Community Edits of Google Places pages are BACK! The return of community edits was first highlighted by Andy Kuiper and the return of this feature certainly has ruffled a few feathers in the local SEO world, not least because of the ease in which signed in Google users are able to suggest edits to already claimed Google Places business listings!
Well……every cloud has a silver lining! I joined in the discussion about this latest change to Google Places over at Blumenthals.com and highlighted a couple of ‘tests’ to the latest return of community edits. I used the new ‘edit this place’ to try and correct a telephone number which had been incorrectly scraped from a Yellow Pages test site (which was created without the business owners permission!). This edit was made at approximately 21:30 UK time and to my suprise this morning when I checked my inbox, I had recieved an Official Google Places email just 8 hours later informing of the changes soon to be made to the account!
Your listing on Google Places will soon be updated!!!!!!
It would certainly appear that the email has been sent due to the community edit, and whilst 8 hours is very quick by Google’s standards, I dont see it being a randomly generated update email as discussed by Linda Buquet. The business in question had already recived an auto-update email about a month ago, so I dont see Google sending emails such as this so close together.
Now I know that community edits offer no value to SMB’s who have active Google Places pages and yes, spammers, corrupt competitors etc will try to sabotage local businesses who have spent alot of time in develoing their Places page, however the silver lining has to be (and appears to be) that any potential changes to your places page, will be alerted to YOU FIRST! Sure its a tad inconvenient having to go back into your places page and click submit, but its certainly the lesser of two evils! Id much rather be informed of attempts to change my places page by Google than rely on Crowdsourcing and even manual edits from Google themselves for that matter!
Have you recieved a Places Page update email? Id love to know more about Google response times (if testing yourself) or the frequency of update emails. Happy Editing!