Google Places Adds A Slew Of Business Categories

Google is working on improving and expanding the business categories for Google Places For Business for countries around the world. In fact, they’re adding over 1,000 new categories in the Places dashboard.

Google Business community manager Jade Wang posted an announcement in the Google Product Forums (via Search Engine Roundtable), saying that the move comes based on feedback from merchants. She writes:

Google Warns German Webmasters That Paid Links Violate Google’s Guidelines

Google head of search spam Matt Cutts postedon Twitter this morning another stern warning to German webmasters about a link penalty looming for them.

Matt Cutts tweeted:

A reminder (in German) that paid links that pass PageRank violate our guidelines: http://goo.gl/sHDdlC

The blog post is written in German on the German Webmaster blog, which basically says Google reserves the right to issue penalties for unnatural links. It then goes through the process of explaining the types of unnatural links and how to submit a reconsideration request if you were hit.