SEO concerns about Google Places

Google has, first and foremost, always been a search engine to help users find sites relevant to their search queries. Even with the introduction of Google tools such as Gmail and Google Maps, its first priority was always to help people find what they were looking for, and then move out the way as quickly as possible.

However, with the introduction of Google Places this could be set to change and it has given rise to concerns amongst those in the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

Google launched Google Places last week as part of Google Maps. Its purpose is to provide a search page for local businesses combining details such as business description, address, telephone number and website as well as the obvious maps and directions. Initially this would seem like a great application. It gives more functionality to Google Maps by allowing users to click on a pin on the map which will then bring up a bubble, from where you can click for more info. This will then invariably take you to the Google Places page.

So far it all sounds great; however it is on Google’s main search page where the issues tend to occur. On some searches Google appears to be indexing the Places pages. Google controls its own index, and therefore is able to push its own products and services to the top of the results should it so wish. Google denies that this is taking place; but the very fact that they are indexing these Places pages at all, when the Google places page is already available from the Google maps result, is cause for concern. In some cases this can mean that in the top ten results alone, there can be two instances where Google is linking back to its own content.

I cannot deny that Google Places is a very useful tool, and it definitely makes sense to pull all the information about a business together. However if the tool continues to appear in the main search results pages Google will be accused of hoarding links for themselves. This would be going against their main principle of linking users to the best information on the internet, and then moving out of the way.

Gemma Neesham
Natural SEO Programmer