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March 3, 2005

Google Local Lets You Keep Your Opinion To Yourself

Google Local rolled out a mess of new features today. For the most part, quite cool.

Other than blogs, local search is shaping up to be the hot topic so far in 2005. And why not? We're seeing the creation of an interactive Yellow Pages on a grand scale. Or least, we are over at Yahoo and Amazon's A9.

Both of those engines have local search which allows you to not only find businesses, but to post your own reviews after having patronized them. They take full advantage of the miracle of user-generated content. Anyone who's ever read a customer review of a book at Amazon knows what I'm talking about.

Google just rolled out a batch of improvements to its local search, including integration with their recently released Google Maps. Reviews are avalable as well, but these are provided by companies like Frommers, CitySearch.com, RestaurantRow.com, and Amazon.com. Those who want to post their own review need not apply.

As noted by John Battelle, Google seems a little hesitant to get involved in user generated content. I think this puts them at a disadvantage. I know that when I buy a book at Amazon, I never read the editorial reviews. I go straight to the customer reviews, and I think most people do the same. They're more interesting, and they feel more "real" to me, probably because they are.

Incidentally, someone asked me recently how to get a business to rank well in Google's local listings. It looks to me that the local listings in Google's free listings are entirely based on location. For example, doing a search for "pizza 96750" gives me the following results in Google's regular search:

Paparoni's Pizza & Pasta
Keauhou Shopping Center: Rocky's Pizza and Family Dining
Cuz'NS Deli Pizza & Ice Cream

This matches exactly the top three results you get if you do a search for "pizza 96750" in Google local. And those listings seem to be ranked according to their distance from what Google has determined to be the geographical center for that zip code.

So I guess the key to ranking well in those local listings is to be located close to the geographical center of your zip code. That makes optimization tough (or easy, depending on your location).

As usual, SearchEngineWatch has the details on exactly what new features have been added to Google local.

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