Google: Everything is Local Search

In a major advancement to embrace local business information, Googles search engine is starting to consider all searches as local oriented. Historically, the search results would respond with local business data only when the query explicitly contained geographical terms such as a city name or zip code. This improvement now allows for any basic search term to trigger the top 10 pack of local business results.

Queries such as Dentist (image) or Plumber (image) now display local business listings among the traditional web page results. The functionality is driven based upon what the user has provided as their default location in the Google Maps. The top 10 pack seem to always rank in 4^th position, which incidentally is the same position for subscribed links.

Activating Local Search in Google

To activate this feature, users can lookup their location in Google Maps and then specify that as their default location. (Example specifying location as 92708). Subsequent searches done on Google will show the local top 10 if the query is relevant to business listings, such as Chiropactor search. The default location setting can easily be changed (or even removed for those who are privacy insecure) at a later point from within the search results by selecting “change location”.

Local = Search

This functionality isn’t new. In fact, similar location profiling and caching techniques have been done at search engines such as the one we developed at Local.com. The fact that Google has incorporated this logic into its universal search algorithm is indicative of the overwhelming user desire to obtain local search results as well as the pervasive nature of local business listings, or in other words: “Everything is local and local is everything”.


David Rodecker
Founder & CTO,
RelevantAds
“getting local business online"

Google Business Listing Loose Search Optimization

Google Local underwent a few modifications in the last week. There are some notable changes that impact SEO and internationalization.

Tracking URL -
Business listing have a primary URL that is shown and linked from the business profile page. The website link used to directly refer to the URL, which produces a link value. A change was done such that the link is now points to a tracking URL and then redirected to the destination website. So instead of going directly to http://relevantads.com, the users browser will first hit Googles tracking URL and then be redirected to the RelevantAds site.


Google's motivation is probably not to stifle SEO link value; but to track user activity. When a user clicks on the tracked link, it provides Google a lot of information such as the search query, business listing, coordinates, type of link that was clicked and other encoding facets.

USA Joins Google Maps Globally
Business listings now are added with a county code prefix. For US listings this means that a "1" is prefix to the added to listing if it doesn't already exist. This is apparent from within the GLBC.
While this seems like a trivial change, it allows Google Maps to be consolidated to a single global index rather than several country segments. And a consolidated index is a faster, more stable and more rapidly updated all of which we've seen in Google Maps over the past few months.

David Rodecker
President, RelevantAds
“getting local business online"

Google Local now with YouTube Video

Google Local silently launched a new feature today in providing a way for businesses to integrate video with their local business profiles.

This makes Google the only top-tier search engine to allow businesses to integrate video in their local business listings. While several 2nd tier local search destinations, such as SuperPages and CitySearch have provided video production and publication for some time; Google Local is focused on giving control to integrate the existing videos. This is similar to RelevantAds business profile. Because RelevantAds also syndicates business listings, videos will now be distributed to Google Local Business Profiles (announcement to follow).

The Google Local Businesses profile page allows for up to 5 YouTube videos to be integrated with the listing. Each video is verified and content approved (presumable to not allow banned or adult content) and retreivd from YouTube along with its title.

Perhaps the more impressive change with Google Local is that the video is shown on Google Local Business Profile within minutes. Previously, it would take several weeks for the Google Local index to be updated with any content changes.

Yahoo Local Enhanced Business Profile, which is a premium product, doesn't even allow for video integration. I would expect to see that upgrade in the months to come.