Google Tags Retiring on April 29, 2011
April 15th, 2011 | No Comments
Google tags was a means for a small business to stand out a little bit by paying an extra $25 per month to have a little yellow tag next to their listing as seen below. When other competitors didn’t have it, your ad would most likely stand out a bit.
Google Places is so competitive and important for small businesses, this comes as a bit of surprise especially given that it served to monetize a product for Google that was otherwise Free. We had an earlier post about some big changes that occurred in local search – this seems as just another step by Google in the ever-changing search market.
I’m sure that Google will find a way to monetize Places if they want to. In the opinion of a humble agency such as Jivaldi, Google Places is a very significant product for small businesses. According to the email sent out to Places users below, Google seems to be placing more emphasis on their Google Boost product.
In any case, Google owns the local search market and will continue to dominate this realm for the foreseeable future. Stay tuned.
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Dear Google Places user,
At Google, we’re always working to innovate and improve ways for small businesses to get online and reach more customers. At times, though, we have to decide where to focus our efforts and which technologies we expect will yield the most benefit to users and businesses like you in the long run.
In that spirit, we are retiring Google Tags for all users on April 29, 2011. No action is required on your part, and your Places account and listing will continue to work as usual. Effective today, no new tags can be created, but all active tags will keep running to the end of April for free.
In your Places account, you’ll be able to see billing history until July 31st. If your tag is active, performance data will be available from now until May 31st. Historical performance data of inactive tags will be available in your dashboard starting May 2nd until May 31st.
You can visit our blog post and our Help Center for more information. There are still a number of options for you to reach more customers online, including our latest product for local businesses, Google Boost. Through the month of May, we are offering Tags customers like you $100 to try out Google Boost. Call 877-503-0841 Monday to Friday 8am-6pm to redeem your credit.
Thank you for trying Google Tags.
Sincerely,
The Google Places Team
