Google Local Guidelines - Insights from Top Contributors

[Linda Buquet]

What's missing from the Google Local (Google My Business) Guidelines and what would you change?

That was the question Phil Rozek posed to some of the most active Google Top Contributors last week.
Mike Blumenthal, Joy Hawkins, Colan Nielsen, Nyagoslav Zhekov (ex TC) and I all weighed in.

<a href="http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2014/09/02/whats-missing-from-the-google-places-quality-guidelines/">What’s Missing from the Google Places Quality Guidelines?</a>
LocalVisibilitySystem.com

The Google Places Quality Guidelines doc doesn’t even contain all the rules you need to follow. Between the scattered letters of the law, gray areas abound.

It’s harder than it used to be to mess up and get a Places penalty, and the rules are slowly getting crisper. But you’d still better understand and follow the rules, or your visibility to customers can go up in a puff of smoke.

Worst of all, it’s never clear how serious Google is about enforcing the rules – not only in terms of which rules are enforced, but also in terms of what happens to business owners who disregard them.

Maybe it’s only fitting that Google’s local-business guidelines are a mess.

But Google’s mess is your problem. You need more than a basic understanding of the rules if you want to navigate the rubble and stay out of trouble.

Head over to read what we have to say, then weigh in below...

And here's another good related thread, based around a post Mary Bowling did at LocalU.
<a href="http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local-important/17033-google-places-guidelines-reading-between-lines-changes.html">Google Places Guidelines - Reading Between the Lines and Changes</a>

Do you have any pet peeves about the Guidelines?
Is there anything you think should be spelled out more clearly?