Over the weekend, I received a credible rumor from one of the larger companies I work with. Purportedly, they were contacted by their Google Ads rep and urged to purchase more advertising now, inadvance of some “big changes” planned to happen on October 1.
It’s still early, and I haven’t been able to confirm this rumor as of yet, despite putting out feelers to a number of sources. However, it feels believable because Google Plus has promised rollout of business Plus pages at some point, and it would make very good sense in the case of local businesses to have their Google Place pages coordinated with their Google+ profiles/interfaces. I could easily see update streams incorporated into the layout of Place pages, replacing the wimpy status updates that have been on the page thus far.
It’s those business updates which I believe are one of the main areas that would almost certainly be set to change as Google rolls out Plus for businesses. They currently allow 160-character update messages to be posted, but they don’t allow for images, links/tags, or other content. I think this part of the Google Places dashboard might be going away, or might be sharply modified to become synchronous with Google+.
Finally, I think we might see some sort of additional UI treatment in Google Place Search results and/or in Google Maps search results. If you consider that Google desires to promote use of the service, if recent status updates were allowed to be made voluntarily visible to appear in the search results with the business listing, this could be a considerable incentive to integrate with the service.
But, what do you think? Have you also heard some rumors of “something big” to emerge in Google Maps? If so, what incarnation do you think it might take?
At this point, we can’t know much more than that, but the topic makes me want to conjecture about how such a tie-in might look and function.
Without knowing anything further, I’d conjecture that for local businesses, the Google+ page might need to be very closely tied to their Google Plus page. Might they be merged in this new release?
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Chris,
I have also received similar cryptic inquiries from various local players. Methinks something is up.
Yes, I feel it in my bones. Something is coming. 😛
Plus today lots are getting errors and that always makes me worry about a major update. So could be some other changes ready to roll out now.
Hmm…not a whisper of same up here in google.ca land….us Canucks are pretty used to being “behind” the curve when it comes to rollouts….
So we’ll be awatching….but if you all have heard same, yup…I’d put some weight behind that rumour, eh!
🙂
Jim
Ooohhh…..that makes me nervous to make any changes/updates to any place pages in the next few weeks then (including Place Posts) which I feel could have resulted in a higher chance of being hiccuped earlier.
By the way -all the listings affected by the July 19 hiccup came back up on Friday September 9 -approximately 7 1/2 weeks after they went down. They all regained their previous placement (a couple may have lost 1 or 2 spots on the more obscure keywords) and they are all functioning just as before. The timeframe fell right into what Google quoted – 6-10 weeks.
[…] I’m working on some unique tip-filled posts but in the meantime wanted to share some great posts with some good tips from others. When I curate my Google Places news channel @Scoop.it some days I find little of interest. But the past few days there has been a ton of good info so wanted to spread the word. Rumored Google Maps Changes Could Involve Google+ » Nodal Bits […]
Chris,
Yeah I’m really excited to see how this all plays out. It would make sense to tie the GP listings to business G+ pages/profiles. I am sure Google offers will tie in too. Only time will tell. Got Oct 1st marked in my calendar now. 🙂
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I hope that’s not the changes we all have been expecting:
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/09/refocused-design-evolution-continued.html
It’s at least some of the changes…
It would make sense to combine Places pages with Google+ business profiles as it would definitely encourage more businesses to use the Google+ platform to advertise and interact with customers.
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