The advantage of a Facebook Page vs. a Place Page is clear: You can promote your products or services on a platform with a large user base that facilitates conversations and content sharing.

Google Maps Place Pages on the other hand will rank better on Google (surprise, surprise), especially when local searches are involved. Moreover, if you are a small business owner you might find out that your Place Page is already there, populated with content Google scraped from other websites, waiting just for you to claim it.

The lack of social interaction between business owners and customers is what conveys a “dead” feeling in Place Pages (using Andrew Shotland’s words), but the introduction of the ability to reply to reviews could make Place Pages more lively.

Google Lat Long Blog announced today that business owners can now publicly respond to reviews that appear on Place Pages taken from a variety of websites.

Apart from being a powerful online reputation management tool for business owners, reviews can now sparkle conversations and work as a customer support resource that will make Google Place Pages more social and useful.

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Place Pages claimed from Local Business Center will be managed from Google Places, and will benefit from “new” tools, currently rolled out in some US cities: Service areas, Tags, Business photo shoots, Customized QR codes, and Favorite Places decals.

Service areas offers businesses without a storefront or office location (businesses that serve customers at their locations) the opportunity to set multiple geographic areas they can serve.

Tags isn’t really a new tool (it was called Enhanced Listings or Local Listing Ads): Local business owners can choose to promote one specific feature of their listing (photos, videos, coupons, directions, menu, etc.) that will appear highlighted with a yellow mark in search results. It’s actually a local business ad that costs a $25 monthly flat fee.

Business photo shoots is a free service offered by Google, that will send photographers to take pictures of the interior of businesses upon request. I can imagine that sooner or later these kind of photo shoots and videos will be integrated in Google Maps Streetview.

QR codes will be available to be placed in business cards and marketing materials, or even better used with the Favorite Places program, in order to allow customers with smartphones to scan the window decal QR code and gain access to special offers (and targeted ads).

Businesses will be able to post real-time updates to their Place Pages, making it easy to communicate with customers about the availability of certain products for instance, or promote special offers using coupons.

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Local Listing Ads will consist simply of a business name, contact information and a link that will be shown only for searches for a business in its local area on Google.com and Google Maps.

Google is making advertising online easy for small business owners: Local Listing Ads are quick to set up after a business is verified on Local Business Center and a category is chosen. Moreover, Place Pages can be used as landing pages for Local Listing Ads and apparently they are designed to provide high conversion rates.

Advantages of Local Listing Ads for small local businesses

Small business owners can get the first 30 days free to test Local Listing Ads’ unique features:

• Ads are shown on Google.com and Google Maps with automated local geo targeting
• Location and business category determine a flat monthly fee
• Therefore there’s no need for keyword bidding and management
• Google provides free call-tracking and analytic reports

Exploiting new opportunities in SEM and Social Media for local businesses can become an effective strategy for small business owners in the struggle to cope with recession.

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Every place in the world could have a web page linked on its corresponding Google Maps result page that aggregates all the relevant information about it: photos, videos, driving directions, reviews, related websites and of course contextual ads.

Content extracted from recommendation directories will make Place Pages relevant for local businesses. User generated content in fact is the key to a fast growth of Place Pages but also new reputation management concerns. Small business owners will be able to update business details through the Local Business Center, or create a page using Google Map Maker if there isn’t one yet, without the need of designing a website from scratch.

Place Pages potential for SEM and SEO

Place Pages are designed to be relevant, and being linked on Google Maps they have a very high potential for ranking well in Google SERPs. However, Google does not intend to show these pages on organic results by default, unless Place Pages get referred to by other websites.

What makes Place Pages especially interesting for local businesses, apart from the fact that they are free, is their nature of being automatically generated and designed to be effective landing pages.

As Eric Fredine points out on predictabuy.com, conversion rates would benefit from a design that makes automated A/B testing possible, because of the way the content is organized in blocks that can be easily moved around, changed in size or not displayed at all depending on the traffic source and search intent.

Once conversion events, like booking hotel rooms or Google Voice table reservations for restaurants, are implemented in Place Pages, the SEM potential for local merchants and small businesses will be fully exploited.

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DigitalGlobe predicts that WorldView 2 will double the company’s capacity to collect imagery. The top resolution of this satellite can astoundingly detect features as small as 0.46 meters. In theory, that could spot a dog or cat running around! This new addition to both Google and Bing Maps will bring us some pretty crisp images from around the globe.

Microsoft is also using this experience to launch Mission: 1000 Rockets, “an educational project developed by Bing to both inspire passion for scientific discovery in young people and to celebrate the launch of the Delta II rocket…” In other words, it is a rocket design contest in the US to get young people across the country to learn about rockets, rocketry, and more general scientific principles.

Here’s a peek at the launch:

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