What is Google Maps and Why is it Important to Your Business?

Google Maps is a mapping application offered for free via the internet. When it came out the service revolutionized how we find addresses and services in our local area. No longer were people hauling out the phone book or checking a city map to confirm a location and finding the route there. Now they could go online, made even easier with internet accessing phones, and do all three at the touch of a button.

Eventually, the benefits to businesses became apparent. Google Maps made it that much easier to show people how to find their businesses. Many websites with retail store locations now integrate Google Maps on their ‘store locater’ pages. Visitors interested in the store or business can easily check to see if there is a branch located in their area.

On top of that, Google Maps offers a free listing service for businesses at their local business center. All that’s needed to create a virtual listing of your real world business is a google account, also free.

Business owners can list tons of information about their businesses on Google Maps. You’ll be able to provide addresses, phone numbers, website URLs and more.

By the time a Google Maps listing is created for your business its filled with some much information that it will serve almost as another webpage advertising your company. Millions of people in the local area can even see the business listing once it’s verified on their Google Maps results.

Whenever a user searches Google for specific services in their local area, business listings offering those services locally will pop up on the Google search too. Google even goes so far as to show you the number of times that listing was shown in results and the number of click-throughs it received.

What are the Benefits Again?

There really are many benefits to the business that makes use of this absolutely free service. Businesses can enjoy increased numbers of visitors to their website as well as more visitors to a real world location through Google Maps.

Integrate Google Maps with a website to quickly show a business location.
Utilize Google’s business listing service to help the business show up during localized searches
Google’s listing service also adds another medium through which to present your business services and site.
Give visitors a real world visual on the location of your business and how to ‘get there from here’ with route finders.

On the surface, this simple mapping application offered for free only offers a chance to show your location to users. In practice it offers so much more on several different levels.