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Victoria & Vancouver SEO

Several weeks ago I wrote about some of the bugs that have plaguing Google places lately. At the end of that post I optimistically predicted that they would have it all fixed within days- I mean c’mon, it’s GOOGLE, right?!

 

But today, over a month later, the situation over at Google is worse than ever. Glitches in Google Places are firing off all over the place, and internet marketers are reaching their collective boiling point as Google offers almost ZERO customer service.

 

As a guy who makes his living offering my customers the latest advancements in SEO, Google places has become an integral part of my business. So as the problem stretches into the “several-months” time frame I can’t help but wonder what Google is thinking with this kind of shoddy service. Don’t they know they are costing businesses (many of them mom and pop stores) a lot of money?

 

Based on their customer support (which is virtually non-existent) it doesn’t appear like it. Some professionals in the field have even started a blog that discusses the problem, which occasionally attracts the apathetic comment or two from Google’s engineers saying something along the lines of: “We’re looking into it, thanks for your patience.”

 

So what are the problems, you ask? Well, to begin with, there is a “system error” bug that keeps popping up. This one is the most common, as it has caused a lot of angry comments on the “Google bug blog.” Basically, if your listing is incorrect and you attempt to edit it, when you save your work a system error pops up and you are just left there hanging. Unfortunately this is happening with brand new listings as well.

 

The second error involves the statistics Google gives users concerning their advertisement’s performance. The stat counter is reading ZERO for many users, apparently having been stuck in neutral since Feb 18th.

 

The third bug is being called the “pending review” bug, which is just like it sounds. This was a problem back in January that Google quickly fixed, but it’s back now and more stubborn than ever.

 

Some other problems include Google’s badly broken scraping algorithm which creates duplicate posts, incorrect instructions for how to create a new listing, AND incorrect update messages in the user dashboard.

 

Needless to say, if there were such thing as an online riot someone would throw a burning trashcan through Google’s front window. Problems are inevitable- but this level of negligence is just plain shocking.

 

For those of us who make our living online all we can do is keep our fingers crossed; after all, it doesn’t look like Google is going to give us any other option.
Stay tuned for more updates about Google places.

Related posts:

1. Google Places Pending Status Surprise
2. Goodbye, Farewell Google Places Phone Verification…
3. Places Optimization: The Ins and Outs

Tags: Bugs & Glitches, Google Goof-up, Google Places, Google Places Listing