Automatic Updates to Google Places Listings

We all know the importance of claiming the business listing on Google Places and making sure the listing is updated and the business details are consistent with other local listings all over the web. This will help improve your visibility in local searches, drive traffic to your website, and give you control of your business information, hours, photos, and videos…until now.

Google announced that based on information from users and other sources on the web your “business listing will automatically be updated and the business owner will be sent an email notification about the change will occur”. Google has always given users the option to provide feedback about business information. Now if a user provides information about your business, or Google found any new information from another web source, your listing will be automatically updated for the information. However, Google will send an email notification to the owner of the listing about the change. This will give you the opportunity to log in to your Google Places account and get fix the issue if not correct. Also this change will not affect your AdWords with location extensions or AdWords Express, although other aspects of your listing will be affected if any action is not taken by owner against the updates.

According to Google, this new feature is to ensure listings are as accurate as possible because they feel for some business owners, “to update their Google Places account may not always be top of mind”. However, this is a surprising and somewhat problematic update. Also, this could be potentially hard to business owners to have their listing changed erroneously or maliciously.

Also these automatic updates expose businesses to possible abuse, owners must now be more concern about monitoring their Places listings. As a business owner, the best things to do is to make sure the email address in your Google Places account is up-to-date, and to stay on top of emails from Google and to monitor your listing closely.

I would like your views and research in the same direction if any. Your views will be more helpful for SMB's.