Google Local is shedding products & names almost as fast they are making them these days…they just announced the end of Tags on the Lat Long Blog. I guess I didn’t realize that it was still a trial and was under the impression that it was a real product. Silly me. From their blog:

Since that experiment began, tens of thousands of businesses have used Tags to help potential customers make easier, more informed decisions when searching. Throughout this period, we monitored Tags closely to learn more about our users’ business needs and how they used the product.

We’ve made a decision to shift our efforts toward other present and future product offerings for local businesses, and will be discontinuing this trial. To that end, we’ve now halted new signups and will be working with existing participating businesses over the coming weeks to help them meet their marketing needs with other Google products where possible.

We’ve learned a lot from our Tags trial and will take that knowledge into account as we continue to find the best ways to serve users and local businesses alike. Lastly, we want to thank all of the businesses that were part of our Tags trial, and we hope we can meet their advertising needs with one of our existing products.

I just got off the phone with Jim Prosser, Manager, Global Communications & Public Affairs and he noted that it “makes more sense to focus on other feature opportunities of more value” to the SMB. Google will be working with existing customers to migrate them to a product that better meets their advertising needs.

An email will be going out directly to current Tag advertisers shortly that will describe the alternatives available with Boost and AdWords. For the remainder of this month, Tags will be free and will show thru the end of the month. User of Tags will also be assisted to help them get any data they may want or need before the information is removed from the Dashboard.