If you “follow me” and read my blogposts (rants) you might have noticed I seem to have gotten myself into a “ranting niche” with Google Local Business Listings, and today when sitting down to write a blogpost it’s yet again Google Local that I have “a bone to pick” with.

Google Local Business Listings is Going Places (see what I did there)
First of all,  it’s now officially not called Google Local Business listings anymore, nope, it’s called Google Places.  Yep that’s right “great” name change. But if your read the linked article it’s also some new functionalities with this re-branding, albeit slightly boring updates.

In the last 6 months I’ve taken a particular interest in Google Local (damn it, it’s going to take some doing getting used to calling it “Google Places”), one of the reasons my interest has grown is admitately, entirely selfish. One of my largest clients (a hotel chain) are ideal candidates for local business listings. It was about last July we started optimising their local business listings and we saw immense growth, not just in traffic but in actual conversions. This has now become a central part of their search marketing strategy, in fact it’s kind of changed our the entire initial strategy. Local has been a goldmine for relevant traffic for this client and the focus has been turned to primarily local. (more…)