I think activation by phone isn't available in every country. We did this by post card, received it within 4 weeks and everything worked well. But be carefull: It might be shocking for some of you to receive _real_ mail from Google. ;-)

very true stefan, looks like a very normal post card and perhaps even junk mail....

Its available in India too.

Archit, thanks for the tip!

I'm able to see business listings in India that do seem to be created by the owner:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&geocode=&q=food&near=india&ie=UTF8&ll=34.615127,75.014648&spn=17.432689,25.488281&z=5&iwloc=A&iwd=1&cid=26297974,73021305,12445574464647914648&dtab=1

Just so you know, India isn't listed in Google's list of locations where the service is available:
http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16634&topic=10778

Again Archit, thanks for posting this information! :)

This kind of makes me wonder how many other places aren't included in Google's list of locations!!!!! Anyone else see business listings in areas other than those listed by Google?

Hi,

I just found a post here http://www.pagetrafficblog.com/google-explains-method-adding-business-google-maps/4796/ that appears to be the same as this one but with a liitle more words added, same images. It has a different author name; so I'm just wondering who's article is this.

I might not know much abut this but isn't there a duplicate content issue that everyone is so affraid of? It's confusing to read the same post on two different sites and see it claimed by two different authors.

Very useful article; thank you.

E.T., the article you link to has this as its first sentence:

<< Over at the Google Blogoscoped, there is a post that has provided details as to how a user can successfully add his business to the Google Maps. >>