Author Archives: Google Places Expert

About Google Places Expert

Owner/Head Geek @ GEO21 - 'Taking over Google Places for the last 7 years'

We do not currently support this location – It’s back!

Friday, May 4, 2012 No Comments by Google Places Expert

Google Places listings owners may be seeing the following error this morning ‘We do not currently support this location’.

It comes after another glitch was reported by thousands of business owners when their listings dropped over night.

We’ve seen this glitch before and it won’t be the last time.

Why do I see We do not currently support this location

Google is always working behind the scenes and when they make a change it usually means the data set is moved at least temporarily. It usually sorts itself out or you can try and press edit on your Google Places listing and Submit to ping the listing.

This rarely works immediately these days but in the meantime until we or Google find a fix hang tight, stay tuned and we’ll get more information across as soon as we have it.

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How to get Google Places review removed

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 No Comments by Google Places Expert

Finally we might have an answer to all your problems

If your business has been attacked by a spammer, another business or individual by posting fake reviews on your Google Places business listing and don’t know what to do about it read on.

Removing Google Reviews

Over the past 3 years since Google Places really became THE place for any local business to be found, we have seen thousands of cases on Google Help Forums and from customers who have had their Google Places listing smeared with what can only be described as fake reviews.

Many have tried the obvious approach and to try to contact Google either through their local business listing ‘report a problem’ panel or on the Google Places forums. Unfortunately it would seem Google do not currently have the man-power to support this fake review problem which leaves many business owners and SEO’s feeling frustrated and scratching their heads.

I am sure there will be some who will be honest and admit  I have even tried to do things that maybe ‘aren’t that clever’ to try to fix, and I personally don’t blame them for doing so. When your business works so hard to play it by the book and offer a fair, honest service and then a competitor simply undoes all the hard work you’ve done to build up your online reputation who can blame them.

I’ve been doing Google Places optimization for 8 years now nearly and I’ve seen a lot, learnt a lot too but today I am going to show you something that might just help your business by helping you delete unwanted Google Places reviews.

The Story of how I deleted a Google Places review

I represent a client in London, a very well-known physiotherapy clinic. Doing very well on Google Places, organically getting thousands of unique visitors per month and generally very happy with Google. That was until they had a review posted on their Google Places listing. For obvious reasons I am not going to name that clinic but I will give you some details on the kind of things written on their review.

The user had never posted a review for another business under that account before but went on to smear the clinic and owner with real hatred. Some of the comments were simply shocking! Nothing about the service itself, more about the actual physio and none of them true, the reason I can say this is we’ve checked the dates and the physio himself wasn’t even there during that period. So anyway I advised him to respond publicly through his Google Places local business centre account which he did. 2 weeks later the user deleted the post and reposted within a week. They knew what they were doing, they knew that this would repost the review and put it back the top of the pile so everyone would see. This happened twice over 3 months in total.

We tried everything, contacting Google, speaking to someone at Google Ireland (which was about as helpful as speaking to an orange).

Then I found this…..

getting google places reviews removed

Thinking this isn’t going to work I filled out the violation form in detail and waited with bated breath.

Please note I clicked on the second link ‘this page‘ to submit a legal request.

report policy violation google places reviews

Today we checked and the review has been removed!

This is great news for the clinic and hopefully for you too. I don’t expect this to work for everyone.

Good Luck and if you like our post please don’t forget to Retweet, +1 or Like.

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We do not currently support this location

Wednesday, February 15, 2012 3 Comments by Google Places Expert

Hey guys thousands of business owners have seen their Google Places listings disappear in the past 6 hours.

Our previous glitch fix does not work on this one. We have been testing all evening to no avail.

Looks like Google is making some big changes to its database which is spread over many servers.

Best thing you can do is nothing and it should return on its own.

Feel free to post any questions.

—————-

Response from Google

Thanks for contacting us regarding your Places problem. We’ve recently experienced technical issues with Places and you may have experienced your verified listing no longer appearing on Maps. We’ve put the fix in place and listings should be appearing appropriately now.

Please check your listing in our search results, and if the problem persists, try going to your listing dashboard and selecting ‘Edit’ and ‘Submit’. This may help get the right information appearing in our search results. If you’re still experiencing your original problem in 24h, please respond to this message.

Regards,
The Google Team

Hypnotherapy London – A

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 No Comments by Google Places Expert

Another client goes straight in at position A for their primary chosen keyword phrase ‘Hypnotherapy London’.

hypnotherapy london

How would you like to see your business at the top spot?

The Therapy Lounge weren’t even listed on Google Places first page and we’ve taken them straight to the top position for ‘Hypnotherapy London’.

I hope they have an army manning their phones!

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Did your Google Places listing drop from Position A?

Friday, January 13, 2012 2 Comments by Google Places Expert

Hot news guys no one seems to be really aware of this problem yet but you should be as it could affect every single one of you.

My Google Places listing disappeared from Position A?

We got a call from our client who is currently position A for ‘chiropractors Leeds’ his listing has dropped overnight off the first page.

My first thoughts were ‘oh Google you silly bot’ and then normally followed by destroying my keyboard. But instead I kept calm because I have seen this problem before. This time it only seems to affect position A results for some reason, why I don’t know. Maybe the search feature is going to change and position Google Places results might have more of a feature that’s my guess. Or someone at Google spilt their coffee on a server.

What to do if your Google Places listing has dropped overnight off the first page!

  1. See if you can still find your listing active on Google. If you can that’s a good start. If not could be the other glitch we posted previously but no matter our fix will cure both.
  2. Go in to your Google Places account and click EDIT
  3. Click ‘fix incorrect marker location’ then zoom right in and move 1mm so it’s still on the same building.
  4. The copy and paste the business name back in so delete and paste back in, do the same for website and description.
  5. Press Submit
  6. Now if you can see the places listing stats go in to there and write a post in the right hand column.
  7. This process might have to be done twice to fix.

That’s the Google Places fix for the position A results glitch

This is a very easily resolved issue for Google Places glitches and bugs and cures most things. It wont get rankings from nothing but any bugs it seems to clear out 99% of the time.

We have had to do this for 4 clients this morning who were all back before we even got time to call them. 30 seconds approximately.

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“SKIP HIRE BIRMINGHAM” – Position A

Monday, December 19, 2011 No Comments by Google Places Expert

We are currently working with a fantastic Skip Hire company in Birmingham who provide a skip hire alternative service.

Optimizing Google Places since 2005

skip hire birmingham

Google Places Optimization for Skip Hire Companies

Although we are no longer accepting any customers to cover ‘skip hire Birmingham’ we do have other areas available. If you would like to see your business on the top of Google Places just call our office on 020 7993 4568.

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ULTRA-SEO ‘Double Whammy AA’

Thursday, November 24, 2011 2 Comments by Google Places Expert

double a seo google places results

2 position A results in 48 hours!

Sometimes it’s cool to be a smug! And today my friends is one of them.

We just posted about our new friends at Headingley Chiropractic Clinic going to position A for ‘Chiropractors Leeds’ in under 24 hours. That’s gotta be getting some emotions stirring for everyone who is struggling with their Google Places optimization.

One of our oldest standing clients ‘Physio Leeds’ has just made a comeback after a short drop off to position A.

The drop happened when someone (probably another competitor) reported his business as permanently closed. We reported on this nasty glitch a few posts back.

Simon Glover the director called us to renew his service and we fixed this problem in just over a week and got him to position A in 2 days for ‘Physio Leeds’.

physio leeds

Physio Leeds above STA Travel, Buckley House, Eastgate, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS1 7JH – 07815 755097

So that mean’s we have the two top spots for ‘physio Leeds’ and ‘Chiropractors Leeds’ for 2 individual clients. Sorry folks are doors are closed to those keywords and towns but we can help any other type of business in Leeds and many more Chiropractors and Physiotherapists across the UK and US.

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Straight to Position A

Thursday, November 24, 2011 1 Comment by Google Places Expert

We recently signed up some old friends we used to work with many years ago for some Google Places optimization. Their listing was being held by some rogue at a digital marketing agency, and they told our client they had optimized their Google Places listing which wasn’t true.

Our Google Places Secret to Success

We managed to get their listing back in our clients account and in just 24 hours it’s soared up to the very top of the search results – position for ‘Chiropractors Leeds’.

As we are originally from Yorkshire and one of our very first clients was a physiotherapist we knew the local competition and another clinic had been reigning high for at least 5 years. Unfortunately for them their days as top dog are over and Headingley Chiropractic Clinic are position A (number 1) for ‘Chiropractors Leeds’. And all in under 24 hours.

There’s no mistaking the proof!

chiropractors leeds top of google places

Marking your Territory with a big juicy ‘A’

Nothing quite makes our day any better than when we get to ring and tell our clients personally over the phone ‘you just took position A’.

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Google Places update today!

Wednesday, November 9, 2011 1 Comment by Google Places Expert

You should have noticed that Google finally updated the majority of its listings today.

This means anyone who has been optimizing their Google Places listing over the past 3 months should have seen the results update and their business found on the first page. Of course there are instances when listings may not have updated yet but on the main your results should be now ranking.

Google Places missing categories have returned

Another important update we have been waiting for is some of the missing categories and data which was lost on the last update has returned too.

You may have seen examples of inaccurate businesses showing up in the wrong category for example ‘dentists’ showing in ‘sports clubs’ & ‘health club’ listings.

Why do Google Places change?

The reason this sometimes happens is that when Google ever makes significant changes to its maps data it usually reverts to a previous state. Which might mean when categories or keywords we’re being moved around. So you get a kind of merged pack a data.

Just as if you did a back-up of your home/office computer and used a program such as Norton Ghost to take an image of your hard drive data of its current state. If you have not done a recent back-up and your computer crashed, the first thing you would do is try to fix it by reloading the image of its previous state. The same goes for Google Places data.

It makes a change, uses data from a previous state, updates it and eventually the latest data will catch up and show in the results.

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Google Places Citations Aren’t The Key to Ranking

Tuesday, November 8, 2011 1 Comment by Google Places Expert

Google Places Citations Aren't the Key

This is going to be quite a controversial post I think but bear with me.

For well over 12 months now so many bloggers, Google Places experts have been telling you it’s all about ‘citations’. For those who aren’t yet familiar with citations these are simply links for other websites and directories that mention your business details such as address and telephone number. The thought being the more of these you have the better the authority your places page will be given by the Google gods.

We’ve never used this technique to achieve our guaranteed first page results on Google Places, but for the past 6 months we’ve been doing a lot of testing just to bring this report to you.

There are several decent and reliable citation tools out there you can get your hands on (we’ll post a link to one below)

We’ve got dozens of examples where the top position results in Google Places have less or no citations whatsoever than listings further down the list. Again details of these will be posted soon.

But wait…. Google citations are the key! Aren’t they?

If we apply that idea surely all position A results should have more citations? But by using this great citation tool you can see that if you search for ‘Printers Southend’ that the top result has only 12 citations and if you check the SEOmoz ‘DA’ or ‘Domain Authority’ which Whitespark have kindly included in their software. You see that #1 has less powerful DA citations than position #3.

printers southend citations

Check out the highest DA citations for position 1 below

Now check out the DA citations for position 3

Note: Remember these guys have 83 high quality citations

Compare these citations too, they have no more authority than the others, so why is that listing deemed to be worthy of the top spot?

We can do this all day too. But let’s not put you in a coma just yet.

So what does this tell us about Citations & Google Places?

  1. Are citations useless to successful Google Places optimization and ranking?
  2. Should we be looking elsewhere for our Maps SEO?

With the research done and the evidence in place to back it up I can only speak my own thoughts on this. I don’t believe citations no matter how great the Domain Authority is that this is the key to getting consistently solid Google Places rankings. I’m sure as I suspect most of you do they can play a small part in the overall success.

But it’s like baking a really good chocolate cake, miss out an ingredient or two, ‘an egg’ ‘less sugar’ ‘forget to whisk’ and before you know it you’ve baked a muffin. Sure it’s still technically a cake but just less grand.

Google Places Citations Summarised

In summary I think a lot of the citations hype is there because not everyone in this industry really understands Google Places. Yes there are some great examples of businesses and individuals who are doing a really great job for their clients. But we also know there are a lot of rogues out there, just in it for the quick buck. (Leaving the good guys to pick up the pieces of their tattered, annoyed, dissatisfied customers.)

I’m sure there will be others who will disagree but all I can say to that is we’ve done the research to back our claims up and most importantly we’ve never used this on any of our position A clients.

True or False

We would love to hear your thoughts on this article, do citations work for you?  Or do you not bother at all adding citations as your main SEO source for Google Places optimization.

Thanks to Whitespark for their citation tool on this exercise.

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