How Google Places Helps Customers Find You

If your business has local customers then you can help them find you by getting listed in Google Places.

Google Places is Google’s local directory. And it determines which businesses appear in the local map that Google often shows when you search for a local business.

For example:
www.google.co.nz/search?q=plumber wellington

Set up your Google Places listing well and you can appear at the top of the Google Map.
And even more importantly, because Google usually shows a map for local business searches, you can often get onto page 1 of Google.

Using Google Places to increase your ranking puts your business in front of local customers who are looking for what you offer.

As an example, we got Quinovic Johnsonville near the top of page one in Google’s rankings when people search for ‘property management Johnsonville’:
www.google.co.nz/search?q=property+management+johnsonville

Of course, nobody tells Google what to do and they do change things a lot. So while we can’t guarantee a particular result, typical results so far have seen rankings improve from nowhere in the first three pages to somewhere on page one (often in the top half of page one).

Google Places is a free service from Google.
You can list your own business from here: www.google.com/local/add/

If you’re going to list your business in Google Places, don’t just slap your details in there and hope for the best. If you want to get to the top of the Google Map every detail makes a difference and every field needs to be planned and filled out well – including the coupons.
If you want to do it yourself be sure to search Google for ‘optimizing google places’ (American spelling will give best results) and follow the recommendations.
If you’re a non-Google guru you should be able do a pretty good job of it with 6 to 10 hours work.

Then sit back and wait. It usually takes between 2 and 5 weeks for the changes to take effect.