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closeLook how old this is!
I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 12 years 8 months 29 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.

Doing a little bit if research, I noticed what I thought was odd behavior in Google local, taking me to directories instead of to a business, so I immediately jumped to a conclusion (imagine that!) and Twittered about it, pinging @davidmihm and @chiropractic

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Michael looked into it…

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and David thought it was odd too, so he pinged @w2scott and @mblumenthal

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Then, digging a little further, I figured out that it was either a mistake by the business owners, or it was fiendishly clever.   Here’s a really short video showing what happened –

To be clear, the Google places quality guidelines do NOT say that it must be your website, and only say to “provide one website that represents your individual business location” .

Might it not make more sense for a local business to link to another more authoritative profile page which is s ABOUT them rather than linking to their own website from their Google Places Page, especially if it’s a brand new business?

To rank better locally, maybe I should go change my places page to link to a Better Business Bureau Profile page or something similar?  I wonder…

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