Updated: June 28, 2009
Google has made some much needed changes to its business listing quality guidelines in Google Maps. This change is welcomed by professional SEOs as necessary to limiting the onslaught spam entries to the Google Local Business Center that has occurred over the past two years.
The new general guidelines went into effect yesterday and include:
1. Only enter listings for businesses you own or are explicitly authorized to represent
2. Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website
3. Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords into the title field, and do not include phone numbers and URLs in the title along with your proper business name
4. Create only one listing for each physical location of your business.
5. When entering categories, use only those that directly describe your business. Do not submit related categories that do not define your business.
6. Provide information that best identifies your individual locations and provides users with the most direct path to your business.
7. Provide the one URL that belongs to your business both in terms of the landing page and the displayed URL. Pages that redirect to another domain, or act as “click through” sites may lead to penalization.
8. Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title, address or category fields.
This list is only general as other factors could lead to your site being removed. If you’re not sure if something would be allowed or not, err on the caution or get clarification by posting a question in Maps Help Forum.
Search engine optimization professionals are delighted Google has made these changes…see some of their reaction in this Webmaster World discussion thread.