Here’s a bit of exciting news for those of you with Google Places listings in the US, Australia and New Zealand.
Google is inviting businesses to apply to have a Business Photo Shoot – where photographs of your business will be taken by Google Streetview staff (the guys that drive around photographing all the roads for Google Maps).
Apart from being a free service, the advantage here is that the photos of your business will appear on your Google Places listing, giving you not only another channel to impress potential customers, but also building up trust about your business in the eyes of Google.
At the SMX Melbourne conference last week, one of the speakers suggested that companies taking part in the Business Photo Shoot may well be given a slight boost in their Google Places rankings because Google has endorsed them and verified their legitimacy. While Google obviously hasn’t made any announcement to this effect, it makes sense that businesses known to Google might be given some type of advantage over businesses Google hasn’t verified.
So I would highly recommend you apply to participate in the scheme! At this stage, only businesses in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan are eligible to participate and only select cities in those countries. Apply here for your Business Photo Shoot.
