Going Places

It used to be just a simple listing service from Google called ‘Local Business’ and it worked like Yellow Pages…but many centuries better than the huge piles of physical directories that we used to get from our local phone companies. The aim is help folks like us find the right plumber, a used car salesman, a book store or an electrician to fix up our faulty sockets.

Recently, Google upped the ante with a re-branded Local Business and called it ‘Places’. At the current moment, we heard that the launch is going to be focused on large cities in the United States, in Japan and also Australia. What is different about this new relaunched, re-branded and repackaged service? Good question.

First of all, local businesses are being courted with free photography services which means that if you got your business listed in Places, Google will send a professional photographer over to your establishment (if you are a retail outlet, that is. There isn’t much point in having someone pro take interior pictures of your office) and have it posted up along with your listing in Places. For free.

If you have to get out of your office to serve people in their homes, you also get to tell others (with the help of a map) where you serve. One might question, however, how it would be for people who worked out of the comfort of their own homes. Not everyone has an office, as it is the latest business trend these days. You can choose to keep your address private while indicating the places that you are willing to serve.

For a small fee, those who wish to stand out more amongst their competitors can opt to pay a small monthly feature fee of $25 for the Tags tool. Now, don’t get all excited yet, people, because the Tags service is only on roll-out plan in certain cities. Some of the cities include Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Atlanta and San Jose.

And of course, this is not an advertorial. We are merely interested in blogging about this launch because the new re-branded service is going to include a QR Code for the business. It’s been said that people can now carry the QR Code around in their cell phones to facilitate quick promotion – and they would be right on that count.