inbound - 4:34 pm on Nov 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

Some recent news from Google suggests that the factors for ranking in Maps/Local will rely much more on external factors (reviews, etc) so the rules for getting into the 'onebox' (the 3 results that are seen following a local search on Google) may continue to change rapidly (and not look straightforward) so understanding the basics of geography and categorisation is important to give the small business a chance..

I've been paying more attention to the UK results, but if my experience is anything to go by Google is getting more aggressive with the number of matches that trigger the onebox results. Clearly this means understanding the way they work will become more important.

It used to be just major cities coupled with well defined category names that triggered the onebox, as time has passed Google seems to be allowing more matches to happen on different geographical and categorical terms.

Categorisation
This area is changing rapidly and I've seen results that suggest Google has a good grasp of what terms are being searched for when looking for particular business types (possibly it's the other way around, with data extracted from advertisers' keywords as they will know the general classification of a business through the data they purchased from Yellow Pages companies).

Now that Google knows the terms that people want to show adverts for it makes sense to show local results that match those broad categories, expect to see quite clever matching popping up more frequently.

What does this mean for the small business owner?
The other side of the matching equation, once Google knows what the searcher wants is to match that with suitable businesses. This is where having consistent, correct information is vital. Google does use review data and does match pages on trusted sites to business listings, meaning if you can control what is shown on the major local sites when they list your business (be that in a list of businesses or on an individual page about your business) then you stand a better chance of gaining business. You can probably influence the type of business you get from Google Maps/Local by ensuring you have both the broad category name and your target keyword/s in your public business listings. There are numerous services that are cropping up making it easy for business owners to update their details across many Yellow Pages/Local Search sites, expect these to be heavily influential to Google.

Geography
As for the geographical side, that's moving fast too. There are many different ways to pinpoint location and many of them do not mean the centre of a city will be the starting point for the results (ignoring the other external factors influencing position for a moment). Think about these US geo data points:

state name (very wide)
phone area code (often very wide)
county name (quite wide to very wide)
city name (suggests 'central' coordinates)
neighbourhood name (difficult to define)
street name (can be long)
zip code (quite accurate)
full address (very accurate)
full business name (very accurate)
business phone number (very accurate)

What does this mean?
It means that Google may use different starting points for who they are going to match for a search. If you do a search for 'City Service' then the external ranking factors will mean it may not be the closest to the centre of that city that come up, but the featured businesses should be quite close to the centre (close to the centre by distance changes depending on how many businesses there are of that type in a place). If you search by zip code (and if a result comes up for that) then Google is more inclined to pick businesses close to those coordinates but again can be overridden by good external ranking factors. Make sure your geographical pointers are correct and all there.

What else is changing?
Just this week Google announced that they will allow the general public (registered users) to correct the coordinates of individual addresses (that's about as local as things get). The importance of this is that individual addresses in the US are calculated by extrapolating the difference between block corners so an address that is numerically between the two corner addresses is estimated to be half way between the two coordinates, this is often not the case and when dealing with individual addresses (and the photos Google has been taking at street level) it's a problem.

The fact they are letting the public do the legwork suggests that they are happy for some degree of errors or gaming to get into the system (although it should not be difficult for them to control most blatant gaming attempts as most updates should be between 2 defined points).

It's all change at Google Maps/Local and I think they are putting more emphasis on it as it's an area for growth. Local is a huge potential revenue earner, but it's costly to sell to local businesses so it's understand able that Google should have been concentrating on non-geo search before. Now they can see that they are dominant in the non-geo it's clear they are going to get more aggressive. Local companies that have already caught on to the possibilities of local search are often earning massive ROI, and why not when you can get super-targeted leads for a few cents.

Will Google change the local landscape?
Yes! Now is the time for the 'mom and pop' businesses to get involved, it's what Google wants - Google really want to cut out the middlemen and deal directly with the local businesses, they will make it easier and easier for small businesses to spend their small budgets online. I believe the only middlemen that Google will be happy with in 5 to 10 years are those that help small businesses spend money with Google, squeezing of Yellow Pages companies and Directories will happen and only the strong will remain. If you are looking at Local Search from the perspective of a developer then it's time to think of how you can help small businesses advertise on the eventual 'winners' rather than trying too hard to oust Google Maps/Local, that ship has probably sailed.