Google Places Reviews

On Friday we published a pretty important post on Google’s latest system update to the reviews on Google Places.

It seems that due to potential legal disputes that could arise from misleading, inaccurate or spammy reviews left of these third-party networks.

Where have my reviews gone?

If like one of thousands of businesses out there your listing has taken a big hit from reviews been deleted then you’re in good company.

It would appear that these will no longer feature on your Google local places listing again.

You would expect Google to have thought of a potential work around for the future such as partnering up with these third-party review sites however thinking about that in more detail it would seem less likely to happen at this stage.

1.) Google already bought out yelp so they already control this review portal but have removed the reviews.

How will reviews return on Google Places

I personally think they will return but feature differently so the standard review insertion.

The most obvious place for third-party reviews to feature would be in the citations section on Google Places listings.

It could be that a mix of citations/references and reviews from third-party sites will feature here.

Geo21
28 Hastings Avenue Whitley Bay, ne, NE26 4AF UK
maps@geo21.co.uk • 020 7993 4568

Google Maps Duplication Qype Updated

in Blog / Google Maps / Google Places / Qype by Tom Peary May 31, 2011 0 comments

Fixing Qype Duplications

Last month we shared our thoughts on Qype and the problems some businesses are seeing with duplicate listings.

Over the weekend we had 3 enquiries regarding this very problem caused by having a Qype listing.

So we thought we’d delve even deeper to the mysteries of Qype listings and what can happen when you use third-party websites and directories to handle your business details.

Avoiding Qype Duplications & Errors

Follow these simple rules and you will avoid having any issues with duplicated listings, or merging details with more than one Google Places listing.

Go to the source: Create all your Google Places listings directly in your Google Places account. If you allow a third-party to create the listings for you, then you will always have problems when it comes to updating incorrect information, the same goes for when you need to change your business details. If you don’t have direct and sole access to your Google Places listing details then you aren’t in control.

QYPE : Duplicate Google Places Listings

in Blog / Google Maps / Google Places / Google Places SEO by Tom Peary May 26, 2011 0 comments

If you are not yet aware of Qype, Qype is a social networking review site that offers members to create, edit and add reviews to local businesses.

Qype has been providing some of the Google Maps/Places additional data such as reviews for 2 years now and in terms of an easy to use website where you can find information on businesses it’s great – we love it!

Today it was brought to my attention that one of our clients had a duplicate listing created on 01/03/2011 – When we looked in to it we could clearly see this ‘unverified listing’ had been created by supplementary data sent by Qype to Google.

Good News!

Fortunately we were able to verify the duplicate Qype listing by phone call and suspend it.

Keep Both Eyes Open

But remember to keep an eye on what information is being sent to Google about your business. You never know when a duplicate listing is going to be created and sometimes you don’t have the option to verify your listing by phone.

qype