Google changed the face of Google Places for Business, replacing this with the new Google+ Local pages. The purpose was for Google to attract more businesses to use its Google+ business page features, and to encourage more interactions from the Google+ community, including reviews, photo sharing, ratings and more. By streamlining the layout and putting more focus on photos and reviews, Google hopes to help business owners to highlight what makes their business truly unique.
Google integrated Zagat reviews as well, and updated the scoring system to Zagat’s time-tested 30-point scale, so that users can better share their view about what makes a place unique.
Business owners can manage their Google+ Local listings from Google Places for Business, verifying basic listing data, making updates, and responding to reviews. For users of AdWords Express, the ads will operate as normal and they’ll automatically redirect people to the destination and Google+ Local listing.
Updating your listing on Google+ Local is not only an imperative SEO strategy, but offers excellent opportunities to engage customers and reach further audiences.
A question is whether to use yelp or google places, which had more weight, which will have more weight? We all know yelp is AWESOME for reviews, but will Google award more “points” if you use Google places…humm…it is almost like the owl asked “how many licks will it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?”