How to Claim a Google Local Listing – Local Search Basics Part I

If you are a local business with a web site, there’s no doubt you want to optimize it to rank as highly as possible among your competitors. But what a lot of people forget about is their listing on Google Maps, that allows people to look up directions to your location, write reviews, or learn more about your business at a glance.

Since Google has started using universal search to combine photos, videos, and maps into the main search results, ranking well in Google Local is becoming increasingly important to your online marketing strategy.

It’s easy to claim your listing, but optimizing it isn’t always so straightforward. Google recently did a major revamp of the Local Business Center, and has continually tweaked and changed the system since its inception.   In this two part series, I will show you how to claim your listing, and how best to optimize it.

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Find Your Listing

To claim your listing, first go to Google and search to see if a listing already exists. Unless your business or location is new, it’s highly likely that Google has already generated a listing. The best way to find it is to use a geographically-relevant keyword search. For example, if your business is Peso’s Kitchen and Lounge, search for “Bar lower Queen Anne Seattle”. If you click on “115 reviews”, it will take you to the Google Places Page for Peso’s.

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You can see there is a lot of information about the business here, including photos, hours, and reviews submitted by other directories and web sites. You can tell if a listing has been claimed by the business owner if at the top it says “Owner-verified listing”. As you can see in this example, Peso’s hasn’t yet claimed their listing. Click “Business Owner?” to get started with editing and claiming your listing.

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Edit Your Listing

The next screen gives you a couple of options. You are required to prove to Google you are the business owner before editing or suspending any listing, for obvious reasons.

Once you click “edit my business information”, you are presented with a form with plenty of fields about your business to fill out. Right now, don’t worry about filling everything out, but the listing must have at least one category to proceed. For this example we would type in “Bar”. Another thing to check for is that the address and phone number are correct. You will need these to be accurate to claim your listing. When you are satisfied, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click “Submit”.

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Claim Your Listing

At the next screen, you are ususally given two options to claim your listing: a phone or postcard verification. The reason why I say “ususally” is that if you changed your phone number on the last screen, Google will want you to verify via postcard, and vice-a-versa. I recommend using the phone verification over the postcard, because it lets you claim your listing right away, and limits the possibility of the postcard getting lost or mistaken for junk mail by you or your employees (If this happens, you can always send a new postcard). If you choose the phone verification, the phone number on the listing will receive an automated phone call from Google, usually within a few seconds. It will provide you with a 5 digit pin number, which you should write this down, and then fill it out in the field it provides.

Your listing is now claimed and validated, and you are free to edit it as needed. Be advised that if your phone number or address is changed afterwards, you will need to validate the change in the same way as outlined above. Now that you’ve claimed your listing, check out part II, where I show you how to optimize your Google Local listing.

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