Ggoogle places

Should we be concerned that GM, Cobalt, and Google decided it best to create Google Places pages for all GM dealers?

Has anyone seen effects in organic search?

Is it all a little "Big Brother-ish" ?

Do these broad sweeping activities border on collusion when considered in the context of organic search and Pay-Per-Click advertising.

When vendors get that close to "Google" what are the unintended or intended consequences to the invisible hand of free market capitalism and innovation driven by competition in the Dealership environment?

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Comment by David Pritchard on March 15, 2012 at 11:47pm: Brian,

Saw your video prior to my post that's what sparked my questions?

I want to "sincerely" thank you for the alert? It was the mark of a thoughtful "World Class" professional.....

Hope all is well...

Regards,

David

Comment by Brian Pasch on March 14, 2012 at 9:21pm: David

I created a video on DealerElite for members who were impacted by this update. Here is the link to the video:

http://www.dealerelite.net/video/google-places-automotive-directory...

I also posted a follow-up commentary on this matter here: http://www.internetsalesmanager.org/profiles/blogs/google-places-up...

This was intended to only impact dealers that ignored Google Places and not to negatively impact dealers that were proactively managed Google Places.

The questions you ask are valid. Dealers were advised on this planned update but how many dealers really understood what that email meant. Of course, now that we know that the update had a major bug, it caused a black eye for GM and Google.