In yesterday’s issue (11/2/06) of the NY Times they published an interesting article called: Basics: Pictures, With Map and Pushpin Included on the nascient field of photo geocoding.

I had been oblivious to this technology before but after reading this article I realized that it will have a huge impact on Local Search going forward. Clearly the technology is just now getting into the hands of people who are interested in geographically tagging their images with GPS data. Like all new technologies it might take 5 years or maybe even 10 to be widely adopted and deployed so that the average housewife is geotagging her family vacation images and sharing the resulting map with Grandma.

The possibilities are endless and Bill Slawski pointed out an interesting patent for some of those. He also pointed out a Microsoft technology demo. It gives some idea  of how maps and photos might interact.  ( I can only imagine that while it might change the details of  the husband  & wife  mapping argument it won’t change the nature of it.) Continue reading →

Greg Sterling had an interesting piece on local database accuracy

What did they find? Shockingly, they discovered there was something wrong (minor to major issues) with 47% of the listings! That’s a remarkably large number. I was truly surprised.

The discussion in the post is of equal interest and well worth a read. My experience with Google’s data is similar. I beleive that it was originally purchased and maintained by InfoUSA and was riddled with problems. The question is whether the partners/local businesses/Search professionals of Google can get the data straight and keep it straight.

“According to the study, 63 percent of U.S. Internet users (or approximately 109 million people) performed a local search online in July, a 43-percent increase versus July of 2005. Google Sites (30 percent) and Yahoo! Sites (29 percent) garnered the largest share of local searches in July. Microsoft Sites captured 12 percent of local searches, followed by the Time Warner Network with 7 percent. “

To read the comScore press release

To read Greg Sterling’s summary and comments

I have been working on Google and Yahoo local search optimization for awhile. It is an area that while not earth shattering in terms of traffic that they have generated it became clear to me that the importance to Google and Yahoo and the client was increasing and it would be a benefit to understand more about it.

I searched the internet for technical and practical knowledge on Google Maps and Yahoo Local and while there were posts from time to time at a number of sites, none seemed to provide a single place to obtain comprehensive and current information or a place where experiments in techniques could be hashed out and discussed.

If you have an interest in this topic and have some experience I hope that you will take the time to share it so that the general state of knowledge about search optimization for Google and Yahoo local can move forward.