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New Visibility for Local Businesses

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Miriam Ellis detailed recent changes to Google’s search engine results pages in this excellent article in Search Engine Guide.

These changes make it much easier for potential customers to find and use Google Maps local listings, and they will likely make the local listings provided by other websites like Merchant Circle, Insiderpages, Yellowbook.com, and Yelp much less important to local businesses and consumers.  In the past, someone searching for a local business was required to input the business type and the location in the search box.  Now however, now Google recognizes the IP location the search is originating from and returns local results appropriate for that location.  So if you search for car repair and your internet service is provided by a company in Houston, TX, you’ll see local results for Houston car repair shops at the top of the search engine results page, even though you didn’t specify “Houston” in the search.  This change greatly increases the Web visibility benefits of claiming Google Maps local business listings.

Since many Web searchers apparently don’t know to use a location in a search for a local business, this change will provide better results for these consumers.  It also makes consumers much more aware of the existence of local business listings, and it certainly enhances the importance of Google Maps local business listings in a universe of listings provided by such websites as Citysearch, Insiderpages, Yellowbook, Merchant Circle and others.  This makes it more important than ever for business owners to claim their local business listings and the one from Google Maps should be at the top of the “to-do” list.
One thing that strikes me when I look at local results from Google or Yahoo is that many of them are incorrect in some way.  Businesses are depicted at the wrong locations on the map or well-known businesses are not listed at all.  Businesses that have closed continue to be listed alongside the active ones.  If you own a local business, by claiming your listings you can ensure that the information in those listings remains up to date.  If you do, your business will benefit from the changes that Google is making.
Google local results are presented in a short list, with a notation of the number of reviews recorded for each business.  If you want your business to stand out in that list, it helps to be the business with the most customer reviews.  Google pulls in reviews from some other sources — Insiderpages is one of them — so your customers’ reviews don’t have to be posted at Google.  However, you’re helping yourself if you regularly ask your regular customers to post reviews for you at Google or Insiderpages, and then you thank them when they follow through.
This new Google feature doesn’t work as intended outside major cities.  I live in Wharton, TX, which is about 60 miles southwest of Houston.  I tried the Google feature by typing in “car dealers” and the local results that appeared were from Houston.  Google makes it easy to then correct the results by changing the location, but the consumer will have to take that second step.  I also tried the search with my laptop using a broadband card and was served results from a suburb of Dallas more than five hours away by car.  The ISP associated with my broadband card must have been from that area.  Again though, it’s easy for the user to click the “Change Location” link at the top of the results list to get the correct results for the user’s actual location.

Please contact us to help you get started with your Google local business listing.

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About Paul Sherland

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