Hot off the press, Google just updated the way it presents local business in search overnight.

It now emphasises the local business results on certain keywords (e.g., “auckland hotels”, “car repair”, “supermarket”, etc) while others such as “life insurance”, “cpu”, “ad agency” and so on remains unaffected.

Links:

- Official Google Blog.

- Matt McGee

- Pariswells.com

Google updates local business results in search

Source: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/5-quick-impacts-of-googles-new-local-search-results/3757/

My first impressions:

1. I don’t like it. It screws up my organic search results and places unwanted locations that I probably wouldn’t care about (e.g., search for “banks” showed one listing as in Onehunga, which is 15-20 odd kms from where I live and work). Organic Search is now also cluttered with biased results simply because some businesses have the resources to put their branches on the map. What about businesses where we can buy stuff online? Especially where they don’t have physical stores? Searching for shoes, perhaps?

2. Google should have fixed Google Places facility first before doing this. Up to now, bulk verification still takes a long time!

3. Reviews on the search results? This is a big can of worm. As I am a cynic, I firmly believe that those who cares don’t matter and those who matters don’t care. We all know that bad experience would multitudely spur reviews while customers who get good experience normally don’t bother to scream out. Reviews will be unfairly biased to businesses. Can Google be sued for defamation due to inaccurate representation through the reviews?

Google, if you are listening, if you want to mess up with the Paid Search space, that’s fine. But Organic Search results was fine as it was!

What is Google Caffeine Update and how it may impact your online business?

This is from my blog about Google Caffeine Update on First Rate NZ website. Read the complete article on http://www.firstrate.co.nz/blog/the-caffeine-google-search-algorithm-update/

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