Archive for Google Local Business
Google’s new 7 box – 10 box loses 3 listings making it even more competitive
Posted by: | CommentsBIG NEWS it seems that Google is making room for it’s new local business ads by taking 3 local business listings off of the 10-box and reducing it to a 7-box. This makes it more competitive now to get into the top spots in Google’s local business results. The display is less cluttered and cleaner looking but once again limits valuable real estate and ups the ante on ranking.
Do you know how to optimize your Google Local Business listing to get into the new 7 box?
Google 10 box now 7 box
New Google Listing Ads – Google’s New Way To Advertise For Local Businesses
Posted by: | CommentsMountain View, California — Attempting to win over its rival Yahoo’s local ad unit model, Google has finally introduced a more novel and simplified version of short ad unit for local businesses called Local Listing Ads.
These Local Listing Ads are configured to display when users search for a business in its local area and will contain only basic information about a business, such as contact info and a link. The units will appear on Google.com in local results at the top of the results page, and in Google Maps. The new ads will be displayed at the top of a search results page when users conduct a geographic search for a category related to an advertiser’s business.
“Once you select a standard category that best describes your business, Google determines the cost that ensures the ad is seen by the highest number of people looking for businesses like yours in your location.”
Google spokesperson Deanna Yick declined to comment as to how much the ads will cost, since Google will be testing prices for each location and category to find the best balance between cost and return for the advertiser.
According to Google, more than 80% of people look to Google for local information, and this is the best way to make your listing stand out. The ads are targeted only to people who are near your business.
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Posted by: | CommentsGoogle Maps updates business listing quality guidelines
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle Maps updated the business listing quality guidelines over the weekend. The new guidelines are welcomed by those who have noticed an influx of spam or borderline spam submissions to the Google Local Business Center over the past couple years.
Here are the new guidelines, as of June 1, 2009:
- Only enter listings for businesses that you own or are explicitly authorized to represent.
- Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website.
- Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords into the title field, and do not include phone numbers or URLs in the title along with your proper business name.
- Create only one listing for each physical location of your business. Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts. Service area businesses, for example, should not create a listing for every town they service. Likewise, law firms or doctors should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties.
- When entering categories, use only those that directly describe your business. Do not submit related categories that do not define your business. For example, a taxi company might properly categorize itself as "Airport Transportation", but it would be inaccurate to also use the category "Airport". Also, please use each category field to enter a single category. Do not list multiple categories or keywords in one field.
- Provide information that best identifies your individual locations and provides users with the most direct path to your business. For example, you should provide individual location phone numbers in place of central phone lines and the precise address for the business in place of broad city names or cross-streets.
- Provide the one URL that belongs to your business both in terms of the landing page and the displayed URL. Pages that redirect to another domain, or act as "click through" sites may lead to penalization.
- Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title, address or category fields.
Will it prevent spam? I doubt it. But it should make reporting and removing spam a bit easier.
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Posted by: | CommentsLocal Search can be very tricky and not accurate at all. Businesses need to claim their local listings and make sure they are correct. Here is a funny story that Danny Sullivan “Godfather of Search” recently told about his issues with Local Search.
Have you claimed your local business?
What questions do you have about Local Search?
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,Google Local changes will greatly affect local businesses
Posted by: | CommentsVERY IMPORTANT LOCAL ONLINE SEARCH ADVERTISING NEWS
Google is now showing local businesses in search results without requiring geo-local modifiers (city names, zipcodes, etc.) . What does this mean? If someone does a search for “catering” from a computer in Westport , CT they will now get general worldwide results AND also Google’s 10-Pack Local results for Catering companies in Westport , CT.
Offline retailers are loosing to Online ecommerce stores in the search results
Posted by: | CommentsOffline Traditional Brick-and-Mortar retailers are loosing to Online ecommerce stores in the search results
Online retailers represent over 30% of the search listings from a typical online retail search on a major search engine, while brick-and-mortar stores only show up in searches 12% of the time, according to an analysis of search-engine results by Internet-Engine .
The results from the Retail Search Presence Study reveal that online-only retailers, such as Amazon.com, have a very strong presence in both paid and organic search listings, while brick-and-mortar retailers — despite a slight increase in search presence over the past three years — consistently have the weakest performance of every group, including manufacturers who do not sell directly to consumers, MarketingCharts writes .
The research suggests that traditional retailers might not be keeping up with changes in consumer behavior since they are relying on a brand-push marketing strategy while online retailers using search marketing present a consumer-pull strategy, said Internet-Engine.
"Online retailers have developed and maintained a dominant presence in search marketing," said Thom Disch, Internet-Engine’s CEO and the director of the study. "To put this in perspective, when a shopper does a search on the internet, he or she will find three listings from on-line retailers for every one listing from a traditional retailer. I find it very surprising that brick and mortar retailers have not invested more dollars in search marketing, since e-commerce sales have grown 28% since 2006 (according to comScore ) while total retail sales have grown by only 3% over the same time period."
Free vs. Paid Results Show More Dramatic Difference
The study also compared paid and free search results and finds that the free or organic listings of the traditional retailer websites have only a 2% share of the total listings. This is dramatically smaller than the share for free listings for eCommerce sites at 17%, shopping comparison sites at 11% and manufacturers’ websites at 10%.
"Not appearing in the free listings means that the brick-and-mortar retailers must spend more of their money on paid search listings which ultimately will have a negative impact on their overall profitability," said Disch. "Investing in search optimization techniques to increase the organic or free listings would help these traditional retailers by balancing their listing placements, reducing their overall costs and increasing their market presence."
About the study: Internet-Engine’s Retail Search Presence Study was conducted over the past three years during the holiday shopping season and included analysis of more than 6,000 web pages in 10 product areas. Product areas included digital cameras, power drills, gaming systems, MP3Players, snow blowers, strollers, treadmills, TVs, GPS systems, and watches. This study analyzed both paid and organic listings that were presented on the three major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN Live.
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Posted by: | Comments8 Most Important Tips to get your Local Business found online
Your Local Search Checklist
Here’s a list of the most important factors to look at when optimizing for local search. Focusing on these factors will help you rank higher in both the Geo-Targeted searches and in regular search results.
1. Do extensive keyword research to be sure you’re targeting terms that get searches every day. Incorporate long tail keywords and optimize your lesser pages for terms that get only 1 or 2 searches a day. Build more pages if you have terms that get quite a few searches but you don’t currently have a page that is relevant.
2. Do competitive research. Outranking competitors often means doing what they’re doing, only better. Research your competitors and see what they’re doing on their pages and with incoming links to make sure you’re doing the same.
3. Optimize your pages for geo-targeted search. Use the keywords mentioned in step one in your page title, meta description, H1 tag and in links pointing to that page. Make sure you use the phrase on the page a few times and mix it up a bit. Use synonyms. For example, Personal Injury Attorney could also be written as Attorney for Personal Injury, Personal Injury Lawyer, Accident Injury Lawyer and so on… Read More→
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,Google ends their Print Ads program
Posted by: | CommentsAnother big reason to start advertising online Google has announced that they are ending their AdWords print ads program. Google first tested newspaper ads as part of their ad offerings back in 2006. At the time, they seemed pleased with the results and soon expanded the program to include more than 800 newspapers. Today, however, the revenue apparently doesn’t justify keeping the program as Google plans to stop offering Print Ads on February 28.
This is another non-surprise. It is clear that print-newspapers are a dying breed. It’s hard to imagine any of them surviving this next decade of economic streamlining, digitization and environmental consciousness. By 2020 daily print media, as we currently know it, will be a viewed as quaint and curious.
On the other hand, Google is continuing their Radio Ads and TV Ads services—so clearly they’re not ready to completely abandon the offline advertising market just yet.
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