Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Mike Blumenthal in Google Places (Maps & Local) March 24, 2009

Google Maps Interface Tweak

Google Maps has made a small change in the interface (thanks to ever observant LA Florist, Cathy Rulloda) removing the obvious links to toggle between Maps View (seen when entering via Maps link) and Text View (seen when entering via a Universal Local Result). The change, one of many since the August Blue Line role out, is one more step in simplifying the Maps interface and integrating the Maps and Business Listing views.

Screen shot from 3/23/09:

before

In the new view, one simply selects the expand or contract arrows to move from one view to the other.

Screen shot from 3/24/09:

after

Written By

Mike Blumenthal

Comments

7 Comments

MiriamEllis (740 comments)

March 24, 2009 at 11:53 pm

Thanks for the screenshots, Mike. I bet I would have been looking around in agitation for the text view/map view links had you not written this.

Miriam

Mike (2634 comments)

March 25, 2009 at 6:52 am

@Miriam

I have the same problem. When Cathy mentioned it, I couldn’t remember when the choices were last there…I discovered that I had left a screen up in my browser from yesterday so I did the article to document the change.

Often I will wonder or someone will ask in 3 weeks what happened. By then I will have forgotten and I can go back and reference the article.

It is interesting how many little things Google is pulling out of the Maps interface.

SEO Joel (3 comments)

March 27, 2009 at 11:51 am

Awesome update, that is an interesting change. I would say this is definitely a positive update. Thanks for the info

Joy Kim (1 comments)

March 27, 2009 at 4:52 pm

Thanks for documenting this new feature.

I just had a weird experience yesterday when Maps all the sudden switched to text view only for my browser saying that my FireFox didn’t support the regular version of Maps after I’d been using Maps just fine for a while.

So, I had to download the same version of FireFox brwoser again to make it work again.

I guess if someone is using a FireFox version that’s lower than 3, the user would only experience the text version, which emphasizes ranked listings than the location thumbnails on the area map. I doubt that there’s a good number of users who don’t update this free OS browser, but thought this is interesting enough to share with you.

Thanks, Mike!

Jonas (4 comments)

March 27, 2009 at 5:56 pm

Wow nice update!

Easy Job Information (1 comments)

March 29, 2009 at 3:25 pm

basicly, this is a new tool from google to implement it with our business listings. oops your pointing it to white house!

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