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Up until now, if you’ve received a complaint in a Google review (legitimate or not) there hasn’t been any way to respond to that review.

Today Google announced via their Lat Long Blog in their post Respond to reviews for your business on Google Place Page that those days are over. As long as you have claimed your Google Place Page you can now log in and reply to the bad review.

Example: Google Place Page Review and Owner Response (from Google Lat Long Blog)

At times, responding to a customer through a review is the only way to reach them if you don’t have their contact information. Perhaps just as importantly, it gives you the opportunity to let potential customers who are reading your reviews know your side of the story. While bad reviews are often earned, there are those that are inaccurate.

There’s another opportunity here that I want to call your attention too.

While most business owners will take the opportunity to respond to negative reviews, very few will take the time to respond to the positive reviews. But why not? We appreciate it when people acknowledge us, even if it’s a small thing. Showing readers of the review that you’re actively paying attention to your customers (good or bad) will go a long way to demonstrating your dedication to great customer service. Plus, the person that you acknowledge will feel even better about having done business with you, paving the way for repeat business and even more referrals. You may even consider going a step further and offering your customer a small thank you offer (like a free dessert on a future visit if you’re a restaurant). Nothing that someone would consider coercive, just a small gesture of your appreciation for their business.

Take advantage of the opportunity that two-way reviews give you and make it a part of your overall social media strategy today.

As Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Center) evolves one of the most important aspects of their development is their mobile presence. The video below shows how Google Places has been enhanced to work more seamlessly with the iPhone, Google Android phones and other Smartphones like BlackBerry’s, Windows Mobile, Nokia and others.

With Android, Google wants to continue to play a leadership role in how mobile is intermeshed with local. And how much more local and intermeshed can something be than a device that’s never far from your fingertips than a mobile device?

This all bodes very well for small businesses who’ve invested the time to create and updating their Google Places page with photos, video, updates, mobile coupons and more.

Along with their name change to Google Places (from Google Local or Google Maps) there are some new useful features and services that the folks in Mountain View have for local businesses in select U.S. and international cities (all major Australian cities!).

If you apply at Google you might be one of the lucky businesses that receive a free photo shoot of the inside of your premise!

Google will coordinate a photo shoot and upload the photos to your Google Places Page. There are still a lot of gaps in their coverage but if you’re included be sure to apply.

And for those of us with digital cameras (ahem, pretty much everyone) you can take photos of the inside or outside of your business (or whatever you choose) and upload them to your own Google Places page any old time.