I’ll put up a part here in this post to give you guys a preview of what I am talking about. This part is about adding URL parameters to your Local Business Center URL’s. In the full article you will also learn how to track the vertical ‘maps.google.com’ and the 3-click-path traffic from the Universal Search results.

Feel free to leave a comment here or on Mike B’s blog!

Track URLs in Local Business Center

First of all, we want to track the URLs in the Local Business Center. The Local Business Center provides very basic information. Impressions and Views. Google is very vague in their answers in the help groups/forum on what an impression or a view actually mean. Does it account universal search traffic as well? or just directly Google Maps related views/clicks? And is this data accurate? We will decide to monitor this not from the Local Business Center but rather with Google Analytics.

Imagine your business has 2 store locations. Each in a different city/state. Your website has one URL www.example.com.

We will give each location a URL with GA parameters. By doing this, we will create a ‘virtual’ campaign in GA for our local listing.

In order to do this we will use the Google Analytics URL builder tool, which you can find here: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

You only need to fill in your specific location URL. the campaign source (in this case; google), the campaign medium (maps) and give it a campaign name, for example local_location_1.

Now copy the full URL and enter it in the Local Business Center for that specific listing. Everything should work okay (although the URL might be a bit long for the LBC to display it properly). Note that Google Maps will only display the part of the URL before the parameters!

Track Local campaign using 301 Redirects

You can do the same using a 301 redirect. (this is my preferred method, but you will have to know how 301 redirects work. ) Using 301 redirects you will be able to have a clean URL in your local business center.

In this case the Google Local Business Center contains the following URL :

www.example.com/locationpage

Google Maps will display :

www.example.com

clicking on the link in Google Maps will actually bring you to :

www.example.com/location/city/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=local&utm_campaign=local_location_1

That’s it to track your Local Business using a virtual Campaign!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Tracking Local Search traffic using Analytics

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Update: as Maps Guide Brian posted in the Google Groups the Local Business Center will also undergo some maintenance the 6th of November.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Google Local Business Center awaiting updates

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You can find the guidelines by clicking on the following link:
Google Help Center Guidelines for Local Business Center Submissions

Honestly, I still find the guidelines a bit vague, taken into account previous statements;
“be as descriptive if you can for your business in your business title’ doesn’t really correspond with “Represent your business as it appears in real life”. Or is this just my point of view?

Can I use “Italian Ice cream and Cappuccino Bar Bella Napoli” or should it just say “Bella Napoli” because I registered with chamber of commerce with that name?
In my opinion it should add up to the user experience and thus allowing the first one.

In the Help Center, Google is now also referring to the Google Maps group for Business Owners where they can report abuse of the Quality Guidelines.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

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First, the use of too many capitals is being prohibited. The following screenshot shows an example of use of roman numbers and its being classified as ‘overuse’ of capitals. Sounds to me like they are trying to prevent people from leaving on their CAPS LOCK (shoutness level).

Also, the use of too many punctuations is being prohibited, since recently, as we could also tell from the increasing number of posts about this in the google maps group.

I submitted split hours, using the bulk-upload feature. Now when editing that listing manually it starts complaining about overlapping hours.
All days have split hours, except Saturday, where only mornings are available. So Google puts the after hours in 12:00AM till 12:00AM. Trying to save these, will result in the following message (the message about repeated punctuation applies to the previous example):

Another one; interesting one actually! Is this a translation error or does this mean that Google is working on something in the future to enable verification by email? Notice the term ‘correo electrónico’ which is Spanish for email. Clicking it however, results in a regular mail verification method.

Have you been noticing other oddities or strange behavior of the Local Business Center? Please let us know in the comments!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Local Business Center Oddities

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So it’s not necessary anymore to use the trick I used for you US users to change the interface/engine by switching back to a European one, where we are still awaiting the updates.

Screen shot below shows the button back in action in the ‘new’ / US interface of the Local Business Center

Thanks Map Guides! And oh yeah

Thanks for letting us know what things make the LBC a better place!

You can read those here!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Fix incorrect marker option is back!

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The Local Business Center is asking me to provide my email preferences as you can see in the screenshot (click to enlarge).

It seems that now you are able to receive notifications when things are changing to listings in your account. That would be great! I look forward to the first emails!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Email preferences Local Business Center

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Thanks for this feedback. We didn’t think that the “edit incorrect marker
location” might still be necessary after verification, but you’ve given us
some clear evidence that it is. We’ll be adding this capability back in.

Now that solves some of the issues, but not all, hopefully they’ve read this post about updates on the local business center!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

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Some ’statistics’:
amount of impressions were in thousands, the amount of clicks in hundreds. But no URL listed. Oops!

lesson learned: provide Local Business Center with full details about your business. This will increase traffic at no cost.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Local Business Ads owners – please use the LBC to the fullest

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• How do I correct my incorrect marker position after I’ve added the listing?
• Where is the bulk upload feature of images like requested here
• The maps overlay in the LBc doesn’t seem to be working in Safari (for windows, or is my system just buggin? )
• Why is this still not available in Europe ??? (including the free category selection!)
• While using this interface I wasn’t asked to re-enter my PIN for my listings, maybe this is because I use bulk-upload instead of manual verification?

Also while trying to delete a listing I was presented with the following screen, which I’m a bit puzzled about, because will Google Maps remove your listings and those from trusted sources if you want them to? What about

“To geographically organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Or is this the useful part?

Here’s the screenshot btw (click to enlarge) :

Also, I must note that I really like the ‘verified local submitter’ idea in a comment from AmhedF back at Mike’s blog. Especially for agencies or people monitoring large accounts, it’s unbearable and a real pain having to re-verify and re-enter those PIN’s for all of your listings. There should be a better and more efficient way to fight map spam.

Update: Seems like they are having some problems using bulk-uploads in the new interface. In the meanwhile, people in desperate need of getting their business listings online use the bulk upload feature can use the work around I mentioned at Mike’s post about this at his blog:

“change the &gl parameter and/or domain to a european one, you can keep the hl in your prefered language“

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

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