Saturday, March 13th, 2010

Google has put up a list of all their geo related twitter accounts and this is something I wanted to share with you in case you haven’t read it already.
twitter.com/GoogleMaps
twitter.com/GoogleEarth
twitter.com/EarthOutreach
twitter.com/SketchUp
twitter.com/3DWH
twitter.com/Modelyourtown
twitter.com/GoogleSkyMap
The twitter accounts are pretty self explanatory.
BTW: remember you can follow me on twitter too! @martijnbeijk is where you will find my tweets.

As part of catching up with writing I wanted to mention something that Google has launched since beginning of march. GA-IQ is a test, for people who use Google Analytics. You can take an individual test to set a score and receive a certificate from Google when qualified. The test is mainly focused on implementation, [...]

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 [...]

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:
1) Best locally relevant results served globally.
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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

After reading the official Google blog today I can say that it has been confirmed (at least by my free interpretation ), Amit Singhal, in charge of the ranking team at Google stated:
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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]