Google Makes Reputation Management Easier for Local Businesses

Google is now letting businesses respond to reviews posted on their Place Pages in Google Maps. This should be huge for reputation management, particularly as Google continues to place increased emphasis on these pages.

"Engaging with the people who have shared their thoughts about your business is a great way to get to know your customers and find out more," says John Maguire of the Google Place Page team. "Both positive and negative feedback can be good for your business and help it grow (even though it's sometimes hard to hear). By responding, you can build stronger relationships with existing and prospective customers."

Google Ditches Local Listings for SEOs and Designers - By Chris Crum

Reference: http://www.webpronews.com/

As 2009 came to a close, Google managed to get SEOs riled up for one last controversial topic. For some time, SEOs and web designers have been noticing that Google has not been showing local listings in search results for queries related to their businesses - even location-specific ones.

Should SEOs and designers be worried about local listings?

As Matt McGee mentions in a Search Engine Land piece, even a query like "candy" without any geographical indicator will bring up a seven-pack of local results, but a query for "seo" or "web design" or even something as specific as "web design vancouver" will bring up no local listings whatsoever (although the organic results still heavily favor local businesses in location-specific queries).

 

Needless to say, some SEOs and designers are taking this as something of a slap in the face, justified or not. Search engine optimization and web design are both services after all, and just about every other type of service you can think of will yield local listings in a Google search.