Upon Further Review of Google+ Local

In an earlier post I expressed excitement about Google's transition of Google Places to Google+ Local and opined that it would give businesses owners more room and flexibility to enhance their Places listing. For the present time, this does not appear to be the case and in fact the opposite might be true:

• For the time-being businesses still need to manage their listing through the existing Places interface
• Among other things, this means that you're still subject to the Places character limit in describing your business and that paragraph is all that appears in the Google+ Local About page
• Other sections populated in Google Places, such as the Additional Information sections, don't appear to carry over at all, at least right now
• Many businesses report that they've been having trouble getting their photos to show up in Google+ Local.

Still, there are some things business owners can do to make the transition easier and eventually realize  the full potential of Google+ Local:

• If you've already claimed and fully-optimized your Google Places listing, it's probably best not to make any further additions or changes right now until the smoke clears
• If you already have a Google+ Business Page (the equivalent of a Facebook Business Page or what used to be called a Facebook Fan Page) it's best that the Places and Google+ Business page both be under the same Google account email
• Even if you don't have a Google+ Business Page, it will probably be helpful to open a Google+ personal account under the same email you use to access your Google Places account.

These blog posts from Search Engine Journal and Poobah Marketing contain additional information and tips and the latter includes a video from Google that has some helpful tidbits, if you can get past the annoyingly sunny disposition of the two Googlers delivering it.