New Google Plus Taking Shape Sept 1, 2012. Now Wha

I'm looking at one of my client's fully merged and optimized Google Places page.  Believe me when i tell you that there are almost no fully merged and optimized pages to look at.  But even so, I'm not getting a thrill, here.  Not saying that Google Places isn't or won't be of enormous importance to small, local business owners, but this could be so much more.

You have some of the same basics as has been true for a while.  Company information?  Just the very basics.  Reviews get a major piece of the page.  So what is new.  The tabs.  For now there are potentially four tabs that we have found.  Posts, Pictures, Videos, and About.  Potentially there is room for one more tab.

The post section provides you with the current stream of posts from the business page stream.  Pictures can be uploaded.  Videos are uploaded, not as YouTube videos, but as MP4's.  As before, there doesn't appear to be any way to title or describe the videos, so the visitor has to take pot luck as to what he might see. 

Contrast the effort by Google and that of Linked in.

165,000,000 folks are turning to Linked in for many of their local service provider solutions.  And as noted in a recent blog post about Linked in, their content opportunity for the local business owner is fantastic.  In fact, retailers might soon find this is a great place to show their wares.  This is especially true when you realize that the Linked in member is much more affluent that any other directory or social media site. 

One has to ask themselves why Google, with all their size, power, and money, has produced such a lame business page when the stakes are so high and others are leading the way to more robust and interesting approaches.