Several months ago, we covered how Google was testing vacation rentals in the Google Maps and local results. So when I saw Allyson Wright, the Community Manager at Google My Business mention it yesterday in a Google My Business Help thread, I was a bit confused.
She basically said that some folks were talking about it and that this is just a "pilot," a test, and it has no impact on the Google My Business guidelines. Those guidelines are unchanged. I suspect people are upset about this line in the guidelines about ineligible businesses for Google My Business listings include "rental or for-sale properties, such as vacation homes, model homes or vacant apartments. Sales or leasing offices, however, are eligible for verification."
Allyson wrote:
As some of you may have noticed, we are running a pilot to test vacation rentals on Google. As part of this pilot, we're surfacing a limited number of listings across a handful of selected regionsWe want to clarify that this pilot is not available at scale and at the moment there have been no changes to the current Google My Business guidelines. Moving forward, we will continue to evaluate when and how to support this business model. In the meantime, if you see a listing on Maps for a vacation rental, please feel free to report it through suggest an edit as ineligible. Internally, we will determine if these listings are part of the pilot or not. If they are, they will remain on Google Maps for the time being
So I guess if this does roll out of beta, Google may have to adjust their guidelines?
Forum discussion at Google My Business Help.
