Google's Info Box and My College
September 26, 2013 6:58 PM Subscribe
So you know how when you look up a company or in my case, a college, on Google and you see a box on the right side with all their information (map, contacts, etc)? I work at a museum at a college, and we'd like to get our information set up this way.
The college itself has one of these boxes, as do other departments (the performing arts building, etc.). I have been tasked to get this to happen, but I don't know how to go about this. I've set up a Google+ account, and it seems like that's Google's solution, but that hasn't worked out for me. Although I've put the code in, the "test" fails. Also, the code Google provides assumes you want a Google+ text link on your page, which is crazy and useless. I've looked at the source of the pages from my own college and nowhere does it include the code that Google says I need.
So what am I doing wrong? I'm not the IT person, but I'd really like to be able to take care of this as our IT department is not as helpful as I'd like.
The college itself has one of these boxes, as do other departments (the performing arts building, etc.). I have been tasked to get this to happen, but I don't know how to go about this. I've set up a Google+ account, and it seems like that's Google's solution, but that hasn't worked out for me. Although I've put the code in, the "test" fails. Also, the code Google provides assumes you want a Google+ text link on your page, which is crazy and useless. I've looked at the source of the pages from my own college and nowhere does it include the code that Google says I need.
So what am I doing wrong? I'm not the IT person, but I'd really like to be able to take care of this as our IT department is not as helpful as I'd like.
The easiest way to do this is to set up a Google Plus Business Page (although Google Places for Business could also work, it's more convoluted). For smaller businesses, it's pretty straightforward:
1) Set up Google Plus Business Page (you would choose Company, Institution or Organization)
2) Enter your college's main phone number; at this point Google will pull up your college's address
3) Verify the address by getting a postcard sent to you
The third part is the trickiest. You need to make sure that you receive the postcard, but there is almost no way to ensure that the mail room will send it to you. You can ad your name as the contactee, but you can't add your specific room number. One thing to do would be to talk to the mail room and ask them to be on the lookout for your postcard. For my clients, I always make a screenshot of the postcard and send it to them, because it looks like junk mail and gets thrown out.
You can also verify by telephone, which might be worth a shot, but the thing is Google will use the main switchboard. So it will entail you contacting the switchboard and setting something up.
But that's all there is to it.
You'll notice that Google already lists your college in Google Plus. This is because Google relies on NAP directories to populate Google Maps. Your university will already be listed in many of them.
So, by verifying your address via Google Plus Business pages, you are "claiming" Google's listing from NAP.
You can also claim from within the listing, which takes you to Google Places for Business (Google Local and Google Plus and Google Places for Business is a real mess, with different business units doing the same thing... it's also tied into mobile, and Android... just a big mess).
Either method is fine, but creating that Google Plus page is easiest, and you can start posting immediately.
The URL verification code, by the way, is something your webmaster has to install, but it does not show up on the page itself.
In summary, you need to figure out a way to verify your address, either by postcard or by phone.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:42 PM on September 26, 2013
1) Set up Google Plus Business Page (you would choose Company, Institution or Organization)
2) Enter your college's main phone number; at this point Google will pull up your college's address
3) Verify the address by getting a postcard sent to you
The third part is the trickiest. You need to make sure that you receive the postcard, but there is almost no way to ensure that the mail room will send it to you. You can ad your name as the contactee, but you can't add your specific room number. One thing to do would be to talk to the mail room and ask them to be on the lookout for your postcard. For my clients, I always make a screenshot of the postcard and send it to them, because it looks like junk mail and gets thrown out.
You can also verify by telephone, which might be worth a shot, but the thing is Google will use the main switchboard. So it will entail you contacting the switchboard and setting something up.
But that's all there is to it.
You'll notice that Google already lists your college in Google Plus. This is because Google relies on NAP directories to populate Google Maps. Your university will already be listed in many of them.
So, by verifying your address via Google Plus Business pages, you are "claiming" Google's listing from NAP.
You can also claim from within the listing, which takes you to Google Places for Business (Google Local and Google Plus and Google Places for Business is a real mess, with different business units doing the same thing... it's also tied into mobile, and Android... just a big mess).
Either method is fine, but creating that Google Plus page is easiest, and you can start posting immediately.
The URL verification code, by the way, is something your webmaster has to install, but it does not show up on the page itself.
In summary, you need to figure out a way to verify your address, either by postcard or by phone.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:42 PM on September 26, 2013
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posted by too bad you're not me at 7:03 PM on September 26, 2013