Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Each morning when I rise, I check the RSS feed from the Google Maps Support Forums. I try to answer a few questions from wayward business folks that have no place else to turn. I often feel that in doing so, I am removing from Google the very real burden of providing actual support.

Here is this morning’s helpful response that I gave to a naive business person thinking the Google Coupons might someday be used by a potential customer:

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Question:
I added a coupon for our various locations yesterday.  The admin center says the coupon is active, but I don’t see the coupon anywhere online?  Where do customers see the coupon?
Thank you.
****
My answer:
Coupon location is one of the best kept secrets of Google Maps. Even Maps Guide Jen has been known to have trouble locating them. The only entity totally capable of finding them after they have been posted is the GoogleBot. Occassionally they are spotted by humans but only after you have drilled into Maps quite deeply.

-In “Text View” there is a link under the business and there is a tab in the stack detailed view
-In “Map View” select “more info” and then it will show in a tab.
-Links or any other indication of their existence are not visible from the main Google search results page. 

My presumption is that Google is attempting to leave a historical record of life on the planet for distant future archeologists to ponder but that they did not intend for Google Coupons to be used in any manner to which you as a business person or consumer are traditionally accustomed.

Mike B

There is the old marketing rule of thumb (written of course by marketers) that the time to grab market share is in a down market. The other marketing rule of the thumb is that coupon use goes up in down markets. According to a recent NY Times article In Lean Times, Online Coupons Are Catching On.

Neither adage could be proven by Google Coupon’s lack luster performance compared to last year. Compared to last March, Google Coupons use is down by 31%. Given that the ValPak numbers are roughly the same , one can surmise that self provisioning of coupons by SMB’s in the Local Business Center is the reason for the decline. Given Coupons low visibility and lack of value this is a rational response. Google Coupons is the greatest Google Local idea that has never received the exposure or positioning that they so desperately need. 

On a related and somewhat ironic note Greg Sterling at Local Mobile noted that  Top Google Android Engineer Goes to Coupons Inc., where Coupons.com is hiring 40 new employees before the end of February.

Most Read New Articles in 2008

Here are the 10 articles (who picked 10 as the appropriate number, anyways?) written in 2008  that received the most readership during the past year. Readership and traffic have moved up significantly compared to last year, growing along with the broader interest in Local. My Top 10 most read stories of 2008 were viewed a total of 19206 times compared to 11337 Top 10  viewings in the 2007. Pageviews and visits increased ~107% year over year.  As you can see from the numbers on these, the most popular articles, my readership is still a niche. 

But Local is a a growing & exciting niche and one where much of the future of the internet lays. On this blog I write to the professionals and aficionados within that niche. That allows me to interact with the many people in the Local space that are forging much of what Local will be. It has been an incredibly fun year meeting and engaging those Localites in person, on the phone and on my blog. To these many folks that have shared their ideas with me and the readers of this blog, sent me visitors and contributed to the local space I say: Thanks for a great year & thanks for helping me understand and learn as much as I have!

Most Read New Articles in 2008 from Previous Years

Articles in the blogosphere often have a very short shelf life. Sometimes, you spend countless hours in research and writing an article and it seems to barely cause a blip in the scheme of things at the time it is published. The 10 Likely Elements of Google’s Local Search Algorithm was one such article. But it manages to find readers 18 months after it was written and it still has relevance. Here are the 5 stories from a time long, long ago that were the most read this year

The Local Search Marketing industry is in its infancy. The following interview covers the good, the bad and the reality of SMB Marketing and how far there is still yet to go for SMB’s to take advantage of its power. 

Chuck Bruce of Bruce’s Sew Handy, caught my attention when he gave a testimonial for Merchant Circle in the November email newsletter that MC sent out. I was curious if he was for real or just another Merchant Circle marketing fabrication so I gave him a call. In the third week of November, we had an extensive conversation about his market, marketing strategies, his relationship with online local listing services and the tough economic times that he is suddenly confronting. To use one of Chuck’s phrases, he is a stand up guy.

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Martijn Beijk has spotted Google Maps embedded in an ATM kiosk in Barcelona, Spain.

These Google Maps kiosks were widely reported on last fall when gasoline pump maker Gilbarco Veeder-Root announced that they would be included in a new generation of gas pump.

At the time, there was a coupon feature included that was supposed to feature local merchants. These coupons were positioned as a potential revenue generator for the local gas station. To my knowledge, these have not been spotted in the wild. This kiosk is using the API and only showing their other locations.

Has anyone spotted other Google Maps Kiosks?

At the end of last week, after the upgrade and bug fixes to the LBC were mostly finished, Carter Maslan, Product Manager for Google Maps, took time to speak with me about the upgrade. You may read the full interview at SearchEngineland.

His main points:
• The upgrade was intended to improve the UI to faciliate flow through the data entry process
• They do read the Groups messages and the Local Blogs but did not have time to respond the many reports as they were trying to get the upgrade out the door and finished
• There will be a European version once the kinks are worked out of the US/Canada/Australian version and localization is finished
• There will be some sort of trusted status going forward for higher volume, trusted LBC users.
• Coupons will continue to languish

Read the whole interview here: Carter Maslan On Google’s Local Business Center Upgrade

Earl the Pearl, in bringing up a new site and comparing to an older one, has done a great summary and analysis at SeoREfugee of where local traffic is coming from:

Over the past 10 months, the largest single traffic generator search phrase has been the industry generic term. In google it has generated about 2100 visits and Yahoo about 2600 visits. About 90% of the traffic from google is ppc oriented whereas in Yahoo its all organic search.

Of visits to the site that have the same or virtually analogous business terms with a geo modifier, the clear traffic visit leader with the most traffic has been the business term with the city name, versus the business term with state names. Traffic for the most popular business term with the city (washington dc) has generated over 300 visits in this time period. Meanwhile the next most popular phrases with geo modifiers have been for the 2 states.

Of significance, prior to the insertion of google maps into organic searches, their was no noticable difference between industry terms for the generic business terms and any of 3 different most prevalent geo modifiers (2 states, Maryland, and Virginia, and one city- DC.).

It appears that the insertion of a map which has always featured this business at the top of the search page, has increased visits to the site by about 30-50% over searches without a map.

In other words, there is a significant increase in traffic to the site wherein there is a #1 organic ranking, and a map, and a ppc ad over sites with a #1 organic ranking, a ppc ad and no map.(my bold)

To date it appears that high generic rankings or high ranked ppc with geo terms in the title for generic industry terms are critical; high ranked terms for geo-modified business terms are critical, and the appearance of a business in maps within a 3 pack/10pack/authoritative map are of big help…but don’t have the impact of either high organic rankings or highly ranked ppc.

His assessment of coupons? No customer responses as they are buried too deeply within Maps to be found.

In November of 2oo7, I used Google’s coupon search function to estimate the total number of coupons that Google was showing in major markets. Google introduced the coupon program in August 2006 and they announced a partnership with ValPak to help promote coupon use shortly after.

Here are the numbers of coupons in NY, Chicago, San Francsico and Olean as of March, 2008 compared to November 2007:

Google Coupons have been the poor step child of the Maps world since their introduction. They just haven’t gotten any respect. Now though, four months after my first analysis, Google is seeing annualized growth rates of 54% despite the fact that it appears that ValPak now has a significantly lower presence. In fact if you calculate the growth in coupons just from the Local Business Center and remove ValPak from the equation, there has been growth of 171% on an annualized basis.

All of the old questions are still there: Why do they promote the program so little? Will it ever achieve greater exposure? Will it play a role in the world of coupons in the future?

And there now is a new question: Is ValPak cutting back its commitment to Google Coupons?

The total numbers are still low in an absolute sense but the growth rate augurs well given the low overall rates of growth that have been reported elsewhere in the online coupon segment. This growth has occurred despite a lack of promotion, virtually no visibility and a number of bugs in the coupon implementation in the Local Business Center.

In December I reported a Google Maps Coupon Bug where if you entered an expiration date the coupon would never show up. It appears that the bug still exists although in slightly less virulent form. There have been a number of reports in the Google Maps For Business Groups where if you select an expiration date the coupon defaults back to no expiration and no date appears on the coupon:

TOPIC: coupons not allowing expiration date

=====================================================
== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Feb 12 2008 7:01 am
From: bullwinkle

Hmm…Jen I think you’re not understanding. Nobody is doing anything
wrong. Clicking on the radio button and selecting a future date from
the calendar then clicking on continue, results in being returned to
the local tab instead of coupons, then clicking on the coupon tab
reveals that the coupon is now activated but there is NO expiration
date, it says “Never Expires”. Going back into edit, shows that the
“Never expires” radio button is once again selected. We cannot set a
date and have it “stick”. It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science,
it’s just plain broken. I’ve tried it repeatedly with both Firefox
and ie7 and neither works. It appears that the only thing we users
can do, is to not use google coupons!

For now the only solution to having an expiration date is to manage the process manually. When you create a coupon, enter the expiration date manually on the coupon body and then be sure to remove the coupon at the end of your promotion

Yesterday I noted that Google Coupon results were showing up in the main search results page for coupon related search phrases. Miriam Ellis who writes a local oriented blog SEO Igloo asked whether using coupons for non-retail oriented deals was a useful strategy.

I have several local search clients that have added service oriented coupons in an effort to 1)test the coupon idea on the premise that they couldn’t hurt* and might generate direct traffic and 2)to see if they helped their rank in the local results. While we have not seen many coupon redemptions, it does appear to have a positive impact on the local standing.

However we had a pleasant surprise as in addition these coupon results also started showing up in the main search results pages for “general service + location” searches. Google Coupons are low cost and easy to implement. Given Google’s penchant for increasing “localness” in their search results, these coupons may just show up that much more often in the future.

For example on the search insurance Olean, NY the Google Coupon results linking to the client coupon are on the first page of the results:

*The Hippocratic Oath of Search: Do no harm.