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.

1- Google Maps LBC: How to make % Complete = 100%

2- Google Local Business Center Categories – The Complete List

3- Tracking Local search Traffic with Analytics

4- List of Google Maps categories

5- Google Replaces Tele Atlas Data in US with Google StreetView Data

6- Google Maps: How to Remove Duplicate Records in the Local Business Center (outdated)

7- Ranking Factors in Google Maps – Cracking the Code SMX Local

8- Big Boobs Bounce Back to Top of Google Maps ( popularity ≠ worth- OK, I have learned my lesson to NEVER use the word BXXbs again in an article title 🙂 )

9- Google Maps: RSS feeds of data into My Maps?

Also popular this year but not technically an article was our Google Places Category Tool

Thanks to all of you that have been sharing this journey with me. The reasons that I started this blog in 2006 are even more true now. I wanted to find folks of like mind that desired to understand the world of local better by sharing information, research and ideas. I would not have learned nearly so much without all of the incredible tips, comments and suggestions that continue to come my way. I am more convinced then ever that we can collectively increase our knowledge more effectively through the power of learning together rather than learning apart.

But I continue to strongly believe that marketing is not life and that all too often marketing is what happens while we are waiting for life. But that hasn’t been totally true with this blog. It has afforded me the opportunity to make real friends across the whole world. Something that, when I decided on a life in the hinterlands, I never dreamed possible. There are many too many to mention here but I particularly wanted to give a big thanks to David Mihm and Matt McMgee as well as Dave Oremland, Will Scott, , Ed Reese, Aaron Wieche, Miriam Ellis, Mike Ramsey and Mary Bowling for becoming not just virtual but very real friends.