Google Answers Your Local Questions

Q: Are there any techniques for tracking clickthroughs from the 10-pack, 3-pack, or authoritative OneBox in Google Analytics (or other tracking programs)?

The current URL strings only seem to show them as organic clickthroughs.

Google’s Local Universal results are organic, and there is no plan to separate them.

Q: It is considered a best practice in all of Google’s other properties

(Adwords, Organic Results, News, Blogs, Images) to include keywords in titles. Why does Google consider local results to be an outlier in this ecosystem? Does Google have plans to stop bolding keyword matches in Loc? Are there titles? If not, why not? There have been plenty of studies that show a click-through drama. Does it increase click-through rate?

On Google Maps, our mission is to show users the proper names and addresses of physical businesses. The Business Title is not the actual name of the company. Adding keywords to this field can move away from giving users a representation of the companies they see on the map. We have no plan to stop bolding keyword matches in titles. Bold matches in titles and categories, for example, help the user understand why we’re showing the result.

Q: Can you tell us about authoritative sources in Google Maps or Google Local?

If a user comments or requests a change, versus a business owner, versus a competitor, versus a validated business owner, or versus a third-party submission site (yellow pages, Yelp), whose content takes precedence?

For us, that’s the biggest problem because it appears that Google takes that information and somehow creates a listing, not using the business owner’s listing.

A business owner’s verified listing trumps all other sources in terms of fields displayed. LBC-verified listing is the most authoritative source. The least authoritative is a single reference on an unverified web page.

Everything else is in between those two ends of the spectrum. When creating the listing, we distinguish between the “listing” and the “cluster”. We display the “cluster,r,” which is composed of the union of one or more listings.

When fields in a listing overlap, the listing with the highest authoritativeness takes precedence over the others; however, it does not prevent additional fields (such as cuisine or parking) from being associated with the cluster.

Q: Are you penalized for submitting your data on a weekly basis? Or should you let your data mature?

No; however if you’re making changes to your listing that prevent us from recognizing that it’s the same business as the one referenced by other sources in the cluster, then there is a risk that your listing becomes “orphaned” from the cluster and thereby loses the associated content and any favorable ranking from that content.

Q: How do you handle mergers?

We own and manage many facilities and need to update their names and contact information.

However, third-party sources make changing the name almost impossible. One third-party submission company told us that we had to pay them to change our company name, and if we stopped paying the monthly fee, they would revert all our data to the old, inaccurate data. In the end, if we don’t, the information is not correct, and users get less relevant results.

Google: You should claim the old listing in the Local Business Center by finding it, clicking More Info, Edit, and finally Claiming Your Business.

Then, once you’ve claimed the business, update your name either by acting on the information or, if you can’t verify either of the acquired businesses’ addresses or phone numbers, create a new listing with the latest information, again using LBC.

Q: Why does the 1-800 number take precedence over the local number even if the local number is listed as the primary number?

Google: This shouldn’t happen. There is no precedent for an 800 versus a non-800 number. The sources of the data determine the choice.

Q: Do the old category listings have a higher value than the newer user-generated categories?

Google: All categories, including ones you create in the LBC or edit in a listing, get indexed and are searchable. A brand-new user-generated category may not have as many known synonyms as an existing category. Also, to clarify, the categories are not user-generated; they are simply an improved set of suggested categories.

Q: Does Google have any plans for a single corporate validation, instead of site validation?

With almost 700 locations, validating them all on Google is a lot of work. On a side note, we’ve done this twice in the last year.

Google: We don’t have a definitive answer to this question. Instead, we’d like to discuss it. We would like to hear from business owners about what inspired this question and what challenges they’re facing with their local listings.

Q: How does Google plan to enforce local spam?

Google: We started by documenting some quality guidelines, which you can find in the LBC help center. We plan to identify listings that don’t meet these guidelines and to remove them. Google has a long history of deals andammers – on the web, as well as in Gmail and some other Google products. The Maps team is working closely with those teams to identify what. Wes works primarily for Google, inventing spam-fighting methods that target the unique types of spam that plague Maps. There has been significant progress recently. We’ve made some big strides in catching and blocking spammers. That’s just the beginning.

Q: How do some listings have more than four phone numbers?

Google: We use the best data we get from multiple sources. Data provided by the business owner will show at the top of the list.

Q: If I create an LBC entry for my business, why does other information that I did not provide also show up?

Google: When we get data from multiple sources, we want to display the best data we receive. The business owner’s data will show first, and for fields where we show only one piece of data, the business owner’s data will take precedence over other data.

Q: Is Google still using the Base feed?

Google: Yes. LBC bulk upload uses Base. An older Base feed still submits data to Local, but it is not the preferred method.

Q: When will Europe receive the upgrades to the Local Business Center, as they were launched earlier this year in the US, Canada, and other regions?

(Or is this considered a future product?)

Google: The most up-to-date version of LBC has been launched in all European countries where LBC is available: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sween, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Q: When will we be able to distinguish local traffic from the 1box/3? It’s a hack in our Google Analytics.”

Now, it still accounts for ‘organic, ‘ and unless you are using parameters, there is no way to tell if the path was taken from a universal search result Onebox. (Asking, because the LBC still provides inferior or basic information: views/impressions).

Google’s Local Universal results are organic, and there is no plan to separate them.

Q: What would you say to the many florists whose listings were hijacked in mid-September by affiliation map spammers?

Google: We won’t always be ahead of the spammers—it’s a tough race to run. But we will become increasingly effective at ending situations like the one you mentioned as soon as they arise. And Place doesn’t just block the bad guys—we put systems in place to block the next guy who tries to do what the last guy did. We’re making it increasingly complex for spammers to hurt legitimate business owners.

Q: What % of US businesses have claimed their record in the Local Business Center?

Google: We don’t have a number we can release, in large part because we don’t have a definitive answer to the question of how many local businesses exist in the US.

Q: Why are the results of the 10 Pack sometimes different than the results from Maps?

Google: Sometimes the data and scoring differ slightly on Google.com and Google Maps.

Q: When the stars were removed from the Local 10 Pack in August, did you see much change in user behavior? Did it generate more visits to Maps from the main results page?

Google: The stars were removed as part of the overall redesign that resulted in the current 10-listings view (from the previous three listings), so we don’t have any data on whether the stars specifically influence click-through rates. The star ratings are still visible once you click through to Maps.

Q: Should businesses take a proactive role in encouraging their customers to write reviews, or should they take a more passive approach, waiting until they are reviewed?

Google: That’s a personal style decision for the business owner. As long as the reviews are legitimate and valuable, it doesn’t matter how you gather them.

What is your opinion on the ethical questions surrounding a business incentivizing customers in some way to write a review? What would you see as best practice in this area?

Google: We don’t have a stance on this.

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Google’s Eric Stein also pointed people during the session to a ‘Submit Your Content’ page on Google, which provides guidelines and links for various content types, including local.

Post excerpts from Greg Sterling