How Google's Local Guides Impact Your Local Web Visibility

Google Maps allows its users to describe the places they've been to. The most invested ones are displayed a badge on their profile image as well as the name Local Guide under their name.  In the end, it's millions of potential consumers who rely on these contributions to choose their favorite establishments or activities, thus offering a significant visibility for the various points of sale...

Contributions in Google Maps

Users and Local Guides can:

• Publish reviews and photos.
• Answer questions about the places you've visited.
• Report certain errors regarding a location: permanently closed, non-existent, relocated, incorrect name/address, incorrect marker location, etc.
• Add a missing address on the map.
• The Beta version of Google Maps even offers "missions" to add missing information about nearby places or validate information suggested by other contributors.

How to have qualitative and positive feedback?

Optimizing the customer experience at the point of sale and setting up a communication that encourages users to publish data on Google is the first step.

Then, your establishments must be quickly visible on the web, so it is necessary tooptimize your local SEO.

Benefits for retailers, contributors, and consumers

This sharing system brings value to each entity:

1. A continuous flow of valuable information about your business, for you and your customers.
2. Users are confident and move around more willingly thanks to the published reviews, photos and real-time data broadcast by the application.
3. Contributors earn points from the first action and benefit from advantages by registering with the Local Guide community, some of which directly impact businesses: - Participation in events hosted by Google (official) or Meetup (unofficial). On these occasions, users are brought together in a city, follow a theme (example: gastronomic discovery) and share their experiences.
4. - Tips for taking high-quality panoramic photos and writing useful reviews.

User and Local Guide contributions that may not seem directly relevant to you can also have an impact: a point of sale located near a park, with beautiful photos and good reviews on Google Maps, attractive therefore, will likely be visited by some walkers.

In the end, the possibilities for activating consumers are multiple and make the Local Guides program a real asset for your Web-To-Store strategy.