Local Marketing: Goodbye Google Places

Its getting increasingly demanding to keep up with all of Google’s moves. However, this most recent change will keep local marketers and SEOs plugged into Twitter today. Want to impress your boss and/or accounts? Here is what you need to know:
Many have anticipated today; the day when Google migrated its places pages to Google+ Pages for businesses. Today Google has replaced Places with Google+ local business pages and and moved roughly 80 million Places pages to Google+ pages. This change will undoubtedly have a confusing effect on the many mom and pop business owners who manage their own Places page for cheap and easy exposure on Google’s network. Google has also integrated Zygat reviews and ratings system into their local Google+ pages for all types of businesses, rather than just restaurants.

Avni Shah, Google’s director of product management, says; “This is our way of taking the best of what we know about you, about your friends, and the locations you are interested in to provide recommendations.” Thanks for using the best of what you know about us…

If your customers are local, get familiar with Google+. Google has the market severely cornered between its search engine and mobile presence. As a marketer, be ready to contact your clients and give them the heads up and lay out what they need to do to not miss a beat with this switch over. If you manage your own Google Places account like many of our firends and clients, you will want to spend some time in Google+ today. Make sure you have the G+ button installed in your website and try to keep some fresh content on your G+ page. I know its hard sometimes.

What will Google “bake” social into next? Currently, G+ is integrated into Google’s mobile, search, local, advertising and  YoutTube ( im probably missing something too, feel free to list in comments) . I can see them integrating social into cars ( self-driving ), TV and the Chrome OS.  What do you think Google will try to make social next?