Google rolls out My Business
Have you lost your Places for Business listing?
Google announced on 11 June the launch of new platform for SMBs. The new Google My Business is supposed to make getting found online easier for local businesses as well as brands. It is a unified interface for Google+ Local and Places for Business, to Update your business info, share news, events and updates with customers, and respond to Google reviews of your company.
Interestingly, it has also released Google My Business Android app and Insights, similar to Facebook Insights for pages. Insights shows post and profile data over time : views, clicks, interactions. Interactions includes number of actions taken : +1 clicks, shares and comments on posts. Audience section gives you number of new followers, breakdown of countries and he gender and age of your total followers.
Existing Google Places and Google+ Pages users are promised to be "automatically upgraded to Google My Business." But life is not so simple for everybody. You need to log into My Business and check out if all your old Places for Business listings are intact with reviews, posts, etc.
You may find that some listings have been disabled or in other words, removed from online search results including Maps :
* Name of your page has been changed to "A Google+ page."
* All reviews, owner responses, photos would have been removed.
* The page and all followers, +1's, and posts are hidden
If this happens, you will be directed to refer here. The company does not say why exactly are pages disabled. To make your business appear on Google Maps and search, you are asked to create a new page, verify it, and contact support to complete verification and recover to have any former reviews. Unfortunately, verifications happens through code sent by post, and may take weeks.
