Google's new "Tag" for Google Places listings are available in only Atlanta, Austin and Washington. We have set-up one client with a Tag (painting contractor) and the results are extremely good. Here is our assessment - - client has the only Tag in their business so they definitely stand out - no idea how the introduction of other tags would dilute their results - Tag has definitely increased call count from Google Places listing - Learn about this, for $25 a month it is worth it for any "local" business I cannot find any information on when Google may make this product available on a wide scale. So far this has been a very good product offering. "Google" house painter atlanta ga and you will see what a Google Places Tag is and how it make a listing stand out.
Actually Tags are available in several more cities now including San Jose, Houston, Austin, Atlanta, Washington DC, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder, Chicago and San Francisco. Google announced the expansion on April 29th. http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/04/tags-now-in-11-cities.html For $25 you can't beat it! Important to realize though that Tags don't boost your ranking, so if your Place page isn't optimized and is stuck down on page 5 ,a Tag won't really help that much. I just took a chiropractor in a big competitive city from #44 to #1. I'll be blogging the case study and showing a screenshot of his stats this week. Then we're going to add a Tag, so will be able to measure the impact!