According to Google, 20% of all searches are related to location. And since comScore reports that over 14 billion searches were conducted through Google in March, this means nearly 3 billion Google search queries contained local terms. Searches like “Nike shoes in Evansville IL” or “dentists 60181”.
Nearly 2 million listings on Google have been claimed by business owners on Google Places - which still represents only about 15% of small businesses. These Place Pages are viewed millions of times each day.
These statistics only reiterate what we have known for a long time now – local search optimization is a crucial part of every SEO campaign. If 20% of all searches come with local qualifiers, businesses are missing out on at least 20% of their potential traffic by neglecting to optimize for local search terms.
Visits by Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Across Google, Yahoo! and Bing
By Dave Cosper · March 10 2011
We recently did a search to find out how many other companies in Illinois were Google Certified Partners and could only find 27 other qualified “companies”, of which 21 only had ONE Qualified Individual on staff. We are proud to say that of the 28 total Google Certified Partners in the state of IL, EZlocal ranks in the top three with a total of five Qualified Individuals. As for Google Certified Partners in the Chicago area, there are only 15. The number of Google Certified Partners varies state to state and can be looked up via the
By Dave Cosper · February 25 2011
There’s a multitude of factors Google uses to organize and display results in Local Search - not to mention the rules of the game are constantly changing. For a thorough explanation of some of the more influential factors, see David Mihm’s collaborative piece: Local Search Ranking Factors. And with all of the recent changes in Google’s Integrated SERP, we’re anticipating the 2011 update to Mihm’s Ranking Factors will be packed with even more useful information. For today’s blog, I’m just going to concentrate on a few things you can do right away to boost your Places listing in search results by establishing a few good citations.
Note: You can add an immediate and monumental boost to your local search rankings with the help of EZlocal search marketing - plans as low as...
By Dave Cosper · February 15 2011
(This photo, “Four Lanes Become Two-Lane Boulevard Overnight” is copyright (c) 2011 tnachtrab and made available under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license)
Chicago was a ghost town on Wednesday. Of course, 60 mph winds and 20 inches of snow will do that to any city. The conditions were brutal and most businesses threw in the towel, closing their doors for the day. However, EZlocal isn't most businesses.
EZlocal helps small businesses get found all across the country. The streets of Port St. Lucie, Florida and Austin, Texas and Roseville, California did not look like
By Jorge Cordova · February 05 2011
Last week, we saw an article about a new marketing piece Google's AdWords department sent out. Awesomely enough, we received the letter in the mail today. It reads: "PS: This card was printed on 100% recycled paper embedded with wildflower seeds. Plant it in a sunny spot with a thin layer of soil, add water, and watch it grow"
Pretty cool, no? So we decided to take the rational approach and have a postcard planting party, check it out
By Derek McKenzie · January 29 2011
google
So it was confirmed last week: Google intends to launch Google Offers and directly compete with Groupon. Did we expect anything less from Big G? And if they were willing to spend $6 billion to buy the company, rest assure they are willing to pool together vast resources to build a noble competitor. This was perhaps an inevitable outcome as Google penetrates deeper and deeper into monetizing Local Search. This kind of friendly, or not so friendly, competition bodes well for business owners, online advertisers as well as shoppers. And EZlocal is excited about any opportunity that allows small businesses to further build their local presence, increase sales, and interact in more meaningful ways with their community.
There are still plenty of unknowns in how these daily deals will be rolled out. There’s no question Google is well positioned to roll Offers out. Whether it’s via Places, AdWords, or a hybrid of their Offer Ads beta is TBD.
Compliments of
By Dave Cosper · January 26 2011
google offers, groupon
Have you been looking for a drug dealer in Chicago? Google maps has you covered!
This surprisingly brought up some map results today, even more surprising to see the Chicago Police at the top. Diving into it, you see a lot of high profile articles posted about Chicago Police and drug busts, which leads me to believe that the new places results are using these as citations. More of the same is found under the Nation of Islam, and citations regarding drug dealer reform and cleaning up drug infested communities.
My take away here: the new algorithm is becoming much smarter than the old, although still has a few deficiencies. Brand mentions, old fashion links, and other traditional SEO efforts may factor much more in to Google Places results than ev...
By Derek McKenzie · December 27 2010
google places, drug dealer map
UPDATE: Google officially announces Local Advertising with Google Boost.
Places accounts are lighting up with their own advertising system dubbed Google Boost. Google very quietly launched a new form of paid advertising for Google Places and local business listings call "Google Boost". You will notice within your Google Places Account, underneath the "Tags" lionk you there is a new otption for "Boost Ad".
Notice that the ad mixes in with the typical paid AdWords ads. The only distinction is the blue place marker. See one in action:
First look at the i...
By Tim Scheer · October 25 2010
google places, google boost
