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Went Hot: February 7, 2008 - 11:08 pm
Posted By: mpilatow 205 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Google Other
14 Comments
Went Hot: February 7, 2008 - 11:08 pm
Posted By: mpilatow 205 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Google Other
14 Comments
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Comments
The changes are indeed interesting and local businesses had better be implementing plans to adopt. I noticed just yesterday that a generic term in my field was now showing map results. The cheese is moving.
Try "carpet cleaner london" and mark the 10-pack out of 10.
Okay, so how do we get into these A-J results of local search? Anyone got a link?
@Gamermk do you mean how do you get your business to appear within these results? Or do you mean how do you get them to display within a normal web seearch?
If the later, it is dependent on the search you do and in some cases how Google is 'feeling.' I don't think we've seen total adoption just yet.
@ gamermk
have a po box in the central location of your target area, submit to google and every local site under the sun, and get reviews on the major local sites.
thats my general understanding of it.
@Brian: muahahahahahaha
I like it.
@daniel: Yup, I want my business to appear in these results.
@Brian: I was afraid of that...
This is awful. As the article says, at a resolution of 1024x768, you don't see ANY organic results without scrolling down. I guess it's a great thing for those local businesses who are close to whatever Google arbitrarily decides to call the centre of the city.
Not only are the "top 10" results crappy, a lot of the organic results are for local searches, too. In a search for "San Jose CPAs", only one top 10 firm is listed in the "local" results and two of the local results are in Campbell, a neighboring city--despite dozens of CPA firms in San Jose that aren't listed (including the one I work for, unfortunately).
The organic results have San Francisco CPA firms listed as high as second!
Google has a long way to go before they display helpful local results.
@Gamermk and @Brian Chappell I was going to save this for another aritcle but here goes anyway.
One quick way to bypass the verification is to buy a pay-as-you-go sim card (cost 5 pound here in the UK) and use the SMS service to verify. This is a lot quicker than setting up a PO BOX, but also means you don't have to use your own phone number.
I'll write up a full post on how I did it for the article tomorrow and post on my website.
Daniel
danielbower.com
Daniel -
The screen resolution data in this article was super. Great stuff.
Not sure I'm able to agree with the 10-pack degrading the quality of the SERPs. As I see it:
- If the search is local in nature, the user will be best served by seeing local results
- Appropriate businesses simply need to get into local SEO if they want to start appearing in the 10-pack. It's easier now than it's going to be when local becomes more crowded.
Where I can agree that the 10-pack will be problematic is:
- The multitudinous bugs in Maps that are serving up outdated and incorrect information. However, historically, there's been a similar problem with organic SERPs (getting 2004 Olympic Games results instead of 2008 ones). Yet, this isn't really as concerning as being sent to a hotel that burned down a year ago that Google is listing as the best place to stay in Baltimore. The new prime placement of the 10-pack is going to make errors of these kind an even bigger headache for end users with every passing day.
- The fertile spamming ground. There are already numerous spamming issues within Maps, many of which Mike has documented. Pollution of local SERPs may be even more of a real-life problem than it ever was with organic.
Enjoyed your article.
Miriam
@brian - that tactic works about as good as passing a fart in church and blaming it on a Nun.
Most of the idiots that did that in my niche resulted in Fedex Kinko's and the UPS Store dominating the 10 results so just keep spreading that non-starter BS advice and I'll be thrilled with the results.
@MiriamEllis I kind of agree with you, and in the long run I'm sure the new 10-Pack will provide some value. The problem is exactly as you say it is - currently the results are very poor and typically show only those businesses who have taken the initiative to sign up. Where was the consideration of opportunity cost? In my mind they have made the results worse now, it doesn't matter how they will be in the future.
When it comes to web search, and particularly with a feature that takes up so much real estate Google shoudn't be so heavy handed. It almost seems that they forget the importance of the service they provide.
@IncrediBILL Interesting point, if a little harsh in its wording. I haven't actually see any examples of those problems in the UK - but I suppose the PO box system could work a little differently.
I think the 10-pack is a better interface than the 3-pack.3 results was too in-your-face.Joe naive user would feel pulled to those results and not notice the text organics.With 10 results the eye is whizzed around and some thought has to happen, not the default zombie "must-click" action.
I saw these become common in the last couple of days, but I thought they had put a couple of organics above it! (I have the brightness way down on this monitor and can't see the yellow background) With a couple of organics above it, I thought it was an excellent layout.With only paid above it... not so much. :(