Interesting Articles from the Past Week (7-14 May)

This week was not as full of nice articles related to local search, Google Places and local-social as it was during the previous one. The biggest event was the Google I/O where a lot of innovations were announced, but only very few regarding local. However, let’s see what I’ve chosen for you to read during the peaceful weekend evenings.

Google Places and Local SEO:
Google Places Help – Verification Problems and Tips for Consultants
Hot Google Places Citations Source for Tier 1 Citations
Yelp Segues into Spain
YPG: 30% of Our Searches Come from Mobile
A Little Light Reading On Google Maps Ranking Factors
The Future of the Yellow Pages
Bing Quietly Adds Bulk Uploads to Local Business Listings
Yellow Pages Opt-In & Opt-Out in Seattle and San Francisco | 2011
Ten Things I Hope Google Places Fixes in 2011
Google Going Places With Local SMB Marketing Swag
Google Opens Places API to the Public
Citation Theory – Higher Rankings in Google with Google Places
Genbook Customer Reviews Now Published to Google Places

Local-Social:
A “real life” example of social media marketing
Social Profiles: It’s Quality, Not Quantity

Bing Challenges Google Places – Bing Business Portal

Today Bing launched its version of Google Places. It is called Bing Business Portal (BBP) and is still in its Beta version stage. However, it could be a tough challenge for Google as Google Places have experienced a lot of bugs lately and had problems with lost reviews, data, the analytics tool got stuck and all the listings got pending, etc. The claiming of business listing on Bing will be similar to the one for Google – by phone or by postal mail, as they will provide the business owners with a verification PIN. The time for changes to occur should be between 48 and 72 hours. For newly created listings it will take within 7-10 days after the listings is verified.

Similar to the Google Offers, there will be Bing Deals. There is no limit to how many deals a business owner could post per day, and the new ones will be occurring within 48 hours. Owners will be able to post the deals on the established Facebook site. Furthermore, some deals will be highlighted daily on the “Deals” section of the mobile version of Bing Business Portal. The criteria will be the following:

• Deals need to be at least 50% off of the retail value of the goods/services offered
• The minimum dollar amount of the retail value of the goods/services should be $20 or more
• Only threeactive deals per merchant location can be provided at a given time
• Deals offered should have an expiration of three days or less from the day they appear on the daily deals page
• Repeat deals cannot be offered until 15 days after the deal has expired.
• Deals need to be created by 6PM Pacific time in order to make it to the daily deals page for the next day

Bing will also implement the already abandoned practice on Google Places to put QR codes in the business listing. The QR code will lead to the business’ Bing Business Portal mobile site.

Google will definitely be challenged, especially if Bing manages to come up with good Customer Service, which lacks in the case of Google Places and if it keeps it as bug-free as possible. Time will show.