Businesses, Claim Your Listings on Patch

Before Santa Monica Patch launched in May 2010, editors and freelancers ventured to local businesses to collect information for our directory.

Patch Places is a spot where readers can find descriptions, hours, accepted payment methods and much more for businesses around town. You can even see what your neighbors think of a business before you try it, or write your own review.

But local businesses get extra bonuses when they claim their free listings.

Owners or managers can sign in and search for their businesses. Underneath the photos, there is a box with the question: Do you own or manage this location? Claim it! Just click Claim it! and a form will pop up asking for contact information and authorization.

Within a few days, someone from Patch will contact you to verify your authenticity. You'll then be approved as the business owner and will see a "Manage Your Listing" button every time you sign on.

From there, you have lots of options to add photos, see your statistics and edit the listing. Here are the tools you'll see and what they mean:

Your Stats:

Here you can see how many users have rated, reviewed or followed your listing. You can e-mail your customers to seek out more reviews, and link your Patch Place to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Edit Listing:

Add photos, website information, hours of operation, contact information and more under the Basic Info tab. Some of this information cannot be changed, but you can request a new description if you think your business is inaccurately described.

Choose Extra Info to add information like the founding date of your business, what kinds of payments you accept, parking information and more.

Manage Photos & Media:

Here you can add and edit photos and choose which image is featured. If you have a video or PDFs, add them here.

Reviews:

You can see what people have to say about your business and respond to reviews.

Free Tools:

This is an easy way to post events and add job openings to our classifieds section, also known as the Marketplace.

Paid Tools:

You can upgrade your listing with a video profile, add a message from the owner and become a featured business on the Places page for a fee. (Learn more about these options from Danielle Bracamonte at Danielle.Bracamonte@patch.com.)

This is an easy way to post events and add job openings to our classifieds section, also known as the Marketplace.