Help Desk Hangouts: Google+ Local

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.


In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we got an update on the new look and feel for Google Places, now Google+ Local. Local experts Dasha and Jade walk us through the redesign, what you need to know, and what’s coming next. They also answered your questions in real time. Miss the event? You can watch the whole thing on the Google and Your Business YouTube channel.

Check out the video description on the YouTube page for a minute-by-minute breakdown.

Some of the questions we answered during the Hangout:

What does this change mean for how business owners add and edit their listings? Do business owners need to have a Google+ profile?
It’s business as usual on this front. Verified business owners can edit the listings (now local Google+ pages) through the Google Places for Business dashboard, as always. Business owners just now looking to get verified can go through the process by clicking on the Manage this page button under Is this your business? header on the right of the page. Right now, business owners do not need to have Google+ profiles to verify and edit local Google+ pages.

Will Google+ Local pages and existing Google+ pages be merged?
Yes! If you’re a business owner that’s got both the local Google+ page (formerly Google Places listing) and a Google+ page that you made in Google+ separately, the current recommendation is to continue managing each separately. The plan is to merge them, so business owners have just one page to manage. We did a few early, and you can take a peek from the Google and your Business blog. We’ll post updates as they come, here, but you can sign up for email updates using this form. Already convinced? You can sign up to be considered for an early upgrade.

Can I attach a YouTube channel to my page?
No, but this is a piece of feedback we’ve heard often and are actively discussing. Eventually, you’ll be able to add videos directly to your “Videos” tab and post YouTube clips to your page’s stream, but that will only be available once Google+ Local pages are merged with existing pages and given the social functionality described above.

Where can I report a problem or send feedback?
Send feedback about Google+ Local like feature requests, or reports if you think something’s broken, through the gear icon on the top right, clicking on Send feedback. On local Google+ pages, the Send feedback link is on the bottom of the right column, under the big photo of the business. You can report incorrect data about a place, like the wrong phone number, by clicking on Edit business details on that right column.

Can a business owner manage reviews and photos uploaded by users?
Be sure to join us for next week’s Hangout at 11 a.m. PDT Wednesday May 2, when we discuss Business Photos for Google Maps. We’ll be taking questions early next week on the Google+ Your Business page.

Posted by Toby Stein, Google+ community manager

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Five keys to success for measuring your website

A few weeks ago, I shared some basic tips on how to measure your online marketing efforts. Today we’re taking a deeper look at how to measure the effectiveness of your website. Think of your website as your “Open For Business” sign on the web - but unlike your business, your website is open 24/7. So it’s important for you to measure how well your site is achieving your business goals. By using free tools like Google Analytics, you can see how visitors are finding and interacting with your site, which can help you improve your customer experience and potentially drive more sales.

Here are five things that every business should consider:

• Identify your goals and track them correctly: Think about the ultimate business objectives of your website and identify specific visitor actions that indicate success, like finishing a sale, signing up for a newsletter, or viewing an important page. Then set up goal tracking to see how visitors are reaching those goals. You can also assign a dollar value to each goal to see how it’s impacting your bottom line, or set up ecommerce tracking to integrate online sales data.
• Become a conversion detective: Businesses spend a lot of effort getting people to visit their site, so if your visitors aren’t converting or achieving your goals, it’s important to figure out why. There could be a variety of factors, like too many required steps to request a quote, call-to-action icons that are too small, or poor placement of your email list sign-up button. See what conversion metrics need a boost, and experiment with your site’s content and layout to see what works best.
• Get to the bottom of your bounce rates: Bounce rates represent the people who are visiting one page on your website and then leaving immediately afterwards. This could signal that they’re not finding what they need right away. Think about what information your customers might be seeking, like contact information or links to promotions, and make sure it’s front and center on your site. Bounce rates can also show you how effective your marketing campaigns are. For instance, if you’re running an email marketing campaign but find that they’re resulting in visits with high bounce rates, you could be wasting time and money.
• Discover important audience locations: The Internet can introduce even a small town business to potential customers around the world, so you might be surprised at what audiences are most interested in your products or services. Take a look at the countries, regions and provinces where your website visitors are coming from - it just might inspire you to run an ad campaign targeted to reach shoppers in France, or start a special promotion for your fans in Canada.
• Make the most of mobile traffic: More and more consumers are browsing the web on the go with their smartphones, so spend some time discovering how many of your site’s visitors are coming from a mobile phone. Are they viewing multiple pages, staying for a long time, or bouncing away quickly? A local restaurant might want to know whether mobile visitors are quickly finding information like hours of operation, menus and address - because if they’re not, they could be going elsewhere. If you need help making your website mobile, you can find a ton of resources at www.howtogomo.com to help you get started.

There are a lot of things that you can learn when diving into your website analytics, and I know that sometimes it can feel like an overwhelming amount of data. The important thing about measurement is to just get started and keep experimenting. You’ll begin to see what works for your unique site and business, and may even find unexpected areas for growth. Happy measuring!

Posted by Francoise Brougher, Vice President of SMB Sales and Operations

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Help Desk Hangouts: Adwords for video

Editor’s note: Each week on the Google+ Your Business page, we’re putting you in touch with Googlers and users who can help you as a business owner get the most out of our products and features.

In our latest Help Desk Hangout On Air, we discussed video advertising using Adwords for video with Googlers Dori Storbeck, Courtney Pannell, Rob Warner, and Valentine Matrat. They taught us how AdWords for video can benefit business owners, how to set up and target campaigns, and how to collect metrics when evaluating your campaign’s performance. Missed the Hangout? Watch it on the Google and Your Business YouTube channel

Check out the video description for a minute-by-minute breakdown.

Here are a few of the questions you asked us to answer during the Hangout:

Is video advertising helpful for local businesses? Is there a way to choose people from a certain town or area?
Video advertising can be a huge help. Video helps increase awareness and create a relationship between the business and potential clients, ultimately reducing barriers to first-time visits and increasing chances for repeat visits to the store. Video advertising allows you to build a personality for your business and provide compelling arguments to your local audience as to why they should choose your business.

If you have a video you know you want to promote, is there a strategy for selecting which type of video ad format to choose or should you try all formats and evaluate performance?
We recommend that you always start with all four video ad formats. You want your ads to achieve a balance between engagement and traffic to your videos. In general, the best format for driving traffic to your site and brand awareness is the in-stream format (it also tends to be the cheapest). That being said, starting out with all four ad formats will allow you to make better informed decisions for your needs.

Is there a time limit or minimum time that a video must be in order to be a TrueView ad?

Your video ad can be any length, but you don’t want it to be too short or too long. We’ve found that the optimal time for a video ad is between 30 seconds to a minute and a half, which allows you enough time to market your business and help you stand out from the competition, but not too long that users lose interest and skip your ad. Here’s a tip: Try to get the main point of your messaging at the beginning of the video so that you capture the audience’s attention.

Can you use annotations offered by YouTube videos in your AdWords video ads?
The annotations that you set up on your video from your YouTube account will show on your video when it plays as a TrueView in-search or TrueView in-display format. However, it does not currently show when your ad plays as a TrueView in-stream ad.

Is analytics data provided for video ads?
You will get detailed performance reporting and video analytics data from the AdWords for video interface in your AdWords account. You should also check out the YouTube Analytics tool, found within your YouTube account. YouTube Analytics is a great resource for businesses on YouTube because you can access a rich set of data about who is watching your videos.

YouTube Analytics can capture the following data and more:

• Chronological and geographic distribution of your views.
• Demographic data about your viewers, which provides age and gender distributions.
• Traffic sources data that allows you to determine what external sites and YouTube features are generating traffic for your videos. This will help you determine how many views are generated by your TrueView ads vs other sources of traffic.

You can find more information on YouTube Analytics in the Help Center.

To learn more about how to get started with the Display Network, visit our Help Center or check out the AdWords Community forum. And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout at 11 a.m. PT Wednesday June 6 — topic to be announced on the Google+ Your Business page early next week!

Posted by Dori Storbeck and Courtney Pannell, Global Online Advertising Associates

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