Frequently Asked Questions / Smart places.
A maintainable list of answered questions frequently asked by our users
What is Smart Places?
A Smart Places subscription is an annual dedicated digital location claiming and management service. A dedicated team of digital location experts will claim and update your business location details on multiple digital platforms throughout the duration of the Smart Places subscription.
Google Maps, Google Search, Apple Maps, Siri, Facebook, Petal Maps (Huawei devices), HERE Maps, TomTom Maps, Foursquare, THTC Maps, Waze and What3words.
The current annual subscription fee is 1000 AED per location per year.
A Google Business Profile, or GBP for short, used to be called Google My Business. Google recently changed the name to Google Business Profile or GBP. A GBP is a service from Google that allows real businesses to claim and manage their business’s location details and descriptions on Google Maps and Google Search. Thus, helping their business get found on Google Search and Google Maps.
Smart Places is a subscription service because claiming your location on Google and other digital platforms is only a small part of how a business can benefit. A properly managed and updated digital presence for a business, gives a business a competitive edge when people are shopping online or looking for a new supplier. Ensuring as much information is made available to Google and the other publishers allows these publishers to deliver your business in search results even when customers don’t know your business exists.
Smart Places is called a “Local SEO” service. SEO is all about driving web traffic to your website or a landing page. Local SEO is all about driving customers to your store or office locations.
Foursquare used to be a very popular Check-in App with reviews. They have transformed their business to now be a provider of business listing information to more than 100,000 mobile application developers and provide business location details to WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Snap Chat, Twitter, Skype and more. It is important to make sure your business is accurately updated in the Foursquare database. For more information visit: https://foursquare.com.
Smart Places is a paid subscription service that is designed and dedicated to helping your business get found organically on Google Search, Google Maps, and other platforms. It’s a fixed annual subscription fee regardless of how many updates and changes you make or request. Google Ads, is a pay-per-click performance marketing service that charges a fee every time someone clicks on a Google Ad.
No, Smart Places is a service for businesses that have a physical location. Flexi-desk, virtual office and pureplay online businesses should not subscribe to Smart Places.
Huawei phones are now using their own proprietary Search Engine and Mapping platforms called Petal Search and Petal Maps. With Smart Places we will also update your location details on Petal Maps and Search.
The “Share Your Location” feature on WhatsApp often has business listed there. These business listings are coming from 2 sources, Foursquare and Facebook. Ensuring your business location is updated on Foursquare and Facebook will help ensure your business location is on WhatsApp.
THTC Maps is a GCC based mapping and mobility company that provides digital maps, location data, navigation and business intelligence solutions for software developers and industries throughout the GCC. For more information visit: https://thtc.ae
What3Words is a UK based company that has devised a new location mapping solution that uses a unique 3-word combination to identify a 3-meter square location on the planet. For more information visit: https://what3words.com
TomTom is a Dutch mapmaking company and a global leader in providing geolocation technology for drivers, carmakers, enterprises, and developers. For more information visit: https://www.tomtom.com
Waze is a popular Navigation application that is owned by Google. Waze uses the same business listing data as Google Maps, but the unique feature of Waze is that it relies on its user community to update traffic information such as accidents, detours, road closures and more. Waze relies on Google Maps and Android users’ location data for traffic information too. For more information visit: https://www.waze.com
HERE Technologies, most widely known as HERE Maps, is one of the oldest digital mapping companies in the industry. Originally known as NAVTEQ, they lead the world in introducing in-vehicle navigation and business listing look up on in-vehicle navigation systems. NAVTEQ was bought by Nokia in 2008, and Nokia changed the name to HERE Maps in 2012. HERE Maps is the leader in in-vehicle navigation systems in the UAE and the GCC. For more information visit: https://www.here.com
Petal Maps is a new digital mapping platform from Huawei. Since Huawei devices currently can’t run Google Maps or other Google applications, Huawei has created their proprietary digital mapping and search platforms called Petal Search, and Petal Maps. By subscribing to Smart Places, your business location will also be updated on Petal Maps and Petal Search. For more information visit: https://consumer.huawei.com/en/mobileservices/petalmaps
How can Smart Places help my business?
By subscribing to Emirates Post Smart Places, you can focus on running your business without going through the hassle of claiming your business location across multiple digital platforms, then having to update each one for every change like operating hours or other details. Simply let your location specialist know, and they will update your location on all the platforms.
Many people think that Google Maps and Google Search provide business listings to all digital platforms. That is not the case. For example, if you have an iPhone and ask Siri where the nearest restaurant or a plumbing supply store is, Siri will search the Apple Maps data set. If your business is not on Apple Maps, you could lose out on a sale. 45% of the world’s Internet users use Voice Search, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. Why miss out on a lead when you have Smart Places?
Yes absolutely, duplicate listings cause confusion with customers. Your dedicated Smart Places location experts will help remove or merge duplicate listings directly with Google and the other publisher platforms for you.
Don’t worry, this happens. Your Smart Places digital location experts will help reclaim the Primary Ownership of your business listing for you, following a certain process with Google. Smart Places will get it done for you.
Yes, when you subscribe to Smart Places, you will get access to a Smart Places customer dashboard. This secure and private dashboard consolidates all your Google and Facebook reviews into one location in the dashboard and allows you to easily review what is being posted, and respond directly in real-time to the reviews.
Yes, this is what we want you to do. Just let us know or have us schedule a call to update any or all your business listing content. The Smart Places service does it for you.
Yes, your company logo will be one of the first things we will ask you for, once you subscribe to Smart Places.
Whether you have 1, 10, 100 or 1000, we can help claim, update, and manage all your locations on Google, and the other platforms. We even offer volume discounts.
It is great that you see the importance of having a claimed location on Google. In most cases, claiming a location is only 20% of the benefit. Where Smart Places excels is in something called Location Optimisation. Our dedicated location management experts are experts in helping businesses get found organically. To do that, they capture as much information about your business, and associate the data, images, and content to your business listing. This helps more shoppers find your business on Google and other search engines, online directories, digital maps, and messaging apps.
True, and this issue is caused by the ‘Suggest an Edit’ feature that even claimed locations have on their Google Maps listings. The dedicated location management experts review all notifications from Google regarding changes that have been suggested or made to your business location. The team will reject and correct all these changes, and when in doubt, they will contact you for clarification.
Yes, absolutely! Smart Places is a great way to attract new B2B clients. The reason being that even B2B procurement professionals also use Google and other search engines to find new suppliers. By associating your B2B products and services to your business name allows Google, other search engines, and online directories to deliver your business as a search result. If Google doesn’t know your business exists or hasn’t indexed your products and services to your business Google can’t deliver your contact details in its search results.
Many people have iPhones, and many now using Voice Search to look for things online. If these people are looking for your business, your products, or services, you need to make sure Siri knows your business exists by updating and managing your business location on Apple Maps—the business listing data set that Siri uses to find things. For more information, visit: https://www.apple.com/maps
Yes, if you are a Smart Places subscriber, you will have secure access to the customer dashboard. In the customer dashboard, you can edit your location details on all digital platforms (we prefer to do that for you), you can view and respond to all reviews from Google and Facebook. You can also answer Google Q&A’s or create Google Posts; a free marketing service from Google. In the customer dashboard you will also see all customer actions. We know you are busy, and could even automatically send you reports on how your location is performing online.
Yes absolutely. As long as your head office or main branch is in the UAE, we are ready to help claim, and manage international locations for you. They too would be included in your customer dashboard.
Yes, there is an unknown feature on the GBP where the community asks questions to business. Often the business doesn’t answer but the community does. The Smart Places customer dashboard allows business owners to be notified, and respond easily to questions being asked on their Google listings.
Yes, most of the in-vehicle navigation systems in the UAE are using either HERE Maps or TomTom Maps.
The customer dashboard has an easy-to-use feature called Posts. It allows you to create and share promotions, news and offers about your business on Google and Facebook very easily.
Yes, automated reports will be emailed monthly or weekly, depending on your preference.
How it works
A lot depends on how quickly we can get information about the business. We will need some basic information right away, and if we get it, your business should be claimed and live on Google Maps & Search in 3 to 4 days. The faster we can collect information about your business, the faster we can get your business ownership claimed and managed on Google.
No, you do not need a website to subscribe to Smart Places.
It is very difficult to remove bad reviews on Google. The best thing to do is respond to the reviewer and get to the bottom of the problem. If you can solve it, maybe they will change or remove their review.
We cannot guarantee that you will find more customers, but do remember that Google is a very generous platform. The more information you give Google, the more often your business will appear in all kinds of search results. Most business owners who have claimed their locations by themselves don’t optimise their location, and that is where the magic lies—in getting found organically on Google, and other search engines.
Abundant insights become available on the customer dashboard once your location is claimed on Google, Facebook, and other platforms. That said, contact details are not available from within the customer dashboard.
To start, we will need basic information like your business name, ‘doing business as’ Name, category of business, complete address, phone number, operating hours, and a logo or image if available. The most important thing is to surface your business on Google and other platforms as soon as possible. Once that is done, dedicated location management experts will reach out for further information to optimise your location details more effectively.
Once your business location is claimed on Google Business Profile, yes, you will start to see what is called GBP Insights. Google provides great information about customer actions like Click to Call, Click to Navigate, Click to your Website and whether your business was found on Google Search or Google Maps and also if it was found by looking for your business name or looking for the products or services you sell.
It is important to keep your listing updated. Especially when your hours of operation change, like during the Holy Month of Ramadan and Eid. The dedicated location management experts are here to help, and update your listing whenever you need. It is great to also add images and videos to your Google Maps listings. Be sure to add your Instagram business related images to your Google Maps listing.
Yes, the customer dashboard provides all the functionality to manage and update your listing on all platforms. That said, our dedicated location management experts would be happy to do this for you.
We cannot guarantee that especially with Google but by being sure to provide the dedicated location management experts with as much information and content as possible in the optimization of your location details, the probability increases significantly of organic discover on Page 1 Google.
Yes.
If you don’t renew your Smart Places subscription, we will disable your customer dashboard. We will remove ourselves as a manager of your Google and Facebook locations. Your business information will remain as is with all the publishers. We will not change anything.
In most cases your locations will appear on all the platforms. Please review the ‘Ingestion Timeline’ in the terms & conditions to understand how platforms treat location data differently, to ingest and surface location data at their discretion. Smart Places T&Cs
We will not be responding to your reviews, but the customer dashboard has a great reputation and review management module that makes managing and responding to reviews much easier.
Feel free to email our Customer Care at [email protected] any time for further details or assistance with starting your Smart Places subscription.
Please call our Customer Care on +971600599999 . We’ll be happy to provide you further details or assist with starting your Smart Places subscription.
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