Of course this should just be the tip of the iceberg for the dashboard and the stats you should be able to get.  While they include which keywords lead to how many impressions, they do not give the far more valuable statistic of which keywords lead to which actions and how many of which actions.  Obviously they have this data and it is difficult to understand why they aren’t including it, when they know how valuable that would be to small businesses.

In addition to leaving out critical data, they also have not given a clear enough explanation of how they’re measuring data.  Since they now include a 10 pack in their organic listings for certain terms even without a modifier (e.g. if you search the term plumber without a geographical modfier you’re still likely to get a 10-pack listing in the universal search) it would be nice to know if they’re including these results in your local business center dashboard.

Lets hope that they offer more data and more clarificaiton in the near future.  In the meantime you can read more on what Google has to say about the new dashboard here.

But if you’re in the U.K.  you might see:

In announcing the international launch of Google Suggest Google states “We’ve localized our suggestions to account for various cultural and local factors…”  they go on to say that “users in different countries will get suggestions that feel natural.”

With any luck this is only the start of the improvements they will be making to this feature which they launched back in August.    While Google says it has “localized” the suggestions what they’ve really done is internationalized the suggestions to not be so US centric.  No doubt this is a move in the right direction, but hopefully they won’t stop here.    Google could and should offer true localization to narrow the geographical reach of these results to a much smaller area.  Dreaming a little bit further it would be great if Google added the ability through a drop down to narrow search on a country, state or city level.

We’ve teamed up with Howling Dog Themes to get you a 50% discount for the theme and the framework which means you’ll also get their K9 Canvas theme framework.  You can even apply the discount to the Developer’s package and get all their themes.  Just enter the code:  wpecdew at checkout.

But before you go, take a look at the multiple ways it lets you feature products.

Custom Featured Product Image Slider

Shop Category Page with Slider

Optional Video Link On Individual Product Pages

Video Product Popup

Get the  Dollar theme for WP e-Commerce

Here are a handful of the themes we’ve built for WP e-Commerce

SugarRae: The website of Rae Hoffman who found her way into search engine visibility when she was trying to connect with other parents of children who have had pediatric strokes. I don’t recommend her site just because of her story, though as the uncle of another pediatric stroke survivor I find it meaningful. Instead, it is for the great content that she puts out on the site. I suggest non-profits and small business alike read her post Before You Launch that Local Business Website and do as she says.

Matt Cutts: If you’re not familiar with Matt Cutt’s Blog, and you want to rank well in Google, you should bookmark him. Matt is the SEO mouth piece for Google. Yes his blog is his own, but he is the messanger. Unlike say a White House press secretary, Matt isn’t just giving the company line he is active in the inner workings of Google search which is why he is one of the authors on Google’s patent application 20050071741 that lays out how historical data is used for placement in search engines. So, you want to know why your pages are marked as supplemental results in Google? Or perhaps what Google is thinking about paid links? Read Matt.

SEO Class: I don’t know if they will ever do it again, but SEO Class offered a pro bono workshop just for non-profits as a prelude to their first ever conference. Whether or not they do that again their blog is worht reading and there is even a section dedicated to non-profit issues, though at the moment it is a little sparse.

Jim Boykin : Jim has been at this game for a long time and though his children aren’t that old he’s already a granddaddy in the seo field. The thing that I appreciate about Jim is that he gives very concrete real world information. For example check out his post on how to value a page you are considering getting a link from.
Danny Sullivan: It’s not difficult to find posts by Danny Sullivan he has brought an incredible amount of energy to search engine visiblity. His latest effort is Third Door Media and one asspect of that company is the co-authored blog Search Engine Land which is a must read.

Anyone who knows search engine visibility experts knows that I have just scratched the surface here, but I am hungry, so I’ll come back to this post and fill it out some more on another day. You might think about book marking it to check out later.