Been spending the morning tweaking some of my client’s Google Local Business Centre (GLBC) listings to take into account some pretty useful new features that the boffins have introduced.
One of the points I never tire of making when I’m out and about talking to other business owners is that you may not actually need a website…but what you do need is a web presence. GLBC provides this and sometimes a well constructed GLBC listing is all you need to keep the new clients rolling in. Why?
Take a look at these search results for the term ‘glasgow builder’.
By the time Google serves the adverts at the top and then lists the results from Google Local Business Centre, there is no space for any organic results on the screen.
A recent study from Jakob Nielsen indicating that web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. That means the large majority of searchers won’t bother scrolling down for the results if they can see a listing in front of them that holds their attention.
Another great feature of GLBC is the reviews option. Users may be tempted to click on a result from GLBC if it has lots of reviews attached to it.
Google Local Business Centre new features
Given the amount of prime page real estate Google is allocating to it’s GLBC listings these days, it’s obviously something they are choosing to focus on. In fact, they’ve introduced some new features in the past week that increases the efficacy of the GLBC system greatly – and makes it more usable for businesses that aren’t tied to a specific location.
1. You can now specify whether your business location is a destination for customers (ie a shop where they come to you) or whether your location is merely an office and you take your service to your customers (termed “”this business serves customer at their locations”). This works on a number of levels but the main benefit is that if you deliver your service at your customer’s locations then you now have an opportunity to say how wide your service area is.
2. “Do not show my business address on my Maps listing” allows you to hide your business address whilst still maintaining a presence in GLBC listings. This is tremendously helpful for home-based businesses and anyone who has no interest in receiving business visits to their home address. It remains to be seen whether this privacy option has an overall impact in your GLBC listing. I’m currently testing it out.
It will be interesting to see how users adapt and abuse these new features. In theory, you would be able to hide your address but say you cover an area almost 2000 miles in diameter but I’m pretty sure this will have an adverse effect on listings.