Have you noticed the local business listings you occasionally get when doing a search in Google? These businesses appear because they have set up a Google Maps listing. A free listing on Google Maps makes it easy for prospective customers to find you. All you need to do is use the Local Business Center to create your free Google Maps listing. When potential customers search for local information, they'll find your business. Your listing can include your address, hours of business and lots more.
When do Google Maps Listings appear?
When you do a search for a business type in a specific area ie ‘coffee shop Terrigal’, a list of coffee shops in the area will appear in the search results.
If you click on the listing, it will bring you straight to their website. If the business has no website, it will display all information that the business has supplied.
You can also select the Google Maps option and do the same search there:
The results will appear here with all other Google Map Listings.
When in Google Maps, you can click on the listing and it will highlight the business on the map and display more information.
Who is listed in Google Maps or Local Business Results?
One point to note is that you don’t need a website to be listed! Any business or organisation can add a listing. Google will use the address details entered on the listing to work out the nearest relevant businesses for the search query. This means that a listing can appear under a nearby suburb or town even if that suburb is not the address. For example, a hairdresser located in Coogee may appear when searches are done for both ‘hairdresser Coogee’ or ‘hairdresser Randwick’. Google will work this out based on distance from the location searched.
How do I add my business to Google Maps or Local Business Results?
- Firstly you will need to set up a Gmail or Google account.
- To do this go to the Local Business Centre and click on the Create a New Google Account option.
- Log into your Google Account and select the ‘Add New Listing’ Option.
- Follow the prompts and remember to make sure the marker is in the correct position on the Google Map.
- Note that all of the information you enter will be visible to the public so check for spelling errors, grammatical errors etc.
- Once you have completed your listing and have requested and received your PIN, you will need to verify by entering the PIN.
- Once you have verified the details, your listing will be visible within 24hours.
Add Google Maps to your Website
If you have a website, why not add Google Maps to it? It’s really quite simple - just copy and paste some HTML. Once you embed the map you can interact with it just as you would on the Google Maps site ie panning, zooming, and moving between panoramas.
Follow these three simple steps:
- Go to Google Maps and pull up the map you want to embed.
- Click "Link" in the top right-hand corner. Copy the text that you see in the second box under ‘Paste HTML to embed in website’.
- Paste that text into the HTML of your webpage.
It’s as easy as that!
Refer to Google Help for more information on embedding Google Maps.
For another powerful Google tool that is also available for free – check out this article on Google Calendars. |
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