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.
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.
Labels: cinnamon edge, google local search, google places, online marketing bury st edmunds
posted by Roy Everitt at
05:11
2 Comments:
I wouldn't call that an anomaly - more a stretch of the capability.
...You say that you had told Google where you were - but I don't see anything other than 'plumber' in the search term. And my own experience of Google thinking that I reside in Chelmsford whereas I am actually in Bishops Stortford would lead me to think that we are both using BT and Google is picking up the IP address and location of a BT ISP location in Chelmsford.
Only when the searcher includes a geographical location in the search term OR is using a smartphone and Google picks up the GPS location will it deliver Places pages properly attuned to the location. You can easily see the improvement by adding the location into the search box.
In any event, the changes on 1st November which released the Places pages from their box and allowed them to dominate page 1 have made Places pages even more important for local businesses.
Regards
Bruce
Accentu8Marketing.com
By
Unknown, At
30 November 2010 at 16:11
Yes Bruce, but as you see I entered Bury St Edmunds in the 'location' box on the left hand side.
You will get different results if you include the location in the search term, as I explained, but people could be forgiven for thinking that typing their 'location' in the box might tell Google where they are :)
In fact it does, but this version of Google's algorithm clearly gives too much credit to optimised listings from further afield, and puts them above the genuinely local ones.
Incidentally, a simple fix that would give more helpful results straight away would be if Google layered their map markers so that higher ranked results obscured the lower ones, rather than the other way round - in this case, result 'H' obscures results 'D' to 'G', which are all in Bury but are not visible on the map.
By
Roy Everitt, At
1 December 2010 at 02:45
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