Google Helps You Find Things Nearby
Google recently made search improvements as your roam around by adding the My Location option to mobile search. The idea is to help everyone find things that can be visited, used or accessed right then and there based on your location. While there is plenty of concentration on the mobile side of search they have not let the local aspect of search from the desktop get stale either.
Last year Google started to give Google map results even if there was no local qualifier in the search which moved local search to the next level. The latest enhancement allows you to look for things that are nearby but with a slightly different twist.
Starting today, we’ve added the ability to refine your searches with the “Nearby” tool in the Search Options panel. One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don’t have to worry about adding “Minneapolis” to your query and missing webpages that only say “St. Paul” or “Twin Cities.” Check it out by doing a search, clicking on “show options” and selecting “Nearby.”
This can come in handy in planning trips or a variety of ways. By creating more options on the geography that are not anchored to specific keywords this certainly adds more power to the local search capabilities of the search giant.
Here’s my question though. How many people does Google think will adopt this option? Most users of search are so unsophisticated that they will have no clue that this option exists. How many times have you seen someone type in a full URL into a Google search rather than into the browser?
I suppose these things are good to have as more people get educated regarding search but most people just type in their basic needs and either refine from there or get frustrated and move on. If I were Google I would work to educate the true masses about what they can actually do with Google. Right now I think that they feel that by telling the “industry” that it’s enough. Trouble is it’s not. If the ‘regular’ searcher doesn’t even know these things exist is Google missing the full value of these offerings? Just a thought.
Leveraging Your Employees For Local Search Rankings
Many management advice books recommend that businesses should make better use of what’s often their biggest investment: employees. Yet, a lot of companies fail to inspire, motivate and exploit the good ideas of their employees. Local search marketing often has an employee component that’s overlooked as well. Read on for some tips on leveraging your [...]
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Google Adds “Nearby” Local Search To Options Panel
Google has expanded the choices in its Search Options panel with today’s announcement of a tool to refine searches by location.
After doing a search and opening the “Show Options” panel, you’ll see a new link labeled “nearby.”
Clicking that link leads to a few refinement options: You can use the default location Google has for you, [...]
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Local Search Complexity = SMB Frustration
In my role as president at GetListed.org, I sometimes receive emails from users asking why one local search engine or another is displaying an old location for their business, or why the search engines still aren’t showing their new website address, or why the phone number listed for their retail location is actually the one [...]
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Local Search APIs For Fun & Profit
I am not afraid to admit I am an opportunist. We all rooted for Julia Roberts when she persevered for years to win the big case in Erin Brokovich, but let’s face it, do any of us really want to work that hard? Me, I would have taken the settlement right after I [...]
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Google Adds Maps, Local Search For 30 Countries In Africa
Relying largely on crowdsourcing and its MapMaker product, Google announced the addition of maps and local business search for 30 countries across Africa:
Our big announcement today is that we are launching Maps domains for 30 countries across Africa. So what’s on offer? As well as searching online Maps for towns, highways, or roads, Google Maps [...]
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Global Vs. Local: How To Let Google Know How To Treat Your Site
As the search engines rapidly move to offer more locally focused search results, those managing large global, single domain sites are facing more and more difficulties in getting them indexed, detected as local, then ranked in the local search results.
This is especially true with Google in English and Spanish speaking countries where it is getting [...]
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Google Maps Labs Open for Business
Google continues to move forward with its work to improve the Google Maps experience as everything gets pushed further and further down to the local level in search. By opening the Google Maps Lab and allowing you to slap a beta logo on it if you please (a little humor from the Googlers, huh?) there is a look at what they are cooking up for the future.
When Google wants to test new features, they call them Lab experiments, and make them opt-in. Now, following many other services, Google Maps received a Lab icon. Click the green flask at the top of Google Maps and you get a chance to enable features like the following:
Drag ’n’ Zoom: Click the Drag-and-Zoom button, then draw a box on the map to immediately zoom into that place.
Aerial Imagery: Available for certain areas, aerial imagery “gives you rotatable, high-resolution overhead imagery presented in a new perspective.”
Other areas that are part of the labs experience allow the user to search for the best places in that location, giving the latitude and longitude of the selected area as well as the ability to rotate maps.
While the Labs experience that Google has had with other services provides the history that not everything in Labs makes the cut this opening says something about just how serious Google is about local search. Why wouldn’t they be considering the pile of money that it represents and someone has to take it, right?
The New Local: Location Based, Social Centric & Behaviorally Targeted
We’re just weeks into 2010, and already a host of major tech, online, and mobile companies have made some exciting announcements about their latest plans for local search.
In mid-January, Google’s Mobile division announced that it is upgrading its search engine on Android-powered devices and the iPhone to present results reflective of the current or last [...]
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8 Opportunities To Optimize Content Beyond Local Listings
Not to beat a dead horse, but as I said in my last column, I think 2009 was truly a watershed year for local search. Between Google’s introduction of the generic 10-pack, its beta test of local listing ads, dramatic improvements to Bing’s Local Listing Center, and numerous partnerships throughout the industry— all of these [...]
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