Get in Google Local Now
It’s always been a good idea for local businesses to register with Google’s local business listings, but as of this week it moves from a good idea to your number one task if you haven’t already taken care of it. Here’s why.
Google has been showing a local search listing and up to 3 local listings next to a map for a bit over a year, but as of this week Google is showing 10 listings for most types of local businesses and most locales.
The new, and I’ll go out on a limb here and say improved local results look something like this image to the left which you can click on to see an enlarged and detailed view of.
Some local search folks might argue about the quality of the results, but I’ve been running a few searches on services I keep up on for clients and I am finding that for the most part there are many more good results than there used to be and they are near the top. Gone for example, from a search for alternative medicine portland oregon is a local vegetarian restaurant that never had any business showing up as is a dentist who didn’t fit the category.
Some folks have suggested devious reasons Google may have implemented this, eg getting their maps to be more popular, and that may be true, but it doesn’t negate the fact that now a lot more of the types of services and retailers that you had hoped to find in your searches are showing up.
Google has always been caught in this bind where it can’t know exactly what a searcher is looking for in many cases and so it shows a hodgepodge of different results that could be what we someone is looking for. Google actually intentionally doesn’t show all of one category for example they’ll show informational sites as well as service sites for a search because you could be looking for either. Now for searches with a location like Portland Oregon in it, it is much more likely that you will find several services or product providers.
So lets cut to the chase, what does this mean for you if you are a local business. It means you have a much better chance of showing up on Page 1 of Google. You don’t even need a Web site. Take a look at a lot of the listings in local search and you’ll see that they don’t list a Web site it just says map. The important thing is you can’t get there if you don’t sign up with Google’s business listings. So you need to do that now. Go to https://www.google.com/local/add/ and add your business. You’ll need a Google account but these are free as is the listing and as of this week this has propelled itself to the number one free advertising favor you can do yourself.