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

Ted Paff is the President of Customer Lobby, a solution to help local businesses to get, manage and publish customer reviews. Prior to founding Customer Lobby, Ted was an entraprenuer, venture capitalist and investment banker.

He has been a guest blogger here before writing the popular Responding to Negative Reviews – Your Prospects are the Real Audience. Ted probably knows more about the ecosystem of the local review space than anyone that I know, for good or bad his life depends on it.

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Here are a few articles that marked notable events and/or influenced my thinking in 2010 with respect to reviews and Google Maps:

1. I found this article and this article to be thoughtful commentaries on review policy.
2. Although the implementation has a long way to go, Google’s support of microformats changed my view of how we and others will provide data to all of the search engines.
3. The many versions of Google’s integration of local/SERP results had me rereading and recommending these articles (here and here) on local SEO.
4. When we started building our company, I knew (and was repeatedly told) that creating a direct, outbound sales force was expensive and time consuming. In reading this article, it struck me that almost every company with scale that markets online services to small businesses, including Google, finds it worth the cost.
5. The rise, fall and reincarnation of sock puppet accounts marked the early days of reviews spam. Testimonials treated as reviews are likely to be spammy as local businesses figure out that they can inflate their reviews count. I think Sam Decker got the title of this post right but there is a lot more to come on this topic.
6. Data from “people like me” gleaned through the integration of my and others opinions, and mobile and search data could create the first real recommendation engine for local businesses. If Google (or Yelp) can figure this out, the impact on local businesses will be huge.

I was approached by two bed and breakfasts whose Places listing had merged. They have all of the standard problems of being in the same business and being located right next to each other. They have the additional problems of one of the businesses previously having the current phone number for the other business. It is no wonder that an algo can’t keep these two straight but that is not consolation for the businesses involved.

Fortunately, the two owners get along well and have agreed to “share” the listing while we worked on getting them separated. Each Sunday, whoever’s turn it is, gets their Places record updated and they become the dominant business name to display. (Kludge of the highest degree! Shame on Google)

I have been working with them both to unmerge the listings and doing all the standard stuff. We created strong geo signals, updated a very precise pin placement, we built a number of upstream citations, added KML files, massaged all of the directories entries that had the wrong phone number etc etc., tweaked their respective websites.

Now all we can do is wait at this point. In the meantime, I thought I would call Google Tags and seeing if paying $25 might help in the interim.

A number of weeks ago, I called the Tags #800 for the one business that had already purchased a tag. I spoke with a rep that was going to “run the problem up the ladder” and call me back. He did call back and left a message but only to say that he hadn’t been able to solve the problem as of yet but he would stay in touch. That was the last I heard from him.

Late last week, I decided to call a Google Tags rep for the other business and express the desire to get a tag if the listing could be unmerged (true not just a lame effort to get support). Here is a transcript of the conversation:
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David Mihm is the President & CEO of GetListed.org, in addition to running his own Portland-based search engine consulting business. He’s a Search Engine Land columnist and a frequent speaker at the SMX, SES, and Kelsey Group conference. He has created a number of tools to assist the SMB in navigating the rough waters of local more easily and publishes the annual survey of Local Ranking factors. More importantly he cares about the state of local search and how it impacts SMBs. He brings that sensibility and an astute mind to his list of articles that  stood out for him in 2010.

He thinks through the issues top to bottom and whenever I have a question, he is the one that I call.

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The Local conversation this year was once again dominated by Google, and in particular, its decision to completely reinvent its Local interface, moving away from the 10/7-pack and into a blended organic/local SERP.  (Btw, it bothers me that we still do not have a conventional term for this type of result two months after it launched!).  So a couple

Looking ahead to 2011, I think it’s going to be all about reviews, reviews, reviews this year as the differentiating factor for most Local SMB rankings.  Google’s extensive–though not quite exhaustive–push of Hotpot here in Portland these last couple months only goes to show how much stock they’re putting in reviews.  So I want to bring people’s attention to a couple of your posts in this arena.

Then, a couple of conceptual / theoretical posts–one by Chris Silver Smith that highlights an often-overlooked fundamental principle of Google’s Location Prominence patent, and one by Carolyn Johnston of Microsoft addressing one of business owners’ and marketers’ biggest frustration: why is my business data wrong, and what’s with all of the duplicate listings?

And, one tactical post–in my opinion the most actionable post in our industry over the course of the entire year–hats off to Garrett French.

Localization, Unique Data Sets & the Future of Search -
Few people follow the economic side of Google’s UI decisions as closely as Aaron Wall.  In this article he lays out some of Google’s less altruistic motives behind Place Search.

Dead Fingers Walking -
Andrew Shotland’s darkly satirical commentary on the same Places UI upgrade (pre-dating Aaron’s article by several months thanks to your own publication of the beta Place Search interface, Mike).

What Are the Implications of the New Integrated Local Search Results? -
Your own commentary on this seismic (or catclysmic, if you ask Andrew) shift in the way Google returns results for Local Intent searches.

Review Services – Do Positive Only Reviews Have a Place? -
Perhaps not one of your greatest literary epics, Mike, but I see this debate raging for many years, particularly as Google begins to incorporate self-generated testimonials and hReviews into its Place Pages.  It’s an extremely important question to ask both the search engines and the marketing community.

Principles for a Review Plan: Considerations in encouraging customer reviews -
You pretty much nail the matrix of important considerations in this easily-digestible column.

A New Behemoth Emerges in Google Maps: Wikipedia -
Chris Silver Smith highlights the importance of the highest-rated referring Place-related document as part of Google’s Location Prominence patent, here pointing to Wikipedia as a very highly-rated source.  Perhaps not actionable for most businesses but I think the concept behind this discussion is incredibly valuable.

Why Local Listings Data Is Tough -
A great “Q&A” posed from the perspective of the marketer/SMB to the search engine that is very illustrative of the difficulties in getting accurate data to flow all the way through the Local Search Ecosystem.

Phone Number Co-Citation Analysis for Local Link Builders -
Garrett French’s terrifically efficient strategy for making sure you’ve got your competitive bases covered when it comes to Local listings.

We are at the beginning of a new era of search that some folks are calling social search. Some businesses are seeing web traffic from the likes of Facebook and Twitter. The local businesses are under constant pressure to try new local marketing channels and often are not sure of how to proceed.

But for the past five years or so, straight up local search has been king. Over that time Google has grown to dominate what was not that long ago a very fragmented market. That being said, I was curious to know exactly what percentage of total web traffic Google was sending to local sites.

I had access to and looked at the analytics for 16 websites that are purely local in nature. Most of these sites have done minimal online marketing, search optimization or in bound linking although a few have. Very few have any budget for online marketing.

I looked at the analytics for businesses that are dependent on traffic in their front door to stay alive and do no appreciable business on the net. For these sites, the vast majority of their web traffic originated from within 75 miles of their location. I compared traffic from Google search to their total traffic (search, referral and direct) for 2009 and 2010.

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Sebastien is Praized Media’s co-founder and VP Product Management. He has more than 12 years’ experience in local search, interactive entertainment and online media. Sebastien co-founded Praized Media in 2007 to help local media companies tap into the growing potential of online word-of-mouth and social media. Praized Media recently launched Needium, an innovative social media lead generation service for SMBs. He writes about traditional media, local search and social media on his blog at  and tweets at @sebprovencher.

When Sebastien speaks I listen. You should too.

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From my point of view, here are what I think the important events in
“local” in 2010.

1) The launch of Twitter Places:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/14/twitter-places-geo-tweets/ and
http://blog.twitter.com/2010/06/twitter-places-more-context-for-your.html
More ways to geolocalize your tweets means more local/social opportunities. More and more people think Twitter’s future will be ”local”.

2) Foursquare went from less than 1M users to more than 5M users in 2010. 2M check-ins daily.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/foursquare-hits-2-million-check-ins-25k-new-users-daily/
Still curious to know how many of those are “active” users (same metric as Facebook) but nonetheless, Foursquare is now a key player in the local/social ecosystem.

3) Facebook launches Places
http://blogs.praized.com/seb/facebook/facebook-places-will-be-huge-capturing-stories-about-places/.
Not as big as bang as I expected but a much needed “local” infrastructure in Facebook. 2011 will probably see growth and better integration.

4) The launch of the iPad. Seen as a savior by many newspapers before the launch, I’m not sure those expectations were met
http://mashable.com/2010/10/19/ipad-newspaper-savior/.

Undoubtedly, on another level, the iPad is a resounding consumer success, creating a new space. What Apple did for smart phones, they’re doing it again for tablets.

5) The rise of Groupon and the daily offer space. Incredible revenue growth. High popularity. New local ad vehicle. ‘Nuff said.

6) Groupon rejects Google’s purchase offer. Worth a bullet by itself. Rumored $6B offer. Wow. Again, ‘Nuff said.

A question that comes up all too frequently because Google has included a grade in the Places Dashboard rating the completeness of a listing, is: how do you make a Places listing 100% complete? It is soon followed by the question: will it affect my ranking or the results?

Let me answer the second question first: It has no impact on rank. The benefit of a complete listing is that you provide more information that Google thinks the reader is looking for. It may, in marginal cases, add to the relevancy of your record on certain searches. That being said, it is not much harder to make a listing 100% complete than 80 or 90% complete and there is no harm in it.

At the Webmaster-Zentrale blog in Germany, they have recently tabulated a guide to one possible way to achieve a grade of 100%. There are several as I have achieved 100% with only 2 videos. I have translated and plotted their results here.
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If you compare this chart to a similar % complete chart that was done last year, you will see that the value of basic information has increased somewhat. There are minor adjustments, both up and down, elsewhere. An interesting aberration that showed up was that by adding the first video, the % complete actually dropped by 4%. This effect has been confirmed by EHG, one of the Top Contributors in the Places Help Forums.

Who better to start off Loci 2010 than Greg Sterling? Greg is an indefatigable writer (how does he get anything else done?) and provides the strategic insights as well as the scoop on the “daily deal” to all of us in the industry. He can be found at Screenwerk, SearchEngineland and Internet2Go. He speaks at and organizes a number of conferences and you will find him speaking next at his Conversational Commerce Conference February 2-3 in San Francisco.

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Local-social-mobile is the new mantra for many financial analysts and VCs. Indeed, we saw a range of developments in 2010 that tied these arenas closer together. It was a watershed year for the mobile Internet and the year that everyone started to take local very seriously – most notably Google. Executives at Google declared local not only a major priority but the company’s “top focus.” High-profile but unsuccessful attempts to buy Yelp and Groupon testified to that.

The following are list of the top trends and developments that I believe were significant in “local” or local marketing this year:

1.     Mobile: the rise of mobile and smartphones in 2010 helped focus new energy and attention on the importance of local and location

2.     Google’s surge into local was significant on several fronts and many product areas. There were so many local-related initiatives this year by Google it’s hard to keep track of them all. The launch of Place Search and the new UI that emphasizes local content on Google is reflective of this larger cluster of local moves by the search engine

3.     Group buying and Groupon: in 2010 this phenomenon came out of almost nowhere to culminate in an aborted $5++ billion takeover by Google at the end of the year. There are well over 100 “Groupon clones” operating in the market and many more if you include the traditional media companies that have adopted the daily deals model

4.     Facebook: Facebook launched check-ins and Places. It also launched Deals as a tool to reward check-ins. While each of these offerings is still “1.0” Facebook’s huge footprint can bring a kind of scale to location and deals that few others can match, save Google or perhaps now Groupon in some limited respects.

5.     Local product inventory: a number of startups emerged and joined a group of existing companies trying to bring real-time product inventory data online. In Q4 NearbyNow and Milo were acquired and Google launched its own effort.

6.     The rise of ‘free’ local data: there are now several companies, including Facebook, Google, Factual, Placecast and SimpleGeo offering free local data to developers. Over time these offerings will become better, more flexible and richer, enabling much more competition in the local, and especially local-mobile, segment. The “free database of places” removes a front-end barrier to developing local sites or applications

7.     Local ad networks: CityGrid, Chitika, xAD, WHERE, Verve, Marchex and others emerged with local monetization offerings that hadn’t existed 12 months ago.  This is significant for local (and mobile) publishers and developers. Now there are a number of high-quality alternatives to Google and conventional ad networks that offer generic national ads with geotargeting

8.     Places (and location) everywhere: Google Places, Facebook Places, Twitter Places; location is now seemingly everywhere.

9.     Social as alternative to SEM: While social media and search ultimately go together social marketing emerged as a kind of parallel universe and in some cases alternative to to more traditional PPC-search marketing. And for many smaller companies social media are more “comprehensible” than paid-search or SEO.

10.   Noise and more noise: From a small business perspective the world of digital marketing and advertising became vastly more complex, confusing and “noisy.”

There are many ways to judge an article’s popularity and worth (two distinct concepts for sure and they don’t always correlate). One is page views, another is retweets and the one that I consider most important, number of comments. Unfortunately, given time constraints and lack of the technology to quickly and easily track total tweets and comments for a given period, these are presented in order of total page views.

In 2010 you will find the top articles on topics like the new Places Search, reviews, tags, rejections, microformats in local, customer service and quality guidelines. All were widely discussed this past year and many have had a huge impact on our jobs and businesses.

2010

1- Google Testing New, More Integrated Local Search SERPs (the winner by a longshot… Hat tip to Linda Buquet of Catalyst Marketing)

2- Google Maps: Now Adding Reviews from News Sites, Hyperlocal Blogs and Other Non Traditional Review Sources

3- What are the implications of the new integrated Local Search results?

4- Google Tags – Do They Help? An Anectdotal Review

5- Google Places And Their New Rejection Algo – It is like 7th Grade All Over Again!

6- Google Announces Full Support for Microformats in Local

7- More on Google’s Paid “Enhanced Listing” for Local (The Tags Rollout)

8- Google Gets a Barely Passing Grade with the BBB – For the Want of a Nail…

9- Local SEO Planning Tip – Determine The Geo Limits of a Search

10- Google Places Updates Quality Guidelines

Top Articles from the Back Library

These are always of interest to me because the reflect the on-going concerns of a growing audience outside of my traditional readers. In these you will find recurring questions about processes and procedures, mostly within Google Places itself. The articles reflect, to a large extent, the problems and struggles that users experience when navigating the not always friendly world of the Google Places Dashboard.

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1. Particular postions, points or places
2. Centers of activity, attention, or concentration

Loci 2010 is a year end review of articles in Local Search that will be appearing over the next week(s). It is a series that I started in at the end of 2008 and and this will make its third appearance. For me, collaboration, cooperation, review and research create the path to increase our understanding of the world. That is even more true in the nascent industry of Local. In that vein, I wanted to share the articles that others in the industry have found significant from 2010.

I have gathered these articles from a range of people, people whom I respect and who are knowledgeable about local search.  Each in their own way is a center of activity around local and each has their own particular perspective on which places in Local over the past year are the most important. Their voices, some more prominent in the industry than others, are voices that should be listened to as they are intimate with the many different facets of local.

Here was the charge that I gave them:
Would you be willing to share the 3,5 or 10 articles that influenced your thinking or actions the most over the past year? The articles could be yours, or from others and could cover any topic that you think relates to Local ie local mobile, phones, mapping, Local VC, Local companies, Google, trends, marketing, best practices etc….but articles that you found of importance in one way or another throughout the year.

Join me, over the next weeks as we look at what others in Local have read and think important from the last year.