Go to Google Maps.

Imagine you were a customer looking to find your business. What would they search one? Let's say it's "web design".

Type that in.

Are you found? Are you featured?

Let's all help each other learn more about Google Maps, how it ties into Google+, and how to get found there!

Lots of people are now using Google Maps to find local businesses, so it's important to be in there.

I'm not sure what I should do. First I don't have a Google+ account. Should I have one in my name or the name of my blog? Can you have multiple, or only one?

Second I write a blog about my own city, how do I get the posts to show up on Google maps?

OK Tina - step 1. You must have a Google+ account for you as a human being. Just like with Facebook. You need that "master" account for you as the administrating human.

So set that up first .

Done

If anyone wants to connect with me, here's my profile

Profile

OK great Tina, that's the important first step!

Now you can start to make Google+ pages for any projects you have, and any businesses you run. So for example I have a Google+ page for my low carb page -

https://plus.google.com/b/115761036618536779877/115761036618536779877/posts

You can see how this has its own title bar and icon and so on.

Do you run any businesses?

I run a blog about the city I live in. I review businesses. I want, when people search for those businesses, to find my review. It would be good if my blog could occasionally be the site of one of those pointers.

Pleasanton Now!

Dear Tina -

That is very cool! OK, so here's the plan.

You won't ever show up as the result for people searching for a business. That wouldn't make sense. If someone searches for "Italian Restaurants" they won't find a blog.

However what you absolutely want is for your REVIEW to be on every single restaurant they find. That way they see your review and learn more about your blog.

So first, you should set up your blog as a Google+ page. That way there's a page to help promote your blog.

Then second, go review every single restaurant in town. Post your review on their page. Make sure you post it on tripadvisor and yelp too. In each case reference that you're doing this for your blog.

That way no matter what system someone is on, they learn about your blog and learn to rely on your reviews.

It's interesting that you are reviewing businesses. I run a site for a town -

SuttonMass.org

but I don't post any reviews there, because I worry it would cause hard feelings if I negatively reviewed something that my townsfolk worked in. And if I only gave positive reviews nobody would believe or trust me, so that would be worse. So I avoid reviews all-together on the site .

So what I do is I do reviews but under my own name, not only the blog name. The blog is about promoting the town - and the reviews are on my personal site, which are my personal opinions.

How do you handle that sort of issue?

I only review places I like and have personally visited. If the review is somewhat negative I make sure I say something good about it, like "even though I wouldn't personally visit again, I did think the food was high quality"

What I'm finding with the blog is that if I do a list of multiple place of the same type (eg the same type of restaurant) then my blog gets found. But just for one restaurant, I wouldn't expect to be found.

Can I really write on yelp and link back to my blog? I didn't think I could.

So now, I'm struggling to see how I create a page on Google+ dedicated to my blog. Can you help?

I haven't touched base on that yet but I have started building pages there as I had in Facebook since in the long run there is value to promoting in Google+. I'll jot down a refresher for creating a page.