Getting on the Map,

Online marketing has just been reconfigured once again by the changes in Google Places Pages. This is a great opportunity for some quick successes by savvy local marketers who act quickly to claim and fill out their pages.

There will be losers in this one. The clueless, the overconfident and those who have their head in the anti tech sand are going to suffer.

Until now many local based businesses got little real benefit from being online. Most local businesses with web sites till now have had litle real advantage. The reason for that? Most of their web sites were merely electornic brochures posting address, times open and little else.

Those who waited to get web sites may have the last laugh. With Google Places Pages, they may never need to get additional web sites of their own.

That doesn't mean that they don't need to be found online though. That doesn't mean tht web sites are necesarily obsolete. But the world has changed. A new force has come on to the scene, even if it is not widely recognized yet. Henceforward, those who take appropriate action online will start seeing significant advantages in attracting new customers.

No busiiness can survive in the long run without an active program to attract as many new customers as possible.

A well designed web site can fullfill a variety of roles and be useful to its users. But the main reason in the past and today to have a web site was to be found my potential customers. Google place pages will soon dominate that role.

What was once done by Yellow Pages will now be done by a Google Places search.

When people have a need for goods or services that they do not have an already established supplier for, they go the easiest reference source they have to find possible solutions. In the old days that meant turning to the Yellow pages to find a dentist or auto repair shop if one didn't already have a regular supplier.

These days 80% of the people who search online use Google, and far more people search online than use the Yellow Pages. While some older folks still turn to the Yellow Pages out of habit, that habit does not reach to the younger generations and even among the elderly, online search predominates.

There is a lot of money in this online traffic. That's why Google has made such a strong effort to capture the dominant role as the new "Yellow Pages."

Google wants to replace the Yellow Pages recognizing that businesses are willing to pay high advertising fees to get active prospects. Businesses were willing to pay a premium for cash in hand buyers because they converted into sales. This remains true today with the online searcher.

The business that is smart enough to take action today is in essence getting the equivalent of an expensive Yellow Pages ad for free. This won't last. It's such a huge value today, its amazing so few people have woken up to its value today. Afterall, it's free.

Now Google is selling little tags for $25 a month that provide additional visibility, and will eventually make revenues from that means. Google seems to be more interested today in getting as many businesses as possible to complete their listings as fully as possible and to treat the income end of it as secondary to making the Google Places Search valuable to the searcher.

To that end, they reward businesses who take the time to fully complete their listings with preferential listing on the so called Google 7 pack or map.

Getting a top ranking means money to a business. The higher your business ranks, the more calls you will get compared to the others in almost all cases. It used to be and still is about being found when the customer has a need we can solve.