When was the last time you Googled yourself? Not in the vainglorious personal sense, rather, in a business sense.
Enter pretty much any company name into the search behemoth and more often than not a 'place page' linking through to Google Maps will pop up among the first two or three listings. If it's not, click on the 'maps' tab at the top of the page and you'll see what I'm on about. These listings are powered by 'Google Places'.
The all-knowing bots at Google will have put together information from interweb sources to come up with some basic details about your company. Are they correct? And is the little red marker thingy on the map actually centred on your actual address?
You can change all this, and you can claim your information and turn it into an 'owner-verified listing'. You can add a contact email, your website address, a business description of up to 200 characters, 10 images, five videos... as far as I can tell, this is all FREE.
Given Google's dominance in the search space, and the small matter of it being the world's most visited website, you'd be mad not to, right?
Well. This morning I Googled 25 printing businesses at random. Big companies and small companies, located in all corners of the country. Eight out of the 25 had owner-verified Google Places listings. So well done to Headley Brothers, Integrity Print, Piccolo Press, Pindar, SP Group, Sterling Press, Webmart, and Wyndeham Heron.
Nil point to the 68% of my sample who have failed to take control of their own information.
Even if you're not a retail outlet or in the business of generating sales online, it still makes sense to have as much accurate information about your business and your brand listed by this internet power player. That way, when, for example, a potential client Googles you everything will be just as peachy as it can be. There's a useful YouTube video explaining how it all works, and here's the Google Places start page.
What's more, as Google will send a letter with a PIN and activation instructions to the business address in order to validate it, you'll be getting this most digital of digital businesses to generate a bit more print too. What could be sweeter than that?
