David Mihm has been showing off his whiteboard skills over at SEOmoz whiteboard friday. I really want to share these 2 video’s with my readers.

The first video is about Local Search Inclusion:

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Local Search Inclusion with David Mihm

The second video is about SEO for Local Search

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – SEO for Local Search

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Local Search Inclusion and SEO for Local Search video’s

Just before the weekend Google decided to launch a new help center. This time it is one that is well appreciated by small business owners and us local search people. Its a Help resource on how to set up the Local Business Center.
You can find the all new help resource at the following link:
Local Business Center User Guide. Here is that video that was accompanied with it:

the video has been set to private and is no longer available.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

New Help Resource for Local Business Center

Mike was fast with his catch on the LBC awaiting an update! I wonder if it has something to do with his previous post that has drawn some attention.
Anyway, here’s the screenshot!

Update: as Maps Guide Brian posted in the Google Groups the Local Business Center will also undergo some maintenance the 6th of November.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Google Local Business Center awaiting updates

Some of us might know Slideshare, the online platform where you can store your presentation slides to share with the rest of the world. It appears that this website is a valuable source for local citation building. The real value, or the amount of it that might affect your ranking could vary. If your presentation on Slideshare is doing well, even the better. This all may sound a bit fuzzy, but I will try and explain with the following example:

I noticed our Local Business listing for our company was taken down. So I checked the Local Business center and found out it was not suspended, not inactive, it was just nowhere to be found in the search results.
The regular keyphrase I use to see if our business is still there is the company name. Whereas we normally we would be in pole position in the 10pack, we were now in 8th, but with a listing that derived its source from the Slideshare website.
Curious of course, I went to the Slideshare website where one of our presentations from SMX Madrid was listed. One of the slides had the company name and phone numbers listed and apparently was being indexed due to the transcript of the presentation.
The data of the company was blended with the results of Slideshare, causing the URL of Slideshare.net to appear. The information taken from the Slideshare transcript also appeared in the ‘webpages’ tab as one of the citation sources.

So I’m wondering, what is the real value of citation sources? Is it the domain that counts or just the per-page popularity? What is exactly needed to be a citation? In our case it was just the company name and phone number that was enough for Google to blend all our information in ‘the cluster’ with our listing. Please let us know your thoughts or experiences in the comment section!

PS: after entering the Local Business Center and updating our listing with basically no major changes it appeared back, where it should be; on top of the 10pack.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Slideshare as a citation source

Google just released one of their most popular products, Google Earth, with over 400 million downloads for the iPhone! It’s a free download from the iTunes App store and it also features the My Location feature. Local Search information with Google Earth right on your iPhone! The iPhone seems to be a perfect device for navigating Google Earth as well using the tilt/gyro sensors.
There is a button in the application that will find businesses directly located near you. Even the more reason for Small Business Owners to get their business listed in the Local Business Center.
Remember, the iphone is a very popular phone so plenty of opportunities/new clients waiting to find your business!
Download the application in the App store.
Video after the break!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Local Search with Google Earth on the iPhone!

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.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Quality Guidelines and reinclusion for Google Maps

It looks like the Local Business Center is tightening its submission policies and some oddities are starting to appear. This is the list so far:

First, the use of too many capitals is being prohibited. The following screenshot shows an example of use of roman numbers and its being classified as ‘overuse’ of capitals. Sounds to me like they are trying to prevent people from leaving on their CAPS LOCK (shoutness level).

Also, the use of too many punctuations is being prohibited, since recently, as we could also tell from the increasing number of posts about this in the google maps group.

I submitted split hours, using the bulk-upload feature. Now when editing that listing manually it starts complaining about overlapping hours.
All days have split hours, except Saturday, where only mornings are available. So Google puts the after hours in 12:00AM till 12:00AM. Trying to save these, will result in the following message (the message about repeated punctuation applies to the previous example):

Another one; interesting one actually! Is this a translation error or does this mean that Google is working on something in the future to enable verification by email? Notice the term ‘correo electrónico’ which is Spanish for email. Clicking it however, results in a regular mail verification method.

Have you been noticing other oddities or strange behavior of the Local Business Center? Please let us know in the comments!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Local Business Center Oddities

I haven’t really checked if all information is up to date, but it seems that most of it is. (let me know if you notice some flaws, like the availability of Ireland for example. )

So my tip for the day is; check out the Google Code pages; often, developers know more about the capabilities of a service and it helps you to sell a better product.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

The research Quest

Word has that Google put back the ‘fix incorrect marker location’. Google Maps Guide Sirene posted this in the Google groups.

So it’s not necessary anymore to use the trick I used for you US users to change the interface/engine by switching back to a European one, where we are still awaiting the updates.

Screen shot below shows the button back in action in the ‘new’ / US interface of the Local Business Center

Thanks Map Guides! And oh yeah

Thanks for letting us know what things make the LBC a better place!

You can read those here!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Fix incorrect marker option is back!

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!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

What should Google do?