Re: Google "My Business" Launches! Goodbye Places for Business! HUGE Google Update!
OK so I created some controversy and maybe was not technically correct in my initial announcement title. My post initially said "Goodbye Google+ Local.
I explained why I said G+ Local even though that was not technically correct
here. But in a nutshell my audience and the people I serve are mainly consultants that kinda get it, not so much SMBs. And I've had soooo many consultants here at the forum and via email tell me I was wrong to still call 'it' Place or refer to a Place page. They thought I was behind the times. Then I'd have to point out that in the dash and help docs (up until 2 days ago) it was still called Places for Business and that was the business owner brand. It was only the public facing page that was rebranded to Google+ Local. But eventually the majority of consultants started calling it Google+ Local EVEN IF they were referring to the dashboard.
So anyway in my announcement I struggled and decided to use the most popular name, even though technically Google+ Local did not change, BECAUSE everyone was so confused they thought the old dash was G+ Local and thought I was behind the times to still refer to Places. So in a nutshell that's why I did it. But it created controversy which you can read in the thread above if you like.
OK here is clarification about the branding confusion & what changed!
The back end owner dashboard was rebranded from Places for Business to "My Business".
The public facing live page has not been rebranded but still gets called a variety of names.
(So still a little confusing.).
Just copied an answer I gave at over at
Mike's blog.
@Danielle asked:
“I was just wondering now that there is Google My Business, does this mean that the Google Places and Google+ Local no longer exist?”
My Reply:
I’ve been hashing this out with some leading local search consultants today and I asked Google for clarification to be sure we are all clear.
The "Places for Business" dashboard (where you used to edit listings) was re-branded "My Business".
My Business is in fact the dashboard for creating ALL G+ pages now, even a non-local brand page.
So yes Places is gone.
But this re-branding was just on the business owner and/or page creation side.
So it's an internal change on the back end dashboard - that unifies and simplifies everything.
The branding has not been changed on the public facing page.
But really now all pages are just Google+ Pages.
If you want to differentiate you could call the local page a Google+ local page.
And many will still call it Google+ Local.
But Google often simply calls it a "local listing" or sometimes a local Google+ listing (Flipped word order.)
I'm going to have to re-program my brain to drop Google Places. I've lived and breathed it 70 hours a week for a long time now.
I think generically I'll refer to it still as a Google+ Local listing or maybe just Google Local. And when I'm talking about changes in dash I'll use "My Business" or GMB for short.
So anyway I know, still a little confusing, but does that help clarify?
AND FYI Business owners don't care that much and may call it one of 8 other names. Most Dentists still call it a Place page. So in that thread on top we were a bunch of consultants talking in an echo chamber just trying to hammer it out. In talking to business owners just use "Google My Business" or Google+ Local depending on if you are talking about the dashboard or the live page.
b/c I know that was their ultimate goal 
