Why I Love Chrome!

Here's a video comparing the speed of Google's Chrome browser to a potato gun, sound waves, and lightning!  It really is that fast, and I know it from everyday use.  Check it out.

Google Local Business Center How-to Webinar or You're Never Done Learning

I'm in the middle of Google's Local Business Center How-to webinar and I wasn't actually expecting to learn anything. I'm in the LBC many times throughout the day working on my customer's listing. I thought that I had a complete understanding of all the tools and tricks that you can use in it, but I learned something new today.

In the "Additional Details" section, website addresses that you enter in are live on the listing. The specific examples that they used were a link to a pdf menu and a link to a restaurant's "Reservations" page. While going back through some of my customer's listings, I noticed that I had done it by accident in one of my customer's listings, linking back to her old (not done by me!) website and domain name.

It's a cool trick with a lot of functionality. Now I have to go back and implement it for dozens of customers!

New Addition to Google Docs Suite - Google Drawings

I logged into Google Docs today, as I do everyday, and a little pop-up came up notifying me that a new type of document was now available: Google Drawings.

I've been playing around with it a bit today, as time allows, and, for me, the most useful application would be as a replacement for Visio. It comes with all the objects and many of the options that I used to get from Visio when I worked in it, albeit this was more than 5 years ago. I'm not up on the latest incarnations of Visio at all.

Another feature is that, like in all Google Docs, you can work on a drawing in real time with another user. I can see how this would be very useful for trying to develop a flow sheet with some of my overseas vendors.

Yet another cool toy from the folks at Google, and one I've been needing.

My Newest Timewaster - foursquare

I was doing my due diligence last week, reading up on the latest and greatest in Local Search when I came across an article about a cool app to put on my phone called foursquare. It's a game / tracking tool that you can use to track where you've been, leave tips about places, and follow where your friends have been. As you use the app you unlock badges, little rewards to motivate users to use it more often.

The thing that drew me in is this article that Google is crawling foursquare for local citations. The way this site is set up is tailor made to improve your local search results. The "Add Venue" option requires businesses to provide their name, address, phone number and a cross street. Local search lives or dies by a businesses NAP (name, address, phone number), and this is a strong place to put it.

On top of that, it's fun. The person with the highest amount of "check-ins" is declared the "mayor" of a place (I'm mayor of 2 currently) and you can compete with your friends, or track your results in comparison to the entire city you're in.

I'm in the process of making sure that all my customers' locations have been added to this site and I'm having fun in the process. What more can you ask for?

Hallelujah and Praise the Lord: Service Areas and Location Settings in Google Place Pages

I logged into one of my customer's Google Local Business Centers today and had a pleasant surprise. As you can see on the image, Google has finally addressed the problem of businesses that service customers outside of their immediate area. Until now, my customers with lawn services, out-call massage, and plumbing businesses had major issues coming up on the map outside of their immediate metropolitan areas.

Today they enabled the "Service Areas and Location Settings" area in the Local Business Center. Businesses have the option of choosing whether their customers come to their business location or if they serve customers at their address. They have the option of showing their address or not and they can choose which area they service. The service area can be chosen as a radius from their address, or they can put in geo-modifiers such as zip code, city name, or even county name. I used both methods for several of my customers, choosing a radius or choosing counties or cities as appropriate.

It's too soon to determine how this new option will affect rankings or if hiding your address has a positive or negative affect on listings. This literally changes how I advise my customers in their local search efforts. I'll let you know my results as time goes on.

Post To Your Place Page - New on Google Place Pages

I was working on one of my customer's place pages, as I do on a daily basis, when I came across a new tool in the top right-hand corner. The option to place a message on my customer's place page that expires in 30 days.

I called the customer for a quick blurb to try out the new tool and here's how it looks.

A great tool that my customers have been asking for. Try it out today.

New Google Map / Local Listing Design

I'm in Google Maps every day as a part of my job promoting the hell out of Local Search and I came across an interesting change in Google Maps. When you click on "more info" from Google Maps, but not yet from the Google 10-pack, you get a different, more expanded version of the Local Listing. That's a screenshot of my own listing there on the right.

Highlights include:

• Visible Business categories
• Distance to the nearest major intersection
• Nearby bus stops! (They obviously don't know Tampa! Who uses the bus?)
• Full business description and a sample review
• Google Map of the location and a picture of the business from the street
• Expanded versions of tabs that you used to have to expand in the old style of listing including Details, Photos & Videos, Reviews, Web Pages, and User Content

I really like the new layout, let's see if they roll it out to all the local listings, or if it stays strictly on Google Maps.

Update: So I just found an article, and posted a link, identifying these as Google Place Pages. The official blog states that one exists for every spot on the map!