Posts on State of Search about ‘Local Search’

Google Update affecting local Australian rankings?

house of yoga

A few reports are floating around these upside down Australian shores that a recent Google update may have rolled out a double whammy impact, targeting both the devaluation of spammy links as well as a direct impact upon location rankings within a particular area.

This second area is of particular interest for me, as it is so different to the European markets. Take the UK for example, although there are definitely changes in search results based on the actual location the search is undertaken from, it is also difficult to pinpoint geographical changes exactly due to the high number of cities within a relatively small geographical area. Here in Australia, this is very different. With only 6 states, and 4 or 5 key cities within the business sector – it should be quite easy for Google to provide the most relevant listing as per geographical location. (more…)

New Google Places Dashboard Launched

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There’s no denying it, local is a major focus for the future of search. Local SEO has been high on the agenda over the last couple of years & has featured in many keynote presentations by top SEOs or on ‘things to look out for SEO in…’. There are a number of factors that have contributed to this rise, many of which are fairly obvious, some less so. What is true is that it certainly can’t be ignored, and if you’re ignoring it you’re probably missing out…

Last week Google announced the launch of a new Google Places Dashboard. But what does this mean?  Can this be interpreted at a move towards a greater focus on local from the search giant? Or is this just a greater integration of its products into the Google+ aesthetic? Below, I will explore some of the new features and amendments, its expected rollout, and just why local is so important for search engines. (more…)

Google Maps: Turn by Turn Directions, Voice Searches & an Infographic

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Despite being dropped by Apple earlier in the year, and yesterdays news that Amazon may drop Google Maps in favour of their own solution, Google Maps are still going strong and seemingly adding updates every week!

This month Google Maps have added voice activated searches, turn-by-turn navigation for traffic conditions, half a gigameter of biking navigation in 12 countries in Google Maps for Android, more than a million public transport and transit stops, and despite news that infographics links may be discounted in the future, Google have themselves produced an infographic to show us that they know what we did this summer…

As an avid Map Geek/obsessive, I am always happy to share with you the new features in Google Maps! Happy travelling people!

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Bruce Clay about Local, Geolocation and International Differences

It’s time for the last video in the series of videos we shot at SES San Francisco 2012 last week. We have been talking to different experts (Jonathan Allen, Brett Tabke and Simon Heseltine) about Geolocation, International Search and local search.

In this last video we chatted with Bruce Clay, someone who has been writing a lot about local search and has a strong opinion on the future of this part of search. And he was on a role!

Geolocation: Brett Tabke (Pubcon) about Local Differences

Brett Tabke has been around in the search industry for a very long time, going back to Webmasterworld in the old days up to his current ‘job’ as organizer of Pubcon. Last week he was suddenly part of an illustrious panel at SES San Francisco together with the likes of Mike Grehan and Danny Sullivan in the chat with Matt Cutts.

Away from the crowds I talked to Tabke about his experiences when it comes to differences in local search, geolocation and international search, the topics on which I interviewed several people last week. Find below his thoughts.

Beer, Pies & Social Media – A Social Local Case Study

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I am often asked at local networking events –  ’what is the benefit of social media for my business? Quickly followed with ’Will I make any money out of it?’, and ‘When will it start to work?’

Many online marketing pro’s (including me) preach about how social is important, but for the smaller local business who don’t have the resources or the knowledge, this is a very real question, especially when there are many articles floating around suggesting that if you get an intern to do your social, you may be committing brand suicide.

Small local businesses want hard facts and figures as to how much money social might make and how long it will take to see results, so I thought I’d do an experiment on a local level to see just how much reach there might be with a ‘bit of social‘ and publish the results. Hopefully you will see that we got more than great content, we made some fantastic local connections and became part of the festival itself. You may also think differently about short term Social Media for events as just the starting point as opposed to the beginning and the end.

If nothing else, I hope this post can show you how simple ideas can be put together and that thinking of what to tweet is not as hard as it seems when you are surrounded by shareable content! (more…)

How Big is the Geo-Opportunity?

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A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak at the launch of Linkdex’s new georanking tool. A number of other people from other agencies such as MEC, Razorfish and Mediacom (my London counterpart) were also there , and it was a good opportunity to discuss the impact of geo-rankings within the SEO community.

Prior to the launch, Linkdex had done a significant amount of research for the launch comprising around 2000 keywords and phrases across 8 locations. For those not aware of what much of this concerns, the launch by Google of Venice which geo-targeted results based on user location factors was the major factor behind Linkdex launching this tool – and its something I have felt has had a significant factor across a number of terms across Retail and FMCG. The net result of this has been the greater breakout of Local Places (Local+) results and a much greater bias of results where local factor or intent can be determined. (more…)

Geo-ranking: Do you know how your rankings differ per city?

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One of the most important goals for Google is being as relevant as possible to the searcher. One of the main aspects in this lies in the area in which now former Googler Marissa Mayer has been working in for the past few years: local search. Here Google is trying hard to personalize the results based on where you are located. After all, if you are living in London and you do a search on ‘Carpenter’, what use would it be for you if a carpenter from Manchester would show up in the number one results. Or even closer, one on the other side of town, while there is a perfectly good one, just as well optimized, right down the block?

For many SEOs and webmasters this is a battle they have been fighting for a few years with all the tools they can find. Some SEOs or webmasters however might not even realize their website is ranking high in one town, but is a lot less findable in another. This issue we call “Geo-Ranking”.

SEO tool Linkdex, which has been expanding a lot in the last year, now comes out with a new feature which helps web masters understand this exact issue. Linkdex launched this last week and has released a whitepaper pointing out exactly this problem and the solution. (more…)

Dear Google… Please make Local Search Work!

10 months ago by Agnete Tøien Pedersen 6 Comments
norway-letter-to-Google

(…or you might lose the Nordic SMB market)

Dear Google… I have been waiting for years now, and I think I have the entire search-community in the Nordics behind me when I say: When will local search listings work as they are supposed to? We are close to giving up, and you dear Google, might miss your chance in the Nordic SMB market…

Dear Google… So now Google Places is over, and Google+ has taken over as your local business pages. Does this mean that local listings will work now? I guess the answer is no, the back-end of Places is still the same as far as I can see… And that is the root of the problem; a system that simply does not work in the Nordics.  (more…)

Start Integrating Google Places With Google+ Local

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With the launch of Google+ Local it was immediately clear this was the end of Google Places as we know it. Updating your current Google Places page might be a useless bit of work so it seems, something we also discussed in yesterday’s hangout. You can however be one of the first to have both your Google+ Local and Places pages integrated, see below how.

If you look in the search results it seems as if Google+ Local there already has taken over from Places. Do a search on “pizza London” for example and you will see map results which have reviews as well as Zagat ratings going to the Google+ Business Page, not the Google Places Pages anymore.

Integrating the pages

The management of the two pages however isn’t integrated yet, you still need to maintain both pages or you have to start moving things over. But Google is planning on integrating both, as we suspected before. And you can be one of the first.

You can now already request Google to be one of the first to be considered for upgrading your listing early. In order to be considered you must have your business verified in Google Places for Business and have created a local Google+ page, after that you can apply here and wait for Google to respond.

Reviews: a tip

As mentioned yesterday in the hangout, one of the most important things you need to do to get your business page visible for local search is to get as many (positive) reviews as you can. This means people will be asking for reviews a lot from now on probably.

Mike Blumenthal gave us a handy tip on how to get people to write a review for you. You can add ?review=1 to the end of a G+Business page and the review box will open directly once people will click the link.

The link will look like this: https://plus.google.com/101475377013754652573/posts?review=1

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