We’re a Favorite Place on Google – Sort of

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I returned to the office today after being away on vacation to find a letter and decal from Google recognizing our company as a “Favorite Place on Google.”  The letter reads in part“Because you’re so popular, we’re enclosing a window decal that shows customers you’re a ‘Favorite Place on Google.’ The sticker includes a special bar code that potential customers may scan with cameras on their phones.  Then they can see your business listing on Google, read and write reviews, and add you as a favorite right there.”

There’s only one problem,  after a Google employee Brian B apparently lied lacked the information necessary to give an accurate answer to queries about the problem back in November about how there was a bug keeping web site design and marketing firms from showing up; Google employee Joel H of the “Geo Consumer Operations Team” has now admitted in the same thread as Brian B that the manipulation of Web firm listings in search is intentional.

Today, we’re intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today. We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham]. I’m sure some of you feel we should be displaying local results for queries like [Web Design Vancouver]. I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.

I’ll give the usual disclaimer that we’re constantly working on improving the user experience and results will vary over time. So, this could change in the future, but I wanted to be explicit about what we’re doing today.

Matt McGee, over at Search Engine Land, points out that nearly identical searches with the exception of the word “in” return entirely different results.

Here’s a screen shot of the results for Website Design in Mountain View Ca

googlewebsitedesign

Do the same search but drop the word “in” and sure enough the local 7 pack disappears Google and all.

Mike Blumenthal, who writes one of the definitive blogs on Google Maps, has posted some good questions that I would love to hear answers for from Google even if they did treat themselves the same as their treating everyone else with a listing for Website Design ;-)

Categories: Google

2 Responses to “We’re a Favorite Place on Google – Sort of” Comment RSS feed

  • Chris Web
    January 12th, 2010 7:59 am
    #1

    What a great idea, lets you advertise Google even further!

  • Simon
    July 18th, 2011 1:14 pm
    #2

    Hi

    At least you are lucky. In the UK, Google do not send out the window sticker for a Google Place registration. I set up a number of my web design clients in Colchester and none received the sticker.

    On a slightly different point. I set up an offer for my web design service on the Google Places offer page. I then generated the code for the QR code to go to the offer and it does not work.

    Ho hum.