Google Places - Another Alarming Anomaly?

Google is still sorting out local search - or at least some local businesses should hope they are.

Here's what happened when I tested Google's idea of 'local' today - bearing in mind that I'm in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Google clearly thinks that local for me (and for local plumbers) includes most of Southeast England:



None of the businesses listed near the top of the page are actually local, despite the fact I've entered my location (on the left) as Bury St Edmunds.

What's more, the map on the right does appear to show one plumber actually in Bury St Edmunds, but it's the one ranked lowest (on the first page) of the Places results (H).

This means that businesses with a more 'effective' Places listing are actually less visible than one with a worse Places page.

Click on that 'H' listing and you do get a 'proper' Bury map with the other local plumbers ranked correctly, but anyone just looking at Google's first page as I did could be forgiven for thinking that there is only one plumber in the town.

Incidentally, you will also see different results if you use the location in the 'search string' - by entering 'plumber bury st edmunds' in this example.

Google's local search updates have had a lot of publicity, not least from ourselves, but they clearly have some way to go before they're a genuinely reliable source of information for UK searchers.

Roy

PS. You can get more help with local search via our Cinnamon Edge website.

Why Leak Link Juice?

I've written several times on this blog and the Cinnamon Edge blog about the importance of link juice for your websites and blogs.

Getting inbound links from respected and relevant sites is really helpful in boosting your own sites in the search engine results, and you can create some of these yourself by setting up blogs like this one.

There are some SEO 'experts' who say that you shouldn't put outbound links on your websites because they 'leak' the very link juice you've been getting from elsewhere with your inbound links. But it isn't quite that simple.

If it was, authority sites would have no authority, because all their link juice would leak away through all the miriad links to other sites. In fact, outbound links help your website, too, and they do it in two ways:

1. Google likes websites to be helpful and to give a good experience to their visitors. Links to useful information on other sites is one very easy but effective way of being useful. You don't have to rewrite the useful information on your own site and you can never be accused of plagiarising another site's content.


2. Your website's visitors will have an enjoyable and helpful experience when they visit your site so they're more likely to come back, suggest it to friends, and so on. They'll probably forget that a lot of what they learned was actually on another site entirely!

There are a couple of things you must do to make outbound links work for you.

1. Make sure you get any links to open in a new page or new tab so your visitor never actually leaves your site unless they actively decide to. When they close the new website (that you linked to) your website will still be showing.


2. Use the relevant anchor text in your outbound links, just as you would in your inbound ones. This tells Google that you're giving people a clear path to relevant information.

Finally, another benefit of linking to other people's sites is that they're much more likely to link to yours or find other ways to tell people about your site.

It's not quite clear how powerful outbound links are compared to inbound ones, and Google isn't going to tell us, but there's no doubt they do contribute.

And being a good citizen by giving your visitors the best possible experience can only help your business in the long run.

I'll talk about the myths and mysteries of 'no-follow' and 'do-follow' links and their possible impact on SEO another time!

Roy

Google's Googly

Google threw everyone a googly last week when they changed the way local search results are displayed. It's fair to say that most people were wrong-footed!

From now on, it seems, local results will be a mixture of Google Places and organic listings, with no clear answer as to which will get priority, although a picture is emerging.

Google's changes have probably made hundreds of 'How-To' info products obsolete overnight, but fortunately our big products - all part of a joint venture that's been over a year in the making - hadn't gone to press yet.

So we've been able to include the very latest advice on how to optimise both Places and your main website (and other web 'properties') in the first new product before it launches.

That's along with all the hundreds of other pages of information, actionable tips and advice and straightforward strategies to grow your business.

In some ways it's a real nuisance for us. But it's pure gain for the people who will get their hands on the very latest on local search almost at the moment it emerges from Google.

Watch this space for the live links to the new product!

Roy