If you read blog posts like this one you might come away with the impression that your small local business is insignificant, worthless, and doomed to get lost in the great cyberspace shuffle. Don’t believe it for a minute. First off, Mike Blumenthal is absolutely correct about Google’s algorithm. It is impersonal and computational. But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a better ranking.
What should you if you find your small business not having the ranking in Google Places that you think it deserves? Will writing a letter to Google make it better? Not likely.
What I suggest is studying Google’s rankings to get some kind of clue as to how the rankings are the way they are. One of the most important things to remember about Google Places rankings is that they are based in part on distance from the searcher. So if your business is located in a southern suburb of your city and a searcher on the north side of town is looking for your type of business, you may or may not appear in their search results depending on how they write their query and how much competition you have. That’s vague, I know, but that’s how the algorithm works.
If you feel lost in the cyberspace shuffle and you’re wondering why your business isn’t ranking better in Google Places – or anywhere else – contact an Internet marketing expert for a consultation.
