Google displaying local results in town searches

Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: January 30th, 2007 Published in: Google, Local Search, Search Engine Optimisation

A fairly notable change now as these additional results take up a large portion of the page:

Accountants in Edinburgh:

accountants in edinburgh local results

Electricians in Solihull:

electrician in solihull local search

I’ve seen these results in random local searches before but as of today they are showing in pretty much any town or city search I’ve tried so far.  Looks like local search on Google just got a little bit more competitive – it’s the top spot or nothing now guys!  Let the spam begin!

Now with a standard screen resolution, there are only 2 organic results on the page before you have to scroll down – and around 12 paid for results (Google Local + Adsense) – I guess you can buy your way into Google after all! ;)

ADDED:  Google Blog mention it today as well. 

MG

ADDED:  I’ve knocked together a local search engine optimisation guide – anyone looking at local SEO for their site should check it out.

Comments

  1. Posted by: Kev Date posted: 30th January, 2007 at 4:43 pm

    Edinburgh online must be pretty happy with that, they now have the top 3 rankings where before they wouldn’t have been listed on the first page at all!

  2. Posted by: David Date posted: 30th January, 2007 at 4:52 pm

    I’m really glad they are doing this. It opens up a lot more possibilities for the SEO, while making it for friendly to people that are searching for local listings.

  3. Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: 30th January, 2007 at 4:52 pm

    Haha yeh Kev.

    I remember not long ago that Yell.com used to take up multiple listings on Adwords for local searches (they were basically bidding for each advertiser listing they had) – that pushed every other local search PPC ad down to page 2.

    Like someone mentioned over on TW – Google are just pushing the spam problem onto Yell, who I would assume are much less able to deal with it.

    TBH David I think the spam problem will get worse – Yell will see a lot more business out of it from people wanting in on the short term benefits, but as pointed out, it will be easier to manipulate which will be bad in the long run for users IMO.

    MG

  4. Posted by: kelvin newman Date posted: 30th January, 2007 at 5:55 pm

    It’s interesting to see they’ve launched this. I’ve always wondered whether local would take off in the UK the way in which everyone seems to think it will in the States.

    Better start brushing up on Local specific optimisation then…

  5. Posted by: Platinax Small Business News » Google pushes maps into search Date posted: 1st February, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    [...] The results had already been spotted by some keen-eyed searchers. [...]