Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
GoogleBase and Local Business Center experiment to encourage more LBC participation?
Yesterday Google announced at the GoogleBase blog that they’ve “begun experimenting with exposing store locations in Google Product Search…. We think this will help users find nearby store locations, and help merchants get foot traffic into their stores” (thanks to Peter Wyspianski for pointing this out).
Google is inviting existing GoogleBase users to submit their local business locations to the LBC either manually or via bulk upload. If it is done via Bulk they are asking that the business fill out this form to help them associate the Local Business Center data with the correct Google Base account.
It is not clear whether Google plans on showing inventory data in Maps any time soon but do seem to be planning to correlate product information with related local store locations in GoogleBase. Has anyone seen this search result in the wild?
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4 Comments
[…] about improving its offerings for local businesses. Well, now it seems they’ve decided to link GoogleBase with the LBC as […]
Google needs to get local listings “right” instead of taking off in another direction.
I think the problems we have with local listings is deceit and fraud. Deceit and fraud carry criminal and civil penalties in all states.
There are consumer protection laws in place to protect people from the deceit and fraud. There is an article on this forum where an attorney general is prosecuting fraud cases. Enough complaints have already been discussed and documented on blogs and forums about issues with the so-called local listings to associate Google with violation of consumer protection laws or enabling violations.
Currently local listings search results are not what they are presented to be to seachers. Searchers don’t want to see all the outlying town results when they specifically select a local area for search. What is the purpose of the search terms when Google yields up on what Google wants… regardless of what the searcher specified.
Regular search terms immediately below the map and local listings usually render directories and internet companies that have SEO their sites significantly. These prominent sites use sophisticated and elaborate schemes to rank higher in search results. Searchers that are just looking for local business services or products, don’t want directories, nor do they want online order gatherers. A carefully crafted SEO local business site may be in the return results, but that is rare.
Google could make local listings ln search return results actually local businesses now Afterall, when businesses register with Google they supply all the information that would be required.
Interesting experiment and I believe it is very much needed. This might also have something to do with the Google Squared experiment they are working on. In the future they will be able to show product information with correlating stores offering the product.
for more information about Google Squared visit: http://www.google.com/squared
Is it helped people?
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