Google Places for Business Image URL Suggestions
-
Hi All,
Currently am grandfathered on the old Bulk Upload version of Google Places for Business. I am being told that the ability to upload images using their upload tool will not be available any longer. Therefore, I am being forced to house the images for each of my 900+ locations on an outside server and then reference the web url location for each image for each location.
I can handle creating the spreadsheet for this, but my question is, does anyone know of a good place to store images in folders that will create clean urls?
Example, I have location 1. I have a folder on my hard drive called location 1 that has 10 unique image .jpg files in that folder. I want to be able to upload that folder to an image host/server and have the url come out something like, www.example.com/pics/location1/image1.jpg
I have tried multiple online storage options so far, such as dropbox, shutterfly, and some one offs, but have not found anything that can do what I need. I don't have the ability to buy a new hosting account with FTP to create my own image storage library, so must be a free solution.
Greatly appreciate any help anyone can offer
-
Glad to help and thankful to be part of such a great community!
-
Hi Vadim, yes, Google Drive provides 15GB of free storage. Thanks for catching my typo, and for your many contributions to the Moz community. I appreciate it.
-
Hi Christy I believe its 15GB of storage right, probably a typo.
If hosting exists subdomain redirects for clean URLs is great. Also dropbox.com and many other services work, with subdomain redirects, like so.
-
Hi Brad, thanks for your question! Google Drive offers up to 15MG 15GB free storage (per account, shared with gmail and Google Plus). You can upload your entire "pics" folder to a new public folder of the same name on Google Drive, but this will create long, messy URLs. Does the business already own a domain? If so, you could create a subdomain and redirect it the public folder to create clean URLs for your images. Let me know if this is feasible for your situation or not.
Christy
-
Hi Brad,
Try photobucket.com. Its been known to give you flexible embed and link options. Here is an example of the permalink structure:
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff255/robynm17/uyergyey1.jpg
Hope it helps
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Tracking Google Local Click-Thrus (Maps)
We've expanded our business to be in multiple cities. We are tracking our local rankings in each city and have Adwords campaigns for those cities with location extensions. We have a separate contact page for each city but haven't setup landing pages for each city which would be fairly tricky as our services are identical for each city. So really the landing page would be almost identical to our home page content with maybe a photo of the city and the city's name thrown in here and there - definitely a risk of duplicate content detection. What I'm wondering is if anyone knows if there a Google Analytics report we can run to show us links from our Google Places for Business Listing segregated by location? My guess is that we would need to make each URL for each Google Places listing unique to that location, like http://www.oursite.com?{name of city} Or is this not even necessary by using some report settings in Google Analytics? -- update -- Well this is a 7-year old article but I suspect it might still basically hold true? In other words, it's not easy and straight forward. What I'm wondering is, if I use the ?{cityname} URL only in my Places listings URLs, well, let's make it ?place={cityname} then really all I need to do is run a report filtering by URL contains ?place= Can it really be that simple because if it is, then this old article and others like it seem to be really over complicating the strategy for simply seeing your googe places listing traffic in total and by location? https://moz.com/blog/tracking-traffic-from-google-places-in-google-analytics Furthermore, if we plan on eventually building home pages for each location, maybe the better URL structure would be mysite.com/places/{city name} and just do a 301 to the home page until the custom page is built. The big question then arises if we are only using this URL in our Google Places listings does it have any farther reaching effect on Google's organic view of our website? In other words will it try to add a unique Google Places URL to the organic results database? Will it cause a suspension of the Google Places listing? If we create the URL as an alias to the home page instead of a 301 will it risk dupe content penalty. Wait a sec... if we use a 301 won't that render tracking in Analytics useless as it's only then going to count the pageview for the home page and not the original URL, right? I guess we could use an alias and then in the robots.txt dissallow indexing of any URLs with /places/ ? Now I think I'M over complicating things. Seems like the best/easiest/safest method is to just a ?place={city name} to the Google Places URL. Then once we have unique places landing pages, just go update the URL in all our places listing.
Local Listings | | Wizkids9640 -
Update business name across 150+ locations
We have 150+ locations. The current names in GMB vary based on the branch. They may include a branch number or city location in the title or some variation of the company name. We'd like to update these to reflect our company wide branding and drop the branch #/location. Any ideas on the impact of this change?
Local Listings | | Jason.Capshaw0 -
Should add Schema markup to my sites Business Directory?
I'm adding a Business Directory to my ecom site to show where the product can be purchased/used. Some listings are stores where you can purchase others are restaurants, bars and spas the product can be used. My question is should I add relevant Schema markup for each listing? My thoughts are yes but wanted feedback from the community.
Local Listings | | ColeBField
Thanks0 -
Is there a purpose to the "google my business" description?
Hi there Can someone tell me if the description serves a purpose in the google my business profile since:
Local Listings | | coolhandluc
a) It is not displayed anywhere as far as i have seen (maps, 3 pack local results, knowledge graph, organic results)
b) It is no longer considered as a ranking factor since it was abused so much Thanks0 -
Don't Let Your Google My Business Dashboard Become Inactive
Google's Jade Wang has offered some important clarification on the scenario of set-and-forget Google My Business dashboards - Google could determine that they are inactive and un-verify the listings they contain. She writes, "In some cases, we may contact Google My Business users via email to confirm that they are still actively managing a business page. If a user is unresponsive to our attempts to contact him or her and has not logged into Google My Business for a significant length of time, then we may unverify pages in the account. We're doing this in order to continue to provide users with the best experience when they’re looking for local businesses like yours. If you find that a page in your account has been incorrectly unverified, please contact support to get assistance restoring verification. It's a good idea to keep an eye on the inbox associated with your Google My Business (Locations) account. It's also a good idea to regularly log into Google My Business (Locations) to confirm that your business information is current and accurate." Mike Blumenthal initially posted that it was necessary to perform a null edit (a tactic in which you view the edit screen of your Google+ Local listing and hit 'save' without making any changes), but Mike has since updated his post to clarify that a null edit isn't actually necessary. According to what Mike learned, you can simply log into the dashboard once every few months, or if you have to make real edits or you post on your page, that should provide an adequate signal to Google that the dashboard is still being actively managed. In the past, an agency with a limited contract with a local business could create the company's Google+ Local page and step away from it. Of course, it's the ideal that your clients are actively posting to their Google My Business page, if it's the right social strategy for them, but many clients don't do this. And so, they'll likely be getting an email from Google one of these days asking if they are still active. If that's the case, you may be hearing from past clients asking if the email is real and what they should do. Fortunately, they should be able to make the the quick visit to the dashboard without help. But for agencies with large numbers of long-term clients, this business of keeping track of how often you've logged into the clients' dashboards could be a bit of a hassle. Just one more task to add to the to-do list. Google has been going through some growing pains recently. With the lock-down of the editing function on Mapmaker and the further removal of Google+ links from more places, many Local SEOs and local business owners are wondering where Google is headed in the local space. To my mind, the fact that they are trying to police active vs. neglected listings is a bit of a sign the Google remains serious about delivering Local quality. And for all of us ... that's a good thing!
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis4 -
Google Local Business SEO
Under "http://moz.com/blog/everybody-needs-local-seo" Q) There is a paragraph saying "If your business has multiple locations, you should have a unique location landing page for each Google Plus Local listing." Does it mean that for each of my shop (location), i have to create an brand new google plus page for it? Q) There is a paragraph saying "you're dealing with a single location, then we're talking about your home page - but these elements should also be locally optimized on product and services pages. City and state in the title tag. City and state in H1 heading" For example, if my country is australia, i have to create a page within my website and the it is optimised to the keywords "Gold Coast | Australia" in my 'product and services page'?
Local Listings | | kevinbp0 -
Removing website from search while you have Pending Google Places Listing
Hello, If you have assign a website in Google places that is in Pending mode, and you removed the website in WMT, from the searches. Will be denied in google places? Thanks for your help.
Local Listings | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT1 -
Google Plus Business (How to replicate categories from Places)- Advanced
I'm very familiar with local promotion. However, I work in some fairly competitive local markets and in most cases only a few dominant keywords are necessary for the client to perform well. With new clients who aren't grandfathered into the old places interface, I cannot setup custom categories. This is known to everyone, but what I would REALLY appreciate is if someone could explain how I can at least to some degree replicate that targeting? To put it in perspective, for the standard categories (through Google Plus Business) my client rank very well; thus you can assume the client's local strength is solid; but when it comes to the few specific terms I need, I can't see to replicate the effect. Please help... anyone! 🙂
Local Listings | | mgordon0