jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Google Local Business Listing Ads

Until the invention of the Local Business Listings Google had two sets of results, AdWords and natural. Placing some ads around the natural listings was a perfectly acceptable thing to do but Google is limited by the number of ads they can show due to the size of the page. Adding 4 or 5 ads at the top simply wasn’t going to help the user experience. Fast forward a few years and...

The Rise of Google Local Business Listings

Google Local Business Listings are either a fantastic opportunity or a really annoying barrier stopping a site in 4th place from getting any traffic. For example when Google displays a map for the query mobile phones it’s annoying for the poor site in 4th place because they get a massive drop in traffic but it’s also not an opportunity really because most people are not looking for a...

2 more product launches for Google

Google is clearly going for some kind of record with product launches this quarter. Today we see them extending support for the rel=canonical tag across two different domains as well as adding sentiment analysis to reviews in Google Local. I don’t see any situations where a cross domain rel=canonical tag would be the right thing to use but here is what Google has to say: Q: Do the pages have...

Google Local citation & review data study

With Google Local results taking up more and more space in the search results local search is becoming (at least for Branded3) one of the key things we focus on for clients with multiple locations. The Google Local algorithm isn’t the same as the main search algorithm but it does have similarities such as citations & reviews which work on the same principle as PageRank & links. Tom at...

Organic results only make up 21% of Googles search result pages

Over the last few months Google has been really pushing local search in the UK (with plans to push it even more) and we are finding Local Business Results increasingly creeping into generic keywords such as mobile phones. Today I thought it would be interesting to take the “mobile phones” search results and see what percentage of the page each element takes up. The results are below and...

Dealing with multiple phone numbers in Google Local

Google Local has a different algorithm to the main Google search engine and requires different optimisation methods. The main ranking factors for Google Local include elements such as citations and customer reviews as well as the usual link factors and the expected address and geographical factors. There has been a lot of talk recently about using tracking numbers for businesses and the concerns are...

Bulk verification in Google Local

We’ve been doing a lot of work with Google Local recently and have come across a lot of challenges. In the next few weeks we’re going to be covering some of the issues on the blog. Google allows businesses to add new listings or claim existing listings via the web interface but for businesses with thousands of locations that’s not really possible. Luckily Google offers a bulk upload...