If you have an offline presence that services a particular region then you should have an entry in Google’s Local Business Listing service. This is a service that is a part of Google Maps. Google will display a map with a list of local businesses when a search term has been entered. It should certainly be a part of your marketing strategy to get your business name in as many places as possible.

For those that have listings, you may want to check your current details against the new set of quality guidelines. The changes are not so much major as tinkering but if you don’t adhere to them, you may find your listing removed.

Changes include the banning of post office box addresses and call center phone numbers. Your address must now be a physical street address. Likewise, your phone number must be a direct number to your business and not to a call center.

The biggest change is in the business name. It must be exactly the same as that which appears on your legal documents – in other words, your official and legal business name. You cannot add any words (like keywords) to that name.

I am not sure if that last change is such a good idea. I know of many businesses that have a legal name like ‘Smith and Son’. Now in the past they may have made their entry ‘Smith and Son – Master Plumbers’. This is now forbidden under Google’s new terms of service. I think the later entry is probably as much help to searchers as it is to the business. Still, I can see how it could be abused and why the change. ‘Smith and Son’ could of course register a new business name that includes Master Plumber and so meet the Google TOS for Local Business Listings.

You can see all the quality guidelines here. If you are not listed, you should be. It costs nothing, only takes about 30 minutes to setup completely and you may find you receive extra customers through the listing.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 5:09 am and is filed under Local Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.