Will The "Poke" Die With The Old Places Dashboard?

[Colan Nielsen]

It looks as though the "poke" may be obsolete as the new Google Places Dash replaces the old one.

For anyone who isn't familiar with a "poke", check out this post - http://localsearchforum.catalystema...69-google-local-pokes-how-when-poke-your.html

This occurred to me today as I was editing a client's listing in the new dashboard. It appears now that there is no way to do a "poke" AKA null edit. As far as I can tell, you need to make an actual edit to the listing.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Is the "poke" a thing of the past?

Or will the "poke" just need to find a new way?

 

[Cleaner44]

I have noticed the new dashboard updates very quickly and have had an address update on the outside listing within 1 hour. The poke may not be needed anymore which would be great!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I have noticed the new dashboard updates very quickly and have had an address update on the outside listing within 1 hour. The poke may not be needed anymore which would be great!

Excellent point.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Bumping this one because Linda hasn't seen it

Would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for the bump Colan! I did briefly see it one day but could not reply from the hospital.

Not sure about the answer and I don't even know if my test account still works or have time to go in to see. (Think the test account they gave me was only supposed to work for 2 weeks.)

HOWEVER the good news is that I believe 2 of the good changes that are coming along with the new dash minimize the need for POKEs to begin with.

1) I believe something is changing in terms of the amount of trust Google has in the dashboard data. One of the reasons we needed a POKE was to signal Google that "Hey we got a live pro-actively managed listing here. An edit was made, so put more emphasis on the data in this dashboard." If Google holds the data in YOUR dash as a little more trusted and gives it more priority, it should help solve some problems that previously a poke would have helped.

2) NO MORE DUAL CLAIMED LISTING PROBLEMS - One of the biggest reasons we needed POKEs was to overcome problems stemming from hidden merged dupes or dual claimed listings to tell Google "Hey listen to this dashboard, not the other one the previous SEO claimed."

But still pokes were helpful for other problems too. Maybe some creative genius here will come up with a new way to poke the data.

OR maybe things will improve so much we won't need pokes any more. One can hope, right?