What's in a name?

[Jo Shaer]

I just read Mike Blumenthal's latest update with the link to the new Google Places starter page.

Am I being blonde? Is Google Places for Business going to be the new name then?

What happened to Google Plus Local?



---------- Post Merged at 06:18 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 06:15 PM ----------

Ha, at the risk of looking both blonde and mad by talking to myself in Linda's absence, I found an answer in the comments of one of Mike's posts - it's all just an interim measure...

Google?s goal, if I may speak for them, is to have two kinds of pages going forward: Claimed and Unclaimed. A claimed page will either have or not have a social component. So really this upgrade allows a business to have a Page but not have to commit to social.​

 

[Nick Rink]

Google Places for Business is the name they use to promote it to actual businesses, while Google+ Local is for consumers ... I think!!

Am sure it's just a matter of time before they change the name again, just to heap more confusion on us

 

[Jo Shaer]

Hmmm... aren't the businesses their consumers too...? :O

 

[Nick.SEOSpark]

Hey Jo.

It is (indeed) very confusing for everyone (even if you work with it every day!).

Like Blumenthal said here, "it's hard to be clear, when Google themselves are unclear".

Google seemed to be very confused about the branding of their local products constantly shifting on what they name it - It's made the situation very confusing. And here, we often have to clarify with one another exactly what side of Google+ Local/Places we are speaking about

Susan Walsh spoke about this recently as well.

 

[Nick Rink]

And we wonder why our clients get confused over all of this!!

If the client isn't that up with all things Google I tend to try and keep things simple, so I just refer to them as Google's local listings. Otherwise, explaining the difference between Google Places, Google Maps, Google+ Local and a Google+ Local business page can end up confusing the cr*p out of them (and me too).