I am currently working on how-to guide for local search marketing for Vertical Measures, and let me tell you, I have never had to edit a writing piece as much as I have this. Things in the local search industry are moving fast, very fast, and business owners, more than ever, need to try to keep up. Google has a very cool time line of corporate milestones, that it updates every so often with the changes and new products it rolls out.
Here are the instances that had to do with local. And, with the way things are going, this timeline will likely be missing something by tomorrow.
March 2004: Google introduced Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps and directions.
February 2005: Google Maps was released and featured satellite views and directions.
Shortly after that, Google Local was available for mobile devices and included SMS driving directions.
June 2005: Google Earth, a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search, is unveiled.
February 2007: Traffic information introduced for Google Maps for more than 30 cities around the US
May 2007: At our Searchology event, we announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result.
May 2007: Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.
June 2007: Google Maps gets prime placement on the original Apple iPhone.
June 2008: A new version of Maps for Mobile debuts, putting Google Transit directions on phones in more than 50 cities worldwide.
June 2009: We add a new dashboard to Google Places, which gives business owners information, such as what people searched for to see their listing or how many times their listing appeared in search results, about how customers find their businesses in Google Maps.
September 2009: We introduce Place Pages to Google Maps: one page that organizes all the relevant information about a business, point of interest, transit station, neighborhood, landmark or city—in any part of the world—in one place. Place Pages include rich details, like photos, videos, a Street View preview, nearby transit, reviews and related websites.
October 2009: Google Maps Navigation, our turn-by-turn GPS navigation system, includes 3D views and voice guidance—and because it‘s connected to the Google cloud, it always includes the newest map data, lets you search by voice or along a route, and provides live traffic data.
April 2010: Google Places (formerly the Local Business Center) gets a new name along with some new features, like showing service areas and, in some cities, the ability to use an easy advertising program called Tags.
November 2010: Google local results and organic results were combined, creating mayhem in the local search industry with local search experts attempting to find all of the consequences of the changes.
Local search has evolved dramatically over the past few years as the demand for local businesses in search results has also increased dramatically. While things have changed, the message to local businesses is still the same. Local businesses must pay attention and engage with this elephant called Google if they wish to succeed online.
Tags: Google local, local search, local search marketing
This entry was posted on Friday, December 17th, 2010 at 4:30 am and is filed under Local Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 17th, 2010 at 9:07 am
It’s not just havoc for the search industry; some users (like me) do very little location-based search and, indeed, prefer to search completely independent of any geo-location.
Upwards of 95% of my searches (which used to be on Google but are now increasingly on Blekko) are for information, not location-based goods or services. I want results that are the “best” (most linked-to, highest page rank, etc.) of all English language results on the Internet. I’m actually rather anti-locavore in my information consumption and often prefer a non-US source if a good one is available for the sake of broader perspective. Certainly I would like to see truly global results equally weighted in most of my searches.
I’m not sure how SEO users and marketers view the growth of location-based search, but to me it’s a humongous #fail.
December 18th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
[...] The History of Google and Local Search [...]
December 21st, 2010 at 3:21 am
Hey you have collected lot of information about Google local Business.. keep it up good one..
December 23rd, 2010 at 4:34 am
The term “Search” is now replaced by “Google”. Everybody in earth now saying “google it” instead of “search it”. Google is very much popular now and I can see their latest technologies they are developing and we can really see the future today!!