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Some business owners are reporting getting emails from Google and are asking if this is legit in the Google Business Help forums.
The emails are legit and coming from Google and the subject line is, "Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing."
Jade Wang from Google explained that they are making "some changes to Google Places for Business and Google Maps." Because of these changes, Google is "asking business owners to review and confirm some of the information in their Google Places accounts."
Jade added:
If you did receive this email, don’t worry. Please log into Places for Business, take a look at your business information, update it if necessary, and click “Submit.” You’ll need to do this for all listings in your account by February 21, 2014, so they can stay on Google Maps. Otherwise, you’ll need to add your business information and undergo PIN verification using Google Places again.
Forum discussion at Google Business Help.
Comments:
Yossi Medina
02/07/2014 01:48 pm
Trying to think of a few good reasons why they would ask . So far, I came up with the following: 1.Google is testing a secret new variable it is looking to add into its algorithm called "response time" and wants to see how fast business owners respond to their request. 2. Google does not trust their mighty algorithm to actually weed out bogus businesses and needs our help. 3. Google just wanted to check how many SEOs are still around following their latest updates, and just wanted to remove those who gave up from their SERPs. 4. Google is honestly trying to remove Irrelevant listings and retain only those of businesses who will actually pickup the phone when you call them using your Android phone. 5. Google is aiming not only to provide the most relevant results but also be the quickest one in doing so and some people just take too long to come up with a query. While thinking of of ways to resolve this serious issue they wanted to utilize a polite ultimatums (not even sure they exist) that may be introduced in the next update when they may "ask" users, "You have 3 seconds to type or say your search query"..."don't keep us waiting" PS: If any of these do not sound reasonable, it may be due to the fact i am still working on my morning coffee. Feel free to add your own... : )