Quality Guidelines and reinclusion for Google Maps
Some technical difficulties with his blog doesn’t stop Mike to get up early today and post his very interesting findings on an update in the Google Maps Help Center. The Google Maps Help Center now contains some guidelines for your business inclusion and also, what to do when you got kicked out of Google Maps for spamming. This report from Google corresponds well with my previous post about Google tightening its submission policies.
You can find the guidelines by clicking on the following link:
Google Help Center Guidelines for Local Business Center Submissions
Honestly, I still find the guidelines a bit vague, taken into account previous statements;
“be as descriptive if you can for your business in your business title’ doesn’t really correspond with “Represent your business as it appears in real life”. Or is this just my point of view?
Can I use “Italian Ice cream and Cappuccino Bar Bella Napoli” or should it just say “Bella Napoli” because I registered with chamber of commerce with that name?
In my opinion it should add up to the user experience and thus allowing the first one.
In the Help Center, Google is now also referring to the Google Maps group for Business Owners where they can report abuse of the Quality Guidelines.
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Google suggest fails on Google philosophy
Google just introduced their Google suggest feature on all search engines. Although I find this feature helpful and promising, it doesn’t follow their philosophy:
I tried some keyword searches and noticed how often Google suggest tries to give you local results. Almost each (local) search will give you suggestions with geomodifiers (locations).
Now here’s the screenshot:
So why do I think it fails? Well, imagine this. I’m living in Barcelona at the moment, I am using Google Netherlands and it serves me with local relevant results which seem to be all in the United States except for London. Despite all the effort Google puts in providing cool geolocation APIs for developers and even determining your own location on a map, they didn’t think of using this same feature to improve their Google suggest feature? Why do you think Google made this decision? Do you think they will implement this in the future?
Location-based services now hotter than hot?
Location-based services are hot. Now hotter than before. Because Google just launched their Geolocation API.
This is what you can call the pre-web3.0 era. Small startups trying to provide even the smallest semantic web like services online. Providing location-based services, opening up their programming code, Developing APIs for the developers to use and create even greater software by mashing up code of several services.
Now with Google opening up their geolocation API it opens new possibilities. Apparently they’ve gathered quite some data by now from CellIDs and GPS devices to have a database that is consistent enough to provide these kind of services. They also state that they will provide more services in the near future based on WiFi access.
What does this mean in general for software or services we are going to see?
Well imagine opening up your browser or software application on your mobile phone or laptop and do a search for restaurants. No need to fill in where you are, the software will determine this using the geolocation API.
Most phones nowadays are able to determine the Cell ID, the ‘zone’ you are in with your mobile phone. No GPS needed. Although it’s not as accurate of course. It should do the trick while looking for a restaurant or any nearby service.
Now let’s combine this, do a mashup and make it all context-aware; context-awareness is a topic I’ve been working on during my internship at the Netherlands institute for applied scientific research.
You are hungry, it’s around 7pm, all your appointments for this business trip are done it’s just that entry in your calendar left with some old friends of yours.
Your mobile or wearable device with a nifty piece of software is aware of all this, it has a built in calendar, it has a contact list, it is able to determine location. it knows your appointment says ‘diner’, yet location is undecided.
Context-aware applications are able to provide you with direct access to the best restaurants in your vicinity based on your preferences (profile) and that of your friends. Let them know right away, by either calling them (their contact info is presented to you right away, because it is aware!) or use intention broadcasting (a new kind of description introduced to me at mobile 2.0 europe by startup Zipipop )
This is the future!
Got interested? You can find the exact specifications of the geolocation API here.
If you are not familiar with the semantic web, a good start is to check Wikipedia, and especially this ReadWriteWeb article here. For context awareness start with Wikipedia.
What should Google do?
What should Google do to make their Google Maps product more successful?
First off all, in the ‘link’ feature, to send people links of google maps, they should provide you with some sort of tinyURL that is descriptive. Everywhere you see Google asking you to be clear as possible, using good structured URL formats, etc, and they just provide you with a URL that contains at least a couple of & parameters, fuzzying coordinates, etc. I read this idea also somewhere in the Google groups.
Second, I have to agree with Matt McGee and Mike B. that if Google would like to promote the use of Geositemaps, KML, and more stuff that common people or small business owners don’t understand they should think of better ways on how to do this.
For example, in the Local Business Center they could provide an export function of your current business listings, (approved, flagged, filter if necessary!) to KML! with automatic geo-encoding, maybe 1 or 2 images to embed in the KML or which further details per listing from the feed and information that is already there! And why not provide your KML in the webmaster central without using a sitemap?
Third,
everything that is still listed here; my previous post about updates I would like to see in the LBC or Google Maps.
Please share your thoughts or name a few things of what you think Google should do to improve Google Maps or make it more successful for business owners!
Email preferences Local Business Center
I might be wrong on this one, but I just was presented with the following when entering the Local Business Center. I have never seen this message before (maybe because I’m normally using european google engines )
The Local Business Center is asking me to provide my email preferences as you can see in the screenshot (click to enlarge).
It seems that now you are able to receive notifications when things are changing to listings in your account. That would be great! I look forward to the first emails!
Why Local Search matters
After reading the official Google blog today I can say that it has been confirmed (at least by my free interpretation ),
Today, I would like to briefly share the philosophies behind Google ranking:
1) Best locally relevant results served globally.
2) Keep it simple.
3) No manual intervention.The first one is obvious. Given our passion for search, we absolutely want to make sure that every user query gets the most relevant results.
Other news: latest hitwise reports show an increase of Google Maps usage, it’s now little over 2 percent of all Google properties. 2 % might seem little, but it’s a whole lot of people.
Google confirms problems LBC and listens!
Google confirmed that there are some issues with the Local Business Center after the recent update. A lot of problems started to appear in the Google Groups.
Yesterday Maps Guide Jen responded and said;
Thanks for this feedback. We didn’t think that the “edit incorrect marker
location” might still be necessary after verification, but you’ve given us
some clear evidence that it is. We’ll be adding this capability back in.
Now that solves some of the issues, but not all, hopefully they’ve read this post about updates on the local business center!
Local Search Ranking factors discussed
David Mihm compiled an excellent article in collaboration with some SEO guys who are particularly interested in the local search optimization.
We see highlights of the most important ranking factors, and also those that might harm your rankings. Must read for small businesses and anyone doing local optimization.
Although this article is quite focussed on the US market it still is extremely useful here in Europe. Most of the factors discussed apply here as well. Too bad Google Maps and Yahoo Local isn’t as developed here as we would like it to be.
