Google Ties Street View To Local Business Listings

[CHR]

Google Ties Street View To Local Business Listings

From Search Engine Land

Aug 27, 2009 at 6:54pm ET by Matt McGee


If it sometimes seems that there’s no rhyme or reason to the various tools and products Google adds to its properties, this one will change your mind a bit: Google has (finally, some would say) brought together its local business listings with Street View inside of Google Maps.



As the announcement explains, when looking for businesses in Google Maps, a new Street View link will appear when available as part of the link options for individual businesses. It’ll look something like this:

Clicking the new link takes you into Street View, where the business is now identified in its neighborhood and the red marker remains available so users can continue to access other information and links about the business. A cool feature is that, if other businesses from your search results are nearby, you’ll also see the red pin marker for those businesses while in Street View.


Street View can have a powerful, if somewhat under-appreciated marketing impact. It offers visitors a first impression of local businesses, and that first impression might determine the choice of a restaurant or hotel, for example.
Combining Street View with local business listings makes it even more important for local businesses to claim their listing in Google Maps and make sure the map marker is in the right spot. It also puts more of a burden on Google to prevent business listing hijackings, which sometimes involve moving a business’s map marker to a different location.

Naturally, you're only going to be seen in Street View if your street has been filmed and added to G's map.

Be sure to check your listing and see what shows up. Our shop was filmed when we had Seth Godin's Purple Cow on the roof, but the photo is far enough back that it's not really noticeable.

Savvy shoppers will now have the opportunity to 'see' real local flower shops and might even notice if a dOG lists a fake location.

 

[JCT]

Thanks as always Cathy. Google shot showed a redemption center out behind my shop. Not real easy to change, but I'm persistent.

 

[steve]

This is pretty good our main shop in South burlington has a street view attached looks like it was shot last summer as I have deferent flowers in planter this year and if you move the screen you can see down the side of the building too. But they have not done any other street views of Burlington shops including my branch shop.

 

[Flowerchatter03]

Google has our street completely wrong. If you look for our shop, their map shows an empty lot. If you move the map (by hand) west of that location, you will eventually get to the shop photo. It was taken over 2 years ago and lists the wrong street address.

Anyone know how to get this corrected?

 

[Mocha Rose]

I do wish they had a more recent photo of our building. When you type in our exact address, our building was just being built and didn't have a front. We moved in here almost 2 years ago.

Strangely, if you move the arrow one step back and zoom around, there's our shop in a recent photo.

 

[mikec]

Our shop "photo" is a picture of nothing really. It is either a field or the highway in front of the car.

 

[Palms]

It mustn't be done over here yet then as i have just searched and just the normal maps come up, am i doing something wrong?