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Google Adds Owner-Verification to Business Place Pages

When you find a business on Google Maps and click “more info”, you will be taken to that business’ “Place Page.” These are the pages that Google introduced a while back that essentially gather content related to that particular business in one place. One might find photos, coupons, reviews, etc. on the Place Page.

Businesses can tell Google if they want specific things there, but if you don’t claim your listing, Google will put whatever it wants there. Now, however, Google is letting users know when owners have verified their Place Pages. If it is verified, there is now a link with a checkmark beside it at the top of the page that says “owner-verified listing.”

If the listing has not been verified, users are now greeted with links that say “Edit the place,” or “Business Owner?”. The latter give you an opportunity to verify the listing if you are indeed the business owner. The former lets users make edits to the page. Obviously, you’re going to want to verify your listing to prevent any reputation-tarnishing information from appearing.

As we discussed recently, the local search landscape continues to change dramatically, and paying attention to things like this is only going to become increasingly important, not only from a reputation management standpoint, but from simply a visibility standpoint as more people gravitate to the Internet (especially with mobile) to find local business listings.

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What does “googling” mean? Google can tell you.

The search giant has quietly rolled out Google Dictionary, which presents definitions and synonyms. Exactly what you’d expect from a dictionary.

In addition to Google’s own database of definitions, looking up a word on the Dictionary website provides a list of definitions pulled from a variety of academically authoritative sources (oh, and Wikipedia).

It has a few cool features. You can mark words with the star button and come back to them later, see a list of recent searches and switch to translator resources or dictionaries for other languages — not to be confused with Google Translate.

Dictionary companies have expected Google would saunter into their realm any day.

Alex Zudin is the owner of Paragon Software, which works closely with Merriam-Webster, Oxford and other renowned keepers of language to build applications based on their data. Zudin says that Google could provide a service in the low-level consumer market, but higher-ed students and professionals would still buy the unabridged versions.

“It will serve you until a certain level,” Zudin said over lunch on Wednesday about Google Translate, which was the company’s first step into the language space. “It’s not enough to be precise.”

The company that might be hurt the most by Google’s new product is Answers.com. Previously, the “definition” button at the top right of all Google searches for words would direct users to entries on the Wikipedia-like Answers.com site. Now those links go to Google Dictionary, a less colorful, less cluttered interface.

So, what does it mean to “google”? According to the top result in Google Dictionary, taken from Princeton’s WordNet, the verb means:

search the internet (for information) using the Google search engine; “He googled the woman he had met at the party”; “My children are googling all day.”

Your children are googling all day? Yeah, us too.

[Updated at 7:35 p.m.: We should note that the aggregation feature previously existed on Google.com/dictionary and searches preceded by the search operator "define:."]

– Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

More in: Google, Mark Milian

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