Google Places News Thread

[dragonlube]

Creating this thread for the purpose of posting any new information regarding workarounds with Google places, verification problems and such.

Ill start off with a tip I received from "localdominator" in regards to bypassing the post card verification, the theory is if you open a new gmail account with your [email protected] then open a listing it will allow you to phone verify it,

now Ive tried to no avail, heres what I did:

- Multiple local IPs
- GP listing had the same phone number as the gmail account
- even had my last name as part of the "business name" ex. Daniels Repair Man.
- GP listing had an address in the same city as the IP.

There must be more to it, any ideas, knowledge, hypothesis?

feel free to share the love.

 

[audioinjection]

A few guesses based on my past experience with GP....

-When setting up new sites back when it was pretty easy, every once and again it would randomly (seemingly) only give you postcard verify. So, if you only tried the method one time, *you could have gotten tripped up on that "random" 1 of 12 or whatever, thus making a winning method look failed.

-Certain keywords (or other factors) will trigger a "postcard only" (from before the recent change. *Same theory as above.

-Try it with different phone numbers. I never did that, and it was never necessary or (seemingly) advantageous.

-When I was setting up a bunch, I would start with them somewhat stripped down, and then add more info, keywords, vids and pics to optimize the listing later. It was just more efficient, in launching multiple listings. I would suggest doing the same if you're trying to beat the recent changes. I'm with you....but don't have the time to really do the full "testing" necessary. I hope you have the time to give it a few more attempts. I'm really hoping someone can eventually come up with a decent work-around. I've been keeping an ear out, and contributing what I can, but so far all of the solutions are expensive and slow and simply don't work for my marketing.

Good luck! We'll get it, or it will change back soon.

 

[dragonlube]

Good luck! We'll get it, or it will change back soon.

Sure hope so, Ive actually tried 3 times to be exact, none worked but yea...either it will change or we will figure it out, Im gonna do some more tests, will update here.

 

[MagicMike]

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone in the U.S. has had success recently in gaining a phone verification from GP... I've not heard of it lately.

I know Canada and I believe the U.K. may still be getting phone verification, but I'm wondering if there is anything as "phone verification" right now for the U.S... we might just be pounding our heads against the wall until the ban is lifted.

 

[Tamra]

I need to set up a couple of GPlaces within the next few days. I've heard about the phone verification changes, but haven't had the opportunity to test. These will not be blackhat since they are for legitimate businesses. Will report back with results though.

 

[freckletone]

For local businesses, do you think it matters a lot where the actual business in terms of miles from the area they want to target.

For example; 2 businesses want to get ranked for "Atlanta dentist" but one is located like 30 miles closer than the other, does that make a difference? Or does backlinks override all?

 

[nokturnal]

distance will affect two 'un-optimised' listings, but if one is further away but optimised better, theres no reason why it shouldnt outrank the other.

P.s. I can confirm phone verification is still the main verification in the uk, maybe about 1 in 20 are postcard verified out of my customers

 

[dragonlube]

May God help us all, Ive still had no luck with it, MagicMike, you might just be right, its possible that right now there is no way to trigger it untill the changes are reverted.

 

[audioinjection]

For local businesses, do you think it matters a lot where the actual business in terms of miles from the area they want to target.

For example; 2 businesses want to get ranked for "Atlanta dentist" but one is located like 30 miles closer than the other, does that make a difference? Or does backlinks override all?

Location DOES matter. Just pull up "atlanta" on maps and see where the city center is, then compare to the density of what appears in the map-box when you search "atlanta dentist"..... most of them will be condensed somewhat close to the city center.

It's a mixture of "relevancy". Location is PART of relevancy. Backlinks don't mean anything, if you can keyword properly and build citations at Yelp, judysbook etc. Get creative. Backlinks are not the only way to page 1 for your search term, and you can beat the big dogs pretty quickly.

 

[Toolboy]

I have just recently created 2 place pages in the UK.

One was for a business already listed in places (had an unclaimed place page) in a small town. This one got through with a phone verification.

The other was for a non listed business in London and it needed postcard verification.

This is a tiny sample of data which alone is almost meaningless, but suggests that pre-exisitance of the listing and size of town are factors.

I plan to create more pages and will update you on the findings.

 

[audioinjection]

Thanks for the info Toolboy. I need to find a way to get UK phone numbers to launch some places. So far, the one's I've attempted (although, I AM in the U.S.!) were postcard verify only.

 

[learnin]

i recently acquired a client and made massive changes to the list with 3 exceptions: i did not change the name, address or phone.

i was allowed a phone verification. the clients phone number.

an hour later it popped up in 12 boxes as the a or b position for our targeted keywords

 

[audioinjection]

i recently acquired a client and made massive changes to the list with 3 exceptions: i did not change the name, address or phone.

i was allowed a phone verification. the clients phone number.

an hour later it popped up in 12 boxes as the a or b position for our targeted keywords

US, UK or elsewhere?

Also, how "developed" was the place already? I've been able to make changes to old ones (massive changes as well!) without even any verification needed, but the changes take forever to show up.

I think editing places is fine, unless you edit it and trigger a "verification" by changing too much, etc.

But the problem still is in.....getting new ones launched. I'm surprised to see such little action on this topic here at BHW. I guess not many people were making money on places.

 

[geezer466]

I am in the UK and seem trapped in the postcard option. Tried about 3 or 4 of them now and whilst they accept the PIN they still always come back as rejected.
Looked at the google official forum and the advice was to keep target keyword (spam to them) out of the business title and description box.
Last time I verified (successfully) I completely stripped the listing down remeoved practically everything bar changing the cats, bus name (which is clean) add and tel number and it still rejected it.

Could my account be to blame as it says account suspended? Would I be able to reclaim the listing in another account?

This is really starting to pi$$ me off.

 

[gettinthere]

Are there any new "products" about detailing all the effects of recent Google changes?

 

[makinbuckz]

I posted a new listing over 2 weeks ago, and am STILL waiting for them to list it.
Is this normal?