Home > Articles > Home & Office Computing > The Web/Virtual Worlds/Social Networking

This chapter is from the book

Adding In-Depth Information to Your Listing

After you submit the initial screen of information about your business, as described in the previous steps, Google creates your listing. Google then offers you another screen in which you can add more information. If you are continuing with editing an existing entry, these fields simply continue on from the ones described in the previous section.

The fields you can enter include the following:

  • Service Areas and Location Settings
  • Open Hours (Hours of Operation)
  • Payment Options
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Additional Details

Service areas are of particular interest. For most locally based businesses, such as a grocery store, you list an address and people come to you. However, if you deliver, you'll want to show your delivery area. If you don't have a storefront—for instance, if you have a home-based advice, coaching, or consultancy business—you cannot list your business address, but you can still list the area you serve.

Service areas take two forms. One is a circular area around your business address, as shown in Figure 5.4. This is great for businesses such as pizza delivery that have an explicit or implicit time commitment. Or, you might want to drive only 40 miles, say, to reach a client. Circular service areas are a bit tough on customers, though, because they think of themselves as living in specific towns and cities, not within circles drawn around your business.

Figure 5.4

Figure 5.4 A circular service area might be more convenient for you than your customers.

The other, more interesting kind of service area is a kind of blob made up of specific cities, towns, and ZIP codes near you. This is shown in Figure 5.5. Google Places fills in the areas in-between to form an odd kind of shape.

Figure 5.5

Figure 5.5 Enter a circular or irregular service area.

For example, for my consulting work, my service area is parts of the San Francisco Bay Area served by BART and CalTrain, and within about an hour and a half of me. I was able to specify this by naming just three points—San Jose, San Francisco, and Richmond—in the northern part of the East Bay.

If I meet potentially high-value new clients who live outside those areas, I still do business with them, but only if the rewards seem worth the hassle. For people who find me on Google Places, I find that people outside the service area still call me—but I have the option of turning them down if the business isn't worth the trouble.

However, whether this is a new listing or an existing one, you will not have verified the listing yet. I recommend that you enter in only the first three types of information, which are somewhat basic: service area and location, open hours, and payment options. I recommend you then verify your listing, as described in the last section in this chapter, "Verifying Your Listing." When that's done, you can spend more time on the additional fields, some of which can require a fair amount of time and effort.

Follow these steps to add more in-depth information to your listing:

  1. Specify whether customers come to your business location or the business serves customers at their locations.

    This is a tricky one. Only a minority of businesses, such as many pizza parlors, routinely offer delivery service for the general public. However, many businesses will do deliveries for big customers, shut-ins, and so on—perhaps for an extra fee, and perhaps only after regular business hours.

    I recommend that you consider describing your business as serving customers at their location, even if you only do it in restricted circumstances. When customers ask you about it, you can explain the circumstances to them.

    If you enter Yes to service areas and location settings, Google will bring up a dialog and a map to enable you to enter your service area, as shown in Figure 5.5.

  2. If you answered No to service areas and location settings, go to the next step. If you entered Yes, enter the details, including whether to show your business address on your Maps listing and the areas served. Click the Distance from One Location radio button to create a circular area based on a ZIP code, plus a radius around it. (Click the Update Preview button to see the area depicted on a map.) Click the other radio button, List of Areas Served, to enter a list of areas served; for each area, enter the name, and then click Add. Repeat until you've entered all areas. See the beginning of this section for more on service areas.

    For the option of entering areas served, Google warns you that areas entered are approximate. Google includes points between the areas you specify, forming a contiguous, albeit irregular, blob, as shown in Figure 5.6.

    Figure 5.6

    Figure 5.6 You can easily specify a lunch break and special weekend hours.

  3. For hours of operation, choose the radio button for not specifying your hours of operation or the button for listing them. If you choose the latter, use the pull-downs to specify your hours, as shown in Figure 5.6. You can enter Monday hours—click the Apply to All link to apply them throughout the week—then customize any days that are different. To enter split shifts—for instance, open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but closed for lunch from 12 noon to 1 p.m.—click the I'd Like to Enter Two Sets of Hours for a Single Day check box to set it. Then enter the second set of hours for the days that have them.

    Open hours are really, really important to many customers. Part of your value add as a local business is convenience, and publicizing your open hours are a big part of this. Remember that, in many cases, you're competing with other local businesses that might be open more hours, and possibly also with online shopping options that are open all the time. So, carefully specify the broadest opening hours that you can responsibly commit to, and then stick to them.

  4. Click the check boxes for all the payment options you accept: cash, check, traveler's check, invoice, American Express, Diner's Club, Discover, MasterCard, Visa, Financing, Google Checkout, and PayPal.

    As with delivery, there's a potential problem here: You might want to offer some customers more payment options than others. For payment, I recommend that you list only the payment options that you're comfortable offering to everyone, and then negotiate if asked for additional options.

  5. If you choose, use the Additional Details area (see Lesson 6), the Photos area (see Lesson 7), and the Videos area (see Lesson 8) to add more content to your Google Places page.

    You can add this kind of content now, but I recommend that you wait to see what Google finds for you after you've had your listing up for a little bit first. Also, using these areas properly might require a bit of education and thought, so consider delaying these additions for now and adding them after reviewing the relevant lessons later in this book.

  6. Check all the choices you've entered, and then click Submit.

    Google will add the information to your listing, and then request that you verify the listing, as described in the next section.

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020