Google+ Plus Local Makes Me Sit Up and Take Notice

I haven’t been as attentive to Google+ as I have to Twitter and Facebook and today my business, Marketing Resources & Results, may start paying for it.

Over the past few years we have enjoyed great search engine results for keyword phrases like “marketing consultants Akron” and “marketing consulting in Cleveland”, but the algorithms are changing again.

The change reflects the move toward mobile devices searching for businesses on the go.

The change to Google Local pages. If you aren’t familiar with Google Places - (sometimes known as Google Local), it’s a website page that you probably have claimed for your business and use it to help your business come up in the results with search engines. It is usually the page that comes up when a business name is searched. Click on the screen shot to the right to see a screenshot of my company’s page. You add location, services, photos, videos, products, special offers, and so on to your page. Because it is Google, it’s always been important to have this profile up to date.

But today Google announced an update to the Google+ with a Local section that is the Google Place page. That can have a big impact on search engine results. They’ve added Zagat (restaurant reviews) as well.

While up to now, Google+ had felt like “just one more” social networking site to learn and populate, now I am sitting up and taking notice because the pages will be indexed. This will definitely effect the search engine results.

So, how is your Google Local Listing looking? I think I’m going to start taking Google+ seriously and update my Google+Local page as well. How about you?

You may be interested in these articles/videos about it:

Google Plus Local - It’s what’s new today! Sage Lewis
Goodbye Google Places. Hello More Google Plus (CNN)
Google+ Local Does More Than Google Places

Looking for help with Google+? Here’s a great place to start: Google+ Support