Google Maps Going Real Time?
Posted on January 14th, 2010
I just finished building this website for an auto detailing shop in Vancouver, BC and today am editing some stuff in their Google Maps profile when I spotted something new. Now you can post up to date events and specials about your business as seen in the screen shot below.
You get 160 characters to write something, and it will auto expire in 30 days.
Below you see how it appeared on their Maps Place page for the business shortly after adding it.
Notice the “54 seconds ago“. It seems to show up on the page in a minute or less.
If you post another one it will overwrite the old one, not post more than one like a twitter feed kind of setup.
Great way to keep fresh content on your maps listing and promote your specials, events, and other timely stuff.
Question is, will posting this stuff on a regular bases have any influence in rankings?
Update :
Seems others are commenting on the Twitter-esque or Facebook-like functionality of this new feature. Seb Provencher suggests it’s Google’s shot across the bow towards Twitter and Facebook and goes so far as to suggest Twitter and FB need to start building business profile pages to compete with Google Maps.
Over on Mike Blumenthal’s post the commentors are picking up on the facebook Fun Wall and Twitter stream look to it.
Greg Sterling suggests it should eventually be tied direct to FB and Twitter so you could post it once in the LBC, and auto update your FB wall and Twitter stream in one go.
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