Google Places for Business recently announced an update to its quality guidelines that allows businesses to add a descriptor to its business name that clarifies what the business is about. Some worry this opens listings up to major spam.
Google Places for Business has updated its quality guidelines to allow a descriptor of a business to be listed in conjunction with the business name … but not everyone thinks this update is quality.
From the Google Places help files, the changes are reflected below:
Business Name:
- Your title should reflect your business’s real-world title.
- In addition to your business’s real-world title, you may include a single descriptor that helps customers locate your business or understand what your business offers.
- Marketing taglines, phone numbers, store codes, or URLs are not valid descriptors.
- Examples of acceptable titles with descriptors (in italics for demonstration purposes) are “Starbucks Downtown” or “Joe’s Pizza Restaurant“. Examples that would not be accepted would be “#1 Seattle Plumbing”, “Joe’s Pizza Best Delivery” or “Joe’s Pizza Restaurant Dallas“.
Mike Blumenthal of Blumenthals.com had this to say of the change:
Obviously for Google to make this change, they must think that they can control the inane and insane abuse that is likely to occur. Either business name is no longer so important in defining search results or the descriptor (which can only be added via the dashboard) is ignored or Google is so confident that they know what the business name is that they can penalize abusers.
Comments on Blumenthal’s blog also show a slightly cold reception of the update, with many believing this will open up listings to spam that won’t be easy to detect and control.
What do you think about the update?