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Google Adds Location Management Features For Businesses

Google is rolling out new features for the bulk management tool for Google Places. These include status of your locations on Maps, an updated data conflicts interface, an improved edit timeframe, auto...
Google Adds Location Management Features For Businesses
Written by Chris Crum
  • Google is rolling out new features for the bulk management tool for Google Places. These include status of your locations on Maps, an updated data conflicts interface, an improved edit timeframe, automatically-enabled social features, and new functionality for manager addition/removal and location removal.

    Jade Wang announced the features earlier this week in the Google and Your Business product forum (via Search Engine Land).

    The majority of the features will be rolling out over the course of the coming weeks, but the social features, and manager addition/removal and location removal features should already be available.

    For status of your locations on Maps, Google will display a column that describes the status of each location on Maps, and says you’ll be able to tell “at a glance” which locations are live, unverified, have errors or data conflicts, are duplicates, or are pending review.

    Regarding the updated data conflicts interface, Wang says, “The updated interface will show you details on how a location page might differ on Maps/Search results versus what’s in your dashboard. We’ll show you what is live on Google, and which field is different from what’s in your dashboard. From there, you’ll be able to take action.”

    She says they’re also working on improving the speed with which your data goes live on Google.

    Google has made each location in upgraded and verified accounts have social features automatically enabled. To use these features (like making a post), hover over “Live” in the status column, and click on the Google+ icon.

    “Each location and its corresponding plus page can now only have one verified owner,” says Wang. “This ensures that multiple verified users for the same location are not automatically overwriting each other’s business information.The owner will be able to give manager access to other accounts, if they want to share responsibilities of updating data or posting social content. They can add or remove managers for a particular location by selecting that location and then clicking on Add managers.”

    Those who are owners, and no longer wish to be, can transfer ownership to another user by hovering over the location, and clicking on the manager icon. Those who aren’t owners, and don’t want to be managers, can simply remove the location from their account by selecting location, clicking the trash icon, and then “stop managing”.

    “If you see a location in your account that has Owner conflict, it means that another user account is verified for this business location in Google Places,” says Wang. “You can request to be a manager of the location by selecting that location and then clicking on Request management. If the verified owner of the page adds your account as a manager, you will see a new entry in your dashboard that will show with a status of Live. You can then remove the duplicate location from your dashboard.”

    Finally, if you’re the owner of a Google+ page, you may see a new step when you’re removing the location from your account. Click the “remove” link, and follow the steps from there. Removing a location wont’ necessarily remove it from Google Maps.

    Image via Google

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