Understanding Google Maps & Local Search – Developing Knowledge about Local Search

I read the other day in I, Cringely’s Blog that Google had a booth last month at the Online Lenders Association convention in Chicago, a group mostly composed of Payday lenders… you know the ones… they charge ~400% to help poor folks get from one pay check to a smaller one. What Google was doing at their convention I have no idea. This is legal part of American society for which I have little sympathy and less respect.

The article, however, about Google’s involvment reminded me that I had written extensively about spamming techniques in the Payday Loan industry as far back as as 2007. I did a quick search on Google for Cash Advance NY NY and the first result struck a bell for me and seemed oddly familiar. I did similar searches in Buffalo and a few other cities and saw much the same…

While Google’s effort at fighting spam might be criticized, their ability to search and sort my back library is near faultless. It turns out that I had written about this very company in a December, 2007 Searchengineland article titled: MapSpammers Getting More Sophisticated. In the article I detailed their techniques having used the exact same search & company as the example spam. At the time I included a screen shot of the Local results showing their #1 standing.  I noted:

The basics of the plan are simple (as originally described at oooff.com):

• Rent a mailing address with forwarding in every major market near the centroid of the city (UPS is one of many that offer this service)
• Obtain a domain name for each city with a relevant “location + service” domain
• Create a website that returns an optimized “location + service” page for the domain
• Enter the businesses in the Google Local Business Center (if you are doing the top 50 metro markets, not such a big deal) note: skip this and the next step if using Yahoo Local
• Enter the PIN numbers when they are forwarded to you
• Get rich quick

The folks at Google have mentioned on several occasions that they frequently allow spam into the Maps index so that it can be used to train and inoculate the system against future spam as they use it to increase their understanding of it. That may be so but leaving this crap in the system to display so prominently actively puts Google in the middle of a vicious cycle of exploitation.

With babies these days, there is a great deal of research that indicates that allowing them to actively play in the dirt is good for them and inoculates their system against a host of potential ailments and creates a dynamic with the bacteria that leads to increased happiness. But at the end of the day, a good parent still brings them inside and washes them off.

Google should take the lesson to heart. In the three years since this exact problem was reported, their baby, the Maps index, has started to grow up and deserves a decent bath.

(To see what Google sees at 118 Fulton St. NY NY)… (more…)

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has just published their recent results of Online Product Research by American adults. The hghlights:

*58% of Americans now reporting that they perform online research concerning the products and services that they are considering purchasing.

*The number of those who do research about products on any given day has jumped from 15% of adults in September 2007 to 21% in September 2010

*24% of American adults say they have posted comments or reviews online about the product or services they buy,

The numbers confirm Greg Sterling’s long stated Research Online Buy Offline mantra. The number of adults reporting having done product reviews is somewhat surprising to me. Interestingly the reviewers are roughly equally split between men and women and across age groups with some tilt towards white, higher educated and higher income individuals as more likely to leave reviews.

While the research is specifically about product reviews, I think it not unreasonable to think that a similar trend will apply to business reviews.

Last week on 9/23, there were major disruptions to the Places listings in Google Maps with numerous reports of listings not showing, showing the wrong Place, duplicate listings and the QR codes not working. One theory posited on the disruption was that Google was moving Maps to new servers. At the time, Google noted the problems and stated that they had been fixed. Many of the issues did disappear but it appears that there are still problems with the QR Codes not working and returning 404 Errors.

Here is my QR Code from my Dashboard. When scanned it currently directs a user to a 404 Error.

It is an interesting coincindence that in the Online Media Daily today, they are reporting out a 700% increase in Barcode scanning this year noting that “there were more barcode scans performed in a single month starting in July than in all of 2009″. The article went on to note that linking to a web site was by far the most common type of action used by a 2D (ie QR type) code with 85% of them going to a URL . From the report:

Looking at user demographics, the study found that half of barcode users are ages 35 to 45 and skew male, reflecting the smartphone and early-adopter populations. Android was easily the most popular smartphone platform among barcode users, with 45% owning devices powered by Google mobile operating system. Second was BlackBerry (27%), followed by the iPhone (15%), Symbian (9%), Java (3%) and Windows Mobile (1%).

The reason for the Android skew is that the app is a default app on that platform.

Update: Barry Hunter helped me parse the bad URL:

http://maps.google.com/m/place?hl=en&georestrict=input_scrid:dddcfcf8a07&utm_medium=QR

and determine that the problem lies in that fact that this location is not functioning: http://maps.google.com/m/place

If you redo the URL with the /m/ removed, it will work:

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&georestrict=input_srcid:dddcfcf8a07af88d&&utm_medium=QR

It is not clear why Google’s /m/ which is their mobile page is not working and/or why it it is not being redirected.

Last October, Google replaced TeleAtlas as their primary geo data provider with their own StreetView data. At the time, they also rolled out the “Report a Problem” link on Maps. The idea was/is that users could help Google keep all of this Map data up to date. Google’s goal at the time was to resolve each map edit within a month. From the LatLong Blog (bold mine):

So where do you fit into this? Well, we’ve found our users are also remarkable data sources themselves, so we’ve added a new tool to Google Maps that lets you communicate directly with Google about any updates that you think need to be made to our maps. You’ll find this “Report a Problem” link on the bottom right of Google Maps (you can also find it by right-clicking on the map). Has that new highway on-ramp finally opened up? Do we have an outdated name for your local school? … Tell us! Once we’ve received your edit or suggestion we’ll confirm it with other users, data sources, or imagery. We hope to resolve each edit within a month. If you submit your email address, we’ll even keep you posted on our progress.

Well I am here to inform you that, even for Google, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Google is officially in the weeds on processing and absorbing end user corrections into the Maps geobase. Either that or their email system is broken.

I just received this email from Google on a change that I suggested to them on August 16 about a problem with Sunset Fl:

Admittedly, Google has fixed the Sunrise Fl problem. They certainly had enough feedback on the problem (CBS, NBC, AP, CNN, BBC, Time, the forums, the Mayor of Sunrise) but it doesn’t appear that my appeal through normal channels has been heard yet.

“Every hour, our users make over 10,000 corrections or additions to Google Maps, like updating the position of markers or correcting other small errors, and for the most part people are being really helpful to other users.”

Hmmm… no wonder they are just getting around to my request and that I stand in line behind the AP. Perhaps there are limits to the benefits of crowdsourcing.

The next GetListed Local University is coming up in Denver and will be held Thursday, October 21 at the Sheraton Denver Tech. Pricing for the event is $129 and with the discount code: MBDenver your cost will only be $89. There will be morning and afternoon events and you may sign up for single tickets here.

The event is being coordinated by the folks at seOverflow and sponsored by Bing, Localeze, UBL and Deluxe. The speaker line up includes the usual suspects of great speakers: David Mihm, Matt McGee, Mary Bowling, Maryam Gholami (Bing), Ed Reese and myself.

Like all previous Local Universities, this event is specifically targeted to local small businesses. One of our primary goals is to connect attendees with reputable local marketers to help answer questions and improve their visibility long after the conclusion of the seminar. We realize that when we are long gone from Denver, these folks will still often need the assistance of professionals in their local market.

To serve this need we are offering a great opportunity for local agencies to expose potential clients (and junior staff) to the concepts and ideas of Local University with a specific package targeted to their needs: the Local University Group “7-Pack”.

Local University Group “7-Pack”

Tickets for each of our Local University events are available in blocks of seven at the discounted price of $399 per block ($57* per ticket).

7-PACK BENEFITS
• • Over 50% off each ticket (normally priced at $129)
• • Increased credibility among clients & attendees
• • Inclusion of your logo & website mention as a Local U partner
• • Special reserved seating at event
• • Inclusion of your company/organization logo in rotating partners deck
• • Networking with presenters and other attendees

Reserve Your 7-Pack Today »

*Larger blocks of tickets are also available at this same $57 rate. Inquire for more information

I am looking forward to meeting you in Denver!

Update 9:00 PM EST:Google has noted the following in the forums this evening:

We’re aware some of the business listings were not appearing on Google Maps earlier today. This was a technical issue that’s now been resolved.

Google Maps Experiencing Difficulties – Do not change the channel, I repeat do not change the channel and do not panic!

As SearchInfluence has pointed out Google Maps is having severe problems this afternoon with loosing listings. Here is a sampling of the most recent posts which obviously indicate that Google has misplaced more than one record and that Google staffers will (hopefully) be working overtime:

Late yesterday Google added a new discussion category, Discuss Google Tags with other users, in the Google Places Help Forums. It is billed as a place to “learn more about Google Tags and discuss the same with other users”.

Having followed the forums regularly Tags discussions have occurred only sporadically. In the last Places Newsletter Google did offer up an actual number although it is not clear that you can get technical assistance at the number. Regardless, a forum makes sense from Google’s point as every call that is shunted to the forums saves them costs.

Make your listing stand out with Google Tags >> If you would like to speak with a sales representative, please call (800) 290-6134

Since Tags is a paid product, it is unclear whether Google will staff the new forum with any higher level of personnel than has been the case in the other Places forum. One would hope so but as they say: “Don’t hold your breath”.

The Lat-Long Blog has announced that Google is now supporting rich snippets as a mechanism for identifying the specific location that a webpage is referring to:

From a local search perspective, part of this effort means looking for all the great web pages that reference a particular place. The Internet is teeming with useful information about local places and points of interest, and we do our best to deliver relevant search results that help shed light on locations all across the globe.

Today, we’re announcing that your use of Rich Snippets can help people find the web pages you’ve created that may reference a specific place or location. By using structured HTML formats like hCardto markup the business or organization described on your page, you make it easier for search engines like Google to properly classify your site, recognize and understand that its content is about a particular place, and make it discoverable to users on Place pages.

From Google’s Rich Snippets for Local Search page:

Beyond improving the presentation of your pages in search results, rich snippets also help users find your website when it references a local place. By using structured markup to describe a business or organization mentioned on your page, you not only improve the Web by making it easier to recognize references to specific places but also help Google surface your site in local search results.

Here’s how you can optimize your site for local search results:

1. Use structured markup to help Google identify the places mentioned on your site. If your site contains reviews or other information about businesses and organizations, then the structured markup helps precisely correlate your pages with the place mentioned.
2. Tell us about your content so that we know who you are and what content you have to offer if additional opportunities arise.

Google’s decision to support a more structured approach to presenting local data on the web has been a long time coming. Chris Silver Smith first recommended hCard as a best practice for Local SEO in October 2007 shortly after Yahoo announced support for the standard. Google announced a more general support in their index for Microformats (Rich Snippets) in partnership with large review sites like Yelp in May of 2009.

This announcement is interesting on several levels. It appears that Google is ready to scrape and include in Places index location information that is marked up in hCard or a similar formats. While it appears from the announcement that they will also be generally scraping other information like reviews that are properly marked up, it is not clear that it will flow directly into the index. They noted that sites that are using review markeup to use Google’s form to tell them about your content so that they know who you are and “what content you have to offer if additional opportunities arise“. (Bold mine) One presumes that this will allow Google to pick and choose which sites to scrape to include in Places. It might also open up Places to smaller sites to show their data in Places that have been unable to get Google to accept their data previously.

From a local best practice point of view it confirms what many Local SEO’s have been saying for some time: Be sure to encode your address in hCard format. But the implications are really more important for news and blog sites as these now have a better way of indicating to Google that a particular article is about a particular place and to feel confident that the information would flow correctly within Google.

It appears that Google is bulking up Places Pages with coupons from CitySearch. I had not seen any third party coupons in Places previously but according to Google the ability for “various partners to make coupons and other content available on the Place page has been available for some time”.

I ran across the coupon sharing when the owner of the La Quinta Inn Sedona in Arizona noted in the forums that:

I’ve got a citysearch coupon showing up in my coupons section. I did not authorize any city search coupon and it is a SCAM and its causing problems with customers because they are seeing this stay for $45 a night coupon valid through to sept 16th. IF this is what things are going to be like when you sign up for google places then no. I will end the account today I will not put up with crap like that. These are dishonest b/s scam ads that are placed in a coupon section knowing it will cause problems.

Obviously not all of the kinks are worked out just yet. CItyGrid has noted that: “The coupon in question was created and approved by La Quinta Resorts corporate offices via their digital advertising agency. All offers created by Citysearch are approved and authorized by advertisers before loaded in our system.”

One of the interesting points about the coupon from CitySearch is that it is created using the Open Graph Protocol, (although apparently that is not used by Google, see below) a microformat that was originally announced by Facebook in April. This is the first use of the protocol I have seen in Local (although I must say, I hadn’t been looking). The initial version of the protocol is based on RDFa and it allows for location & human readable addresses (although it is not clear that this coupon did so):

The Open Graph protocol supports the ability for you to specify location information for your object. This is useful if your object is for a business or anything else with a real-world location. You can specify location via latitude and longitude, a full address, or both. The property names used are defined within the Microformat hCard.

Whether Google is using the Open Graph format to insert the coupons is unclear. Citysearch sent me the following: We wanted to clarify that Google is not scraping our content; we provide them with a feed to our data.

Chris Silver Smith noted the following:

Citysearch is apparently a data partner with Google Maps, so it isn’t clear to me that these pieces of data are being harvested via the semantically-marked coupons on Citysearch — they could be getting fed via Google Maps’ partner data format protocols.

It’s possible that Google Maps could harvest Open Graph content, and I’d even expect it might well happen, considering Google’s desire to get Facebook data by hook or by crook.

However, unless we can find instances where Google Maps appears to be harvesting Open Graph data from someone who isn’t formally a partner, I’m not sure it’s happening yet. I could be wrong. I don’t know of a way to easily tell the difference between data harvested through parsing a semantically formatted page versus through a separate data format like XML. The resultant data is generally the same either way..

For a good summary of the history of RDF & microformats, how they play into the web of things and how the Facebook Open Graph format fits into all of that read Facebook Open Graph: A new take on semantic web.

Google has just announced on the Lat-Long Blog that images on a Places Page, whether uploaded by the owner or included via Panoramio, are now viewable in a slide show mode. From the Lat-Long blog:

Today, we’re offering you a better, more streamlined way to view these photos. With this new feature, you can easily flip through a whole collection of photos and find the sites on the web that have relevant pictures of a given place. Photos that have been uploaded by our Panoramio or Google Places users will appear in high-resolution as an overlay when users click on them. For photos from other sources, you can easily click on a specific photo to see more and visit the site it comes from.

This simple and intuitive online album experience makes it easier to explore all the wonderful photographs of places all over the world.

The album like slideshow is invoked by simply clicking on any one of the photos on the Place Page. While in this mode, the Places Page is used as a dimmed backdrop and the viewer is allowed to move easily from one enlarged view of the photo to another. The only option available to the viewer are to close the show or report the photo as inappropriate.

The slide show is not exposed in the Local Universal results on the main page search results and requires at least two clicks before you can see it. Thus, as currently designed, it is unlikely to get much viewership. There are no options to embed the slide show on your website and no link directly to the slideshow is provided.

All recent enhancements to Places have several things in common; trying to keep the user in Places or move them to another Google product. This has been true on the desktop and in mobile with many changes affecting both simultaneously. Google obviously has an eye on increasing user engagement and page views so as to increase visitor loyalty and to be able to deliver more ads. This upgrade, while desktop only at this point, focuses on the engagement side. It is unclear when and what form it will take for mobile.

It is understandable that once Google has you this far into Places, they want to keep you there via this new feature but it would also make sense for Google to provide an ability to present the slideshow via an embed option or a direct link as well.

(click to view larger)

If you click through to Places page for the Option House Restaurant and click on an image to go thru the slide show it becomes obvious why it now makes sense to upload photos at the maximum size allowed by Google Places (less than 1MB and 1024 x 1024 pixels).

Interestingly, when there are photos from other sites (not Panoramio or Google), they show at the end of the slideshow in thumbnail form with an option to expand them. However, when clicked they spawn a new window for the 3rd party site. Sheesh… did anyone say portal?
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