Mike, I woot-ed him yesterday afternoon, but got no reply up to now http://goo.gl/QZ21E I’m not sure if he is doing that simply as a test, or he is really going to reply these tweets. Worth the try anyhow.

omg – scary find Mike 😉

One of the primary questions is what is the nature of local search.

For example, on my smart phone (any mobile device, assuming I haven’t blocked tracking) if I’m on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC and I use Google Places (or any similar app) to search for coffee, I’ll receive different SERPs listings than if I use Google Maps and search: washington dc coffee. The SERPs on Google Maps are the same regardless of whether I were to search — washington dc coffee — from my home computer (Maryland) or from a location across the country. This is, of course, because Google Places on my phone recognized I was on Capitol Hill.

Receiving different results on Google Places vs. Google Maps is exactly why products with which to conduct local searches on mobile devices are growing. Yet, this presents an interesting dichotomy for Google. The algorithms that render results in both Places and Maps place a great deal of value on what is deemed the center. While there are, of course, additional criteria, the distance from center — concentric circles, if you will — receives a great deal of value; the premise that one doesn’t want to walk further than one has to.

On Google Maps the map marker for the center of Washington DC is just below ‘E’ Street NW in the Ellipse — where 16th Street would have been had 16th continued through the Ellipse. (Incidentally the marker, previously, had been placed at 9th Street & Constitution Avenue, NW.) The center of DC by the designation of the quadrants (NE, NW, SE, & SW) is the US Capitol Building. Hence, why for this example using Google Places I chose Capitol Hill. Given the value placed on proximity to the designation of center in Google Maps, business in NW DC garner an advantage.

This is also why Google Maps isn’t really local search. When using Google Places my phone’s location is the geographic center.

An additional question is why what is displayed in SERPs listings vary from one Google product to another. For example on Maps and Places both star ratings and the number of reviews are displayed. On web SERPs the number of Google +1 that have been received are displayed. Why are star ratings displayed on Maps and Places SERPs but not web SERPs and conversely why are +1s displayed on web SERPS but not on Maps or Places SERPs?

That ratings are displayed on one product vs. another is independent of how a particular product’s algorithm may assess value for either a positive rating or the number of ratings received.

Oops, my xhtlm is rusty and dropped the end of the href in the prior post. The end of the prior message should read:

I’m a pretty active user of ~all Google’s products (having built more than a few of them), and other products out there — e.g., .

Sometimes my response time does lag a bit, and sometimes I can’t say as much as I’d like about things that aren’t announced yet — sorry.