say that location-based search ads have led them to visit a store or make a purchase. For small business serving customers in their area, mobile ads can offer a vital opportunity to connect with customers.

3. New local search ads help businesses bring customers right to their door.

As we announced at the Google Performance Summit, businesses using location extensions in AdWords can prominently display their business location when consumers search for things like “dentist” or “car repair shop near me” while on-the-go.

We’re also testing new local ad formats that make it easier for users to find businesses as they navigate on Google Maps. Consumers may start seeing experiments like promoted pins that allow businesses to strengthen their brand presence in maps.

4. AdWords is designed to help you succeed in a mobile-first world.

We also introduced innovations in both text and display ads to help AdWords work harder for you on smartphone screens. Look for these upgrades coming soon:

• New expanded text ads in AdWords provide extra ad space so you can showcase more information about your products and services before the click. The key changes include more prominent headlines and a longer description line in your text ad.
• Responsive ads for display will adapt to the diverse content, shapes and sizes of the more than two million publisher sites and apps on the Google Display Network. Just provide headlines, a description, an image, and a URL, and AdWords will create beautiful ads for you that looks good on every device and site.

To learn more about other exciting ads and analytics innovations announced at the Google Performance Summit, watch the livestream keynote here.

Posted by Soo Young Kim, Head of Marketing, Get Your Business Online

Get Better Insights With Google My Business

Search engines have become the most popular way for people to find info about local businesses – and millions of business owners rely on Google My Business to reach new customers on Google Search and Maps. In fact, the average well-maintained Google My Business listing gets five times more views than listings which haven’t been claimed by their owners.

Today we’re announcing some exciting changes to Google My Business, designed to let our users see where and how people are finding them on Google.

Where are people seeing your listing?

Now when you log into Google My Business, not only will you see the total number of views for your listing, you’ll also see a breakdown of how many are coming from Google Search vs. Maps.

How are people finding you?

Though some people search for you on Google by name, others search more generally for what you have to offer. (For example, “pizza restaurants in [your town].”) In fact, when researching a future purchase, 76% of people consider more than one business before making their final choice.3 Now you can see who visited your listing after searching for it directly, and who discovered your business while looking for a broader category.

To better serve our users, we’re focusing these new insights for local listings on Google Search and Maps, and removing Google+ statistics from the dashboard. With deeper insights on how people are finding your business on Google, you can make sure your efforts to maintain and promote your business are paying off. Keep your listing up-to-date by adding photos, responding to reviews, and updating your hours so that users find helpful, relevant information when they’re looking for you directly. And, if you want to reach more customers who are searching for your business category, consider promoting your listing with AdWords Express.

We hope these changes make your life a little simpler, and we’re excited to introduce even more insights into your customers' behavior soon. To learn more, check out our help center. Happy Tracking!

Originally Posted by Tom Pritchard, Product Manager Google My Business at smallbusiness.googleblog.com

Ways to Use Yelp to Improve Your Local Business

What is Yelp?

Yelp is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. It develops, hosts and markets Yelp.com and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about local businesses, as well as the online reservation service SeatMe and online food-delivery service Eat24. The company also trains small businesses in how to respond to reviews, hosts social events for reviewers, and provides data about businesses, including health inspection scores.

How do you get listed on Yelp?

Use the search function on the Yelp for Business Owners page to find your company.

• Search the Yelp for Business Owners page to find your business listing.
• Click the Claim this business button.
• Complete the form to claim your listing.
• Authenticate your listing using Yelp's phone verification process.

How do I put my business on Yelp?

Claim Your Listing

How do I claim my yelp page?

If your business is already listed, you can still claim it – just visit https://biz.yelp.com/claiming. Search for your business and once you've found it, click “Claim”. At this point, if you don't have an account, you'll be asked to create one. Verify by phone by clicking “Call me now”.

How do I link yelp to my Facebook page?

Putting All of Your Own Reviews on Facebook. Log in to your Yelp account, click your username in the upper right corner and click "Account Settings" in the drop-down menu below. This displays your general Yelp settings. Click the "Change Settings" link in the "External Services" section on the left side of the screen.

How do you make a review on Yelp?

To write a review you'll need to create a Yelp user account if you don't already have one. Once you're logged in, you can locate the business you're trying to review by using the search bar located at the top of any page on the website or from the search button on the app.

10 Ways to Use Yelp to Improve Your Local Business

1. Apple pulls its review data from Yelp. Anytime somebody accesses your business through Apple Maps or Siri, the review data or star pack comes directly from Yelp.

2. there's a correlation between user engagement and ranking on Yelp. If you're having trouble ranking, a lot of people think that you need to get more reviews and you'll climb in the ranks. While that's true, freshness is what matters, and Yelp looks at those metrics a lot more. So if somebody has more reviews than you and they've stagnated their review campaign, if you get more reviews during a certain time period, you'll actually increase your ranking, sometimes even passing the person who has more reviews than you. It's very common for this to happen.

3. One of the biggest complaints that I get from small businesses is that they have a hard time getting reviews to stick. That means that even though a review is left from an actual customer, Yelp will filter it out through its pretty strict spam filter. And if you're having trouble getting reviews, have users check-in whenever they enter your establishment. I have never seen a case where a user has checked in and left a review and Yelp filters out that.

4. You cannot actively solicit reviews from customers for Yelp. Now what you can do is ask users to check in. Within the Yelp application, if somebody checks in, Yelp will actually remind them at a later point in time to leave a review. In a sense, asking for a check-in is kind of asking for a review.

5. Asking every single customer to check in can be a little time consuming which is why Yelp actually has stickers. All you have to do is go to this URL and fill out a form. Yelp will send that sticker to you in the mail.

6. So if you're still having trouble getting reviews, you can actually use something called the Facebook hack. Now, within the Yelp application, they have a feature called "find friends." The find friends feature imports all of your Facebook friends (editor note: or email contacts) that have Yelp accounts. If you have any past customers that also happen to be your Facebook friends, you can ask them to stop into your business again and check you out. Now that's going to statistically improve your chances of getting a review, and when they see one of your stickers, they'll be very likely to check in and leave you a review at a later point in time.

7. Let's introduce Yelp Elites. It's important to understand that Yelp has two different kinds of members: normal Yelpers and Yelp Elites. Yelp Elites are people that use the application a lot. There's perks to being Yelp elite. Yelp Elites get a snazzy profile badge, a customized cover, and they also get access to regional parties. It's kind of Yelp's way of saying "thank you." It's important to understand that Yelp Elite reviews are a little bit different. Now their photos are more likely to be prioritized, their reviews are more likely to be featured, their flagging is more likely to be considered by Yelp, and we'll get into more of that later.

8. The secret formula to becoming Yelp Elite. The criteria for becoming Yelp Elite goes all the way down to the details. You have to use the Yelp application and all of its features. That means having a snazzy profile picture, fill out your profile to the best of your ability, answering every single question that they ask you, participate in Yelp talk, take pictures every single time you leave a review, be sure to import friends from Facebook like we mentioned earlier, check in, leave tips for other Yelpers, participate in Yelp events, bookmark businesses, and create lists. Once you complete at least 40 reviews, you can nominate yourself at yelp.com/elite. A community manager will look through your profile and approve you. You'll receive an email and once you're welcomed into the Yelp Elite family, you'll get all the perks that come along with being a Yelp Elite.

9. If a customer leaves a negative review on your profile, a lot of business owners approach me and ask if there's anything they can do about it, especially if that review is inaccurate. That review can be flagged, however, if you flag this as not factually correct on Yelp, they'll actually send you a message that says, "We do not get involved in factual disputes." There is a silver lining. In Daniel Lemons' book, Manipurated, he actually points to a study called, The Perfect Review Sandwich, which states that negative reviews can actually amplify the positive reviews around them. And if you think about it, that's true. When you see a 4.5 out of 5, 4.6, 4.7, it's actually a little more credible than just a 5-star review. I mean, nobody's perfect.

10. I'm going to throw a fun one at you. In the Yelp platform, look at reviews of your local jail. If you're ever having a bad day, they are almost always hilarious and I highly encourage you to check them out.

That's all we have today, and I hope that you enjoyed these 10 Ways to Use Yelp to Improve Your Local Business. It was really fun making it. We hope that this helps you out in your quest to get more reviews on Yelp.

Academy for Ads: On-The-Go Training for Google’s Ad Products

Becoming a digital advertising expert takes time, and it’s important to get off to a good start. Only 50 percent of marketers say they’re confident in their knowledge of digital advertising,1 despite the wide range of educational materials available – sometimes “more” isn’t the same as “better.” You’ve told us that you want quick, bite-sized training in more interactive formats. And we heard you.

We’re pleased to announce Academy for Ads, a new digital training platform designed to help you learn how to use Google’s ad products in a mobile-first world. We built Academy for Ads to promote learning on-the-go, whether you’re on a laptop, a desktop, or a mobile device.

Grow your Google product know-how

Guided by input from our team of product experts, Academy for Ads courses cover the topics that matter most to Google advertisers – from AdWords basics and the essentials of campaign management to bid strategies, reporting, optimization, and more ways to successfully advertise with Google.

Learning paths, Assessments, and Achievements

We’ve organized the courses into “Learning paths” that you can walk through at your own pace. At the end of each path, take an Assessment and earn an Achievement to show that you know your stuff. Earning an Achievement for AdWords helps prepare you to take the AdWords Certification exam in Google Partners, or try deeper education offerings such as AdWords Academy.

A few example Learning paths:

• Digital concepts: Learn the essentials of online ads, including third-party ad-serving, programmatic buying, remarketing, and more.
• Get started with AdWords: Learn the basics of AdWords and prepare for the AdWords Certification exam offered by Google Partners.
• Get started with AdWords Display: Learn how you can show ads to your online audience via the Google Display Network.

Academy for Ads also offers training for DoubleClick clients, with Learning paths covering Bid Manager and Ad Exchange – and more to come.

Get started

If you already use Google Partners, you can sign in through the Partners portal at g.co/learnwithpartners — or, you can go directly to g.co/AcademyforAds to sign up and start sampling courses and Learning paths. We’re constantly adding more content, so if you like what you learn, keep coming back for more.

Origanally Posted on http://www.googblogs.com/ by Tracy Bizelli, Head of Academy for Ads

Businesses are Growing Online with Google

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” This may have been a question you were asked regularly as a child. Today it seems as if any interest can become a career, thanks in part to the reach and accessibility of the web. From outdoor adventure guides and quilters, to toymakers and bowtie designers, at Google, we feel lucky to play a small role in how many people turned their passions into professions.

Last year, Google’s search and advertising tools helped provide $165 billion of economic activity for U.S. businesses—advertisers, publishers and nonprofits. Businesses are using the web to find new customers, connect with existing ones, and grow.

For example, Kathryn Jackson spent many years as a sales associate at a luxury department store. During that time she observed how quickly her clients had to re-sole their expensive shoes. She was inspired to create Protect Your Pumps, shoe sole protectors that help shoes last longer. Within two years, she turned her idea into a full time career. Today 40% of her sales come from Google Search. She’s expanded her product line to include shoe protectors for flats and men’s shoes, and has shipped products to more than 80 countries.

Michael Salvatore loves coffee and bicycles. Michael discovered many other people in his native Chicago shared those same interests. In 2011, he founded Heritage Bicycles, creating a space that offers delicious coffee and bicycles uniquely designed and manufactured in Chicago. Michael used the web and geo-targeted Google AdWords campaigns to build his brand and get local customers into his stores. He also created global campaigns in AdWords to encourage customers from around the world to visit his e-commerce store. Today, Michael has two stores in Chicago, 23 employees, a global customer fan base, and plans to expand to more locations this year.

These are just two examples of businesses using the web and Google products to grow their businesses.You can find more stories and explore Google’s economic impact state-by-state in our Economic Impact Report. Across the U.S., business owners are using the web and Google to grow their companies, operate more efficiently, and turn their dreams into reality. We’re proud to play a role in their success and are committed to building tools and programs to help them reach their goals.

Posted by Claire Mudd, Head of SMB Marketing

GOOGLE PACK ADDS ABILITY TO SEGMENT RESULTS BY RATING & HOURS

Sergey Alakov, an active local SEO from Toronto, just noted on Twitter that Google has finally rolled out the ability to segment all local pack results on both the desktop and mobile by ratings and by hours. The feature had been first spotted in tests in early September and the tests have recurred since then. It has been available for restaurants (only) since April.

The buttons drop down at the top of the Local Pack and when selected provide a view of the results within the Local finder increasing the likelihood of those folks that meet the criteria more likelihood of being seen even if they are not a top of pack result.

There currently are typically ratings and hours to choose from. Although is some verticals, like cars, there is also distance. There may be other filters and there may be times when it varies from desktop to mobile. If you spot different filters besides ratings, hours and distance please let me know.

If there are no ratings or only one business with ratings, like this search, then only hours are offered and no option is given to chose by rating. Likewise a search for “best” something in a city seems to occasionally remove the ratings option as well although not always.

With the advent of an increased focus on attributes it is conceivable and likely that the options for filtering will increase as well as Google gets broader and deeper attribute details. I can imagine that one of the first might be accessibility.

Obviously this new feature encourages users to look at the higher rated businesses and stay at Google longer. Google once again comes down on the side of higher rated businesses getting a leg up in the search results. It also obviously favors Google reviews and Google site visits over third party reviews site.

Originally Published on http://blumenthals.com/blog/2016/12/15/google-pack-adds-ability-to-segment-results-by-rating-hours/

How To Update Your Holiday Hours or Special Hours on Google My Business?

When your business has an irregular schedule, like this criticisms or special events, you can enter special hours in advance. If you schedule special hours for an official holiday, users will be told that those hours are scheduled specifically for that holiday. 

Open 6 - 10 Christmas Eve. Closed Christmas day.

You can schedule the whole year out in advance if you want to. But days that don't have special hours will keep your normal hours.

The option is only available in GMBL. Which is "locations" or "list view". But now of course, even a single business can just go to list view to use features there any time.

Here are the official Google My Business Help Docs that explain how to do it, based on where you are editing:

Here is Emily Harris's post at the Google Small Business Blog with more details: Updating Your Holiday Hours on Google? Easy as Pumpkin Pie.

Heather Mohorn, owner of Momo’s Tree House, adds special hours on Google to let last-minute shoppers know when her business is open. “The holiday hours feature makes it easy to communicate [changes in hours] to customers,” she says. “It reduces the number of phone calls we receive to ask whether we’re open, which is nice when we’re busy wrapping those last-minute gifts on Christmas Eve.”

With Google My Business, you can update your business info on Google for free to ensure that your phone number, address, and hours of operation are correct so customers can find you this season (and beyond).

To help you make the most of the season, we put together a holiday workshop filled with tips for using the web to connect with shoppers. Preview the section on updating your holiday hours above, or watch the entire workshop at gybo.com/livestream.
For a list of step-by-step instructions on how to update your hours on Google My Business, visit our help center 

We hope this is one thing you can easily check off your holiday to-do list.
Cheers,
Emily Harris, on behalf of the Let’s Put Our Cities on the Map team