Google Places - How to Claim Your Business Listing on Google Places

Before you can really take advantage of the benefits of Google Places, you need to make it your own.  If you have been in business for a year or so, you may be listed already.  However, the information may or may not even be correct.  And you can be certain that the information will not be as good as you can make it.  Additionally, claiming your Google Places Listing is known to be one of the most important factors in determining how you rank compared to your competitors. 

There are two ways to go about claiming your listing.  First you need a Google Account.  You can go to Google.com or to Gmail.com and set up an account.  Once you have an account go to local.Google.com.  This will take you to a page that looks like this.

To the left hand side you will notice it says "Put your business on Google Maps."  My son the editor would maintain that they should have changed this to "places" by now.  :  )    When you click on this link you will get this page.

If this is a brand new account with Google, you won't have all these things, but you will at least have the choice of Google Places.  Click on that link and you will go to a page that looks like this:

Start adding in your company name address and the rest of the items asked for.  As you do this, the map on the right will go more and more local, eventually ending up at your location.  When you finish this section, you will see a continue bar, click on that and you will be given some choices.  If your company is already listed, Google will offer you one or more chances to claim the existing listing.  If you see a good listing or even one that is close to correct, go ahead and choose that and continue.

If none of the listings they show is you or if there is no options at all, then just follow the instructions.  No matter what you do, when you continue, you will now be back to the form and there will be more things to fill out.  Finish filling out the form using all the best practices shown on this blog.  At the bottom of the page you will be asked to submit.

Usually after submitting, you will get a choice of confirming your listing by phone or by post card.  The post card now shows that it will come in a week.  For most folks, I would suggest that you just take the phone call, get the code and enter it into the box as shown.  Then you are done claiming the listing.