Mike Blumenthal

At the Google LatLong blog, Google announced that Maps now offered a neighborhood search capability. From the post: You can now do searches such as bagels upper east side new york and restaurants, over the rhine, cincinnati on Google Maps. Additionally, this capability allows you to do city-level searches where the city is uniquely named, …

I was sitting at my daughter’s soccer match yesterday and slightly bored, I started to play with the browser on my old Nokia 3600 cell phone. I explored MSN (it didn’t work) and the Yahoo interface (not bad) but I was struck by the incredible improvement to the speed and quality of the interface to …

This just in from the San Jose Mercury News: Google aims for 3D World From the article:The Mercury News has learned that Google has quietly licensed the sensing technology developed by a team of Stanford University students that enabled Stanley, a Volkswagon Touareg R5, to win the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge…. The technology will enable …

Interesting Forum conversation on the impact of the Huge Expansion of the Google Onebox at SEORefugee. Local businesses in Universal search from Google LatLong. Note the comment: We’re excited about this first step in the integration of local results in Universal search and will continue to let you know about developments in this area over …

At SearchEngineLand Greg Sterling has given a mini review of the Maps layout in: Universal Search Spawns New Format for Maps. From Greg’s post: In conjunction with Universal Search, the Google Maps team created a new “text view” that features images of local businesses and a smaller map. The placement of ads is different, below …

Here are two screen shots of on the Onebox returned for “city + st” search on Google today. Note the differences in map size and the inclusion of the “get directions” field and button in one of the results. I have explored a number of hypothesis as to why & when the difference occurs (existence …

Many of the changes that we have been seeing in google Maps over the past few days have been part of Google’s new Universal search upgrade. These upgrades magnify the importance of Google Maps as they allow for “The best answer is still the best answer” local results to be inserted in all of Google’s …

Google Maps has recently upgraded the information that is now displayed with the business. The display now includes images, reviews and owner provided description if available. Note in the after results image, that when an owner entered description was not available, reviews were substituted. This highlights why an owner should control their listing. Here are …

Earl the Pearl has reported at SEO Refugee of the expanded presence of the Local OneBox on broader geographic phrases and broader business categories. He notes: Onebox maps are now returned on searches by state names, ie Used cars Florida, Nursing School Pennsylvania. Previously its appearance was more locally focused for queries like used cars …

*From Geeking with Greg – Google News Personalization Paper while it speaks directly to Google News the overview of personalization is of importance to all search. *From Bill Slawski at Seo by the Sea – Yahoo’s Clickable Map Advertising with Product Inventory Displays