Thursday, April 22, 2010

Google Places



Today the Local Business Center is becoming Google Places. Why? Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real world, and we want to better connect Place Pages — the way that businesses are being found today — with the tool that enables business owners to manage their presence on Google.

We launched Place Pages last September for more than 50 million places around the world to help people make more informed decisions about where to go, from restaurants and hotels to dry cleaners and bike shops, as well as non-business places like museums, schools and parks. Place Pages connect people to information from the best sources across the web, displaying photos, reviews and essential facts, as well as real-time updates and offers from business owners.

Four million businesses have already claimed their Place Page on Google through the Local Business Center, which enables them to verify and supplement their business information to include hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons, product offerings and more. It also lets them communicate with customers and get insights that help them make smart business decisions.

Google Places will continue to offer these same tools, but the new name will simplify the connection with Place Pages. This reflects our ongoing commitment to providing business owners with powerful yet easy-to-use tools.

We're also introducing several new features:
  • Service areas: If you travel to serve customers, you can now show which geographic areas you serve. And if you run a business without a storefront or office location, you can now make your address private.
  • A new, simple way to advertise: For just $25 per month, businesses in select cities can make their listings stand out on Google.com and Google Maps with Tags. As of today, we're rolling out Tags to three new cities — Austin, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. — in addition to ongoing availability in Houston and San Jose, CA. In the coming weeks we'll also be introducing Tags in Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder and San Francisco.
  • Business photo shoots: In addition to uploading their own photos, businesses in select cities can now request a free photo shoot of the interior of their business which we'll use to supplement existing photos of businesses on Place Pages. We've been experimenting with this over the past few months, and now have created a site for businesses to learn more and express their interest in participating.
  • Customized QR codes: From the dashboard page of Google Places, businesses in the U.S. can download a QR code that's unique to their business, directly from their dashboard page. QR codes can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials, and customers can scan them with certain smartphones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for that business.
  • Favorite Places: We're doing a second round of our Favorite Places program, and are mailing window decals to 50,000 businesses around the U.S. These decals include a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to directly view the mobile Place Page for the business to learn more about their great offerings.
Over the past few months we've also added the ability for business owners to post real-time updates to their Place Page. You might want to promote a sale, a special event or anything else that you want customers to know right now, and this feature lets you communicate that directly to your customers. You can also provide extra incentive by adding coupons, including ones specially formatted for mobile phones.

To keep track of how your business listing is performing on Google, we offer a personalized dashboard within Google Places that includes data about how many times people have found your business on Google, what keywords they used to find it and even what areas people traveled from to visit your business. With the dashboard, you can see how your use of any of these new features affects interest in your business and make more informed decisions about how to be found on Google and interact with your customers.

One out of five searches on Google are related to location, and we want to make sure that businesses are able to be found and put their best foot forward. We're excited to announce Google Places today, as it's just the beginning of what's to come from our efforts to make Google more local. If you want to learn more about Google Places, we'd like to invite you to an upcoming overview webinar, or you can visit our newly updated Help Center. We'll also be posting on the Lat Long blog throughout the week to give a deeper dive into many of our newest features. To get started now, go to google.com/places.

Posted by John Hanke, VP Google Maps, Earth and Local
Posted: 19 Apr 2010 01:00 PM PDT
We're always honored and often surprised by the many ways people can be inspired by Google. Take for example artist Ken Solomon, who has done a series of watercolors of Google Image Search results, like this one:


Ken's "Google Portrait - Warhol 2"


Just as societies preserve important documents and works of art, archivists and historians are now developing ways to preserve digital ephemera, from tweets to book drafts, as part our cultural and global history. On a small scale, Ken is doing just that, and we're intrigued by his creative method of preserving moments in time. We may not have majored in art history, but we like the "meta" quality of Ken's paintings of search results for pop artists. From Brillo pad boxes to Google in under 25 moves...?

You can see more of Ken's work on his website. And if you live in New York, Ken is exhibiting these pieces in a one-man show at the Josée Bienvenu Gallery until May 15.

Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog & Twitter team
Posted: 19 Apr 2010 08:42 PM PDT
Nearly 400 IT executives joined us last week for a discussion on the future of enterprise IT at Atmosphere, our first cloud computing summit at the Googleplex. It was an exciting day of conversation and debate about the power of the cloud. If you're interested in seeing it for yourself, you can watch the public talks online:
  • Improving collaboration: Our opening keynote announced the next generation of Google Docs, setting the stage for an inspiring roster of visionary thinkers.
  • Forces for change: Author Geoffrey Moore and analyst Mary Meeker reflected on the role of IT and the emerging trends driving its evolution.
  • Cloud adopters: Executives from Google Apps users Motorola, MeadWestvaco, Seagate and Genentech shared their experiences migrating thousands of employees to what Motorola Mobile Devices VP of IT Walt Oswald termed "the new world of IT." (You can learn more about why businesses have gone Google on the Google Apps YouTube channel.)
  • Expanding horizons: Cloud computing pioneers Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, and Werner Vogels, the CTO of Amazon.com, expounded on the newest insights and innovations from their businesses.
  • Google product highlights: Google's product leaders showcased some of the latest features in Google Apps, Chrome OS, Android and search, while Vint Cerf, Alan Eustace and Jeff Huber explored our vision for enterprise computing.
  • Beyond IT: Scientist Janine Benyus delighted the audience with her explanation of the biological imperatives for collaboration, and reminded us all that "life is a team sport."
Atmosphere concluded with a public discourse between Eric Schmidt and Forbes National Editor Quentin Hardy.

The complete set of Atmosphere videos is now online, and you can learn more about our cloud computing solutions for businesses on the Google Apps website. We want to thank all those who participated in Atmosphere for their contributions to this unique experience!

Update 8:41PM: Removed video.

Posted by Dave Girouard, President of Google Enterprise
Posted by SEOLAWS.com at 10:31 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)