Another nice fresh post. I hadn't noticed the services area option yet. It's interesting because Geotargeting via SEO has been a hot topic for so long with no good way to do it other than spammy madlib city pages. My hope is that Google is trying to combat those while providing a way to have businesses show up in the SERP for the locations that they serve.

I think they are to a degree.  I have noticed great improvements (in terms of quality) in Google Places over these last few months.  For the most part, the "spammiest" things I see these days are keyword loaded business names.  Google has been cracking down on them pretty quickly in recent weeks too.

Rignt now it seems all signs at Google are pointing to a more local (and presumably mobile) web.  These are exciting times!

edit: I actually posted a follow up to this blog post a few hours ago regarding some limitations in service area radius, etc. - http://www.justinblase.com/service-area-limitations-in-google-places

This post seemed to have been overlooked by the Sphinn community. Guess Justin isn't in the "in" crowd.

I pushed this to the home page as I am fairly certain many people don't know about the service area options in Google Places.

Seems that when an article is moved to the home page via the editor's choice option, the nofollow tag remains intact on the external link. This article is an example.

Would be cool if it was lifted based on merit (even if it hasn't reached 21 sphinns).

Just sayin...

The nofollow is not on the link to the article, just the one on the comment link.