Los Angeles — MapQuest Inc., a wholly owned division of AOL Inc., on Thursday, announced its own novel service dubbed as Local Business Center, a place designed to help SEOs and small-business owners where local businesses can add and/or manage their listings on MapQuest, a free service for businesses to control and enhance their content for better consumer reach.
Previously, business owners had to approach each website to modify the location, photos, phone number, description, hours and other details of the business listing.
As the video below shows, the MapQuest LBC functions very much contrasts with Google’s and Bing’s and delivers many of the same basic features such as photo uploads, videos, categories and so forth. Besides, Google Inc.’s Places Search, which was released last autumn, empower owners the ability to update their listings and enhance them with photos. Also last year, Google introduced “tags,” which shows deals offered by firms listed on Google Maps.
Accessible at listings.mapquest.com, the offering enables merchants to deliver comprehensive information beyond industry standards to prospective customers, which is essentially important to propel search traffic from MapQuest directly to business locations.
In addition, “MapQuest’s Local Business Center also provides paid upgrades featuring premium listings and distribution on eight additional sites.”
“The new MapQuest Local Business Center emphasizes our mission of accuracy, helpfulness and reliability across MapQuest’s dotcom and mobile platforms,” said Christian Dwyer, senior vice president and general manager, MapQuest. “Providing high-quality and accurate business listing information is critical as consumer behavior has evolved into a search-based world. Consumers expect relevant search results and this new service makes it easier for businesses to provide a quality experience, ensuring they are engaged with and discovered by local audiences on MapQuest.”
Local Business Center: Listing Platform Features & Functionality
The layered listing platform provides merchants with both free and paid services to formulate their listing and create greater visibility online.
The free “claim-your-listing” service on MapQuest.com allows businesses to:
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Enter business information such as address, phone number, payment options and hours of operation
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Provide an original business description with up to 600 characters
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Upload storefront and additional photos
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Specify exact location of the business by a drag and drop location marker
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Add multiple URLs such as website and reservation link
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Include parking tips and helpful hints for getting users to the organization’s front door
Paid services include innovative marketing solutions, such as:
MapQuest is offering two premium listing levels at $99 and $399 per year. MapQuest said the price includes an option for business owners to advertise promotions as a part of their listings. Also, a distribution service that routes their updated business listing information and special offer from MapQuest to eight additional properties, including Citysearch, local.com, Superpages, Yahoo!, Yelp, Yellowbook, YellowBOT and WhitePages.
“We receive 2,000 queries each week from people who want to update information,” says Dwyer. “They want to take control to change the information to make it more accurate.”
Moreover, Businesses can set-up a MapQuest Local Business Center account by visiting listings.mapquest.com and follow a simple and secure verification process. Once the merchant creates an account, they may use it to claim a listing and create a detailed page for their business. All updates and changes to verified listings becomes live within minutes on MapQuest.com.
The MapQuest Local Business Center beta unveiled earlier this week sets the groundwork for additional features coming this summer, such as video capabilities, image captions, and additional marketing products and services.
“MapQuest’s Local Business Center beta is an essential milestone in our ongoing effort to provide the best content and services to our businesses and consumers,” said Vijay Bangaru, vice president of product, MapQuest. “This new product will also provide true content ownership to businesses, while at the same time, serving MapQuest’s great mission to offer robust information in the social, mobile or traditional avenues.”
“The MapQuest Local Business Center will let merchants connect directly with consumers actively searching for business information and deals,” said Dwyer.
For instance, MapQuest users most often search for hotels, restaurants, schools, parks and airports, stressing the value of the Local Business Center. Businesses can now directly interface with local consumers by providing customized information, instead of requiring the need to go through an intermediary.
Finally, MapQuest has allied with Yext, a leading local advertising technology company dedicated to synchronizing business listings everywhere, to develop the MapQuest Local Business Center.
Here is the MapQuest intro video that shows how it works:
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