All indications are that this is a very limited test at the moment and there’s no way of knowing whether it will become generally available. But the implications of such a change would be huge. For certain types of queries (i.e. those that tend to return the map today), traditional SEO efforts would no longer be of any value.

Only AdWords and Google Places listings would matter.

I doubt the screen capture the linked article shows reflects what Google would use in the long run, as it seems fairly clumsy. There are only 2.5 listings above the fold, with a great deal of wasted space.

But we certainly could see something like this in the near future.

Hat Tip to WebmasterWorld for pointing this out to me.

This is especially welcome for home-based businesses, who might not want to list their home address on the internet for all to see.

Businesses owners should realize that there is a significant disadvantage to this approach, however. A large part of Google ranking calculation is based upon the Citations a listing has received. Citations are pages that Google has found that list the company’s name, phone number and address (and are trusted by Google).

Yes, you can list your home-based business with Google and prevent the address from showing within Google, but you’re going to have a harder time building citations. You can try listing just your company name and phone number, but those citations tend to not be as strong.

So, do you use your home address or not? At the end, it comes down to a value judgment, but you need to be aware of the pros and cons of various approaches.

Being in Austin, Texas, an offer for this advertising program popped up in ionadas local’s Google Maps management system this morning.

“Learn More” takes you to Google Help pages. If you “Preview and select a tag, the following dialog box is shown:

You have the option of highlighting coupons, photos, videos or your website. If one of these is not available in your Google Places, it won’t be offered for tagging.

Here is what the ad looks like, in the 7-pack, the 3-pack, and the 1-box, respectively.

It’s too early to tell if this will result in an uptick in traffic, but watch here for updates. In the meantime, here’s the dashboard the advertisement adds to your management system, although it does not have any data yet.

ionadas local will be attending and speaking at PubCon South 2010 in Dallas the second week of April. CEO Brian Combs will be speaking on the “Personalize Search – Universal Search – Life Goes On” panel with Michael Gray and Dr. Amanda Watlington.

Brian’s panel is at 1:30pm on Wednesday, April 14th, and he will be discussing developments within Google Maps and other local search engines as they pertain to universal and personalized search.

If you’d like 20% off your ticket to PubCon South 2010, use the code “rc-7200720″ when registering (coupon expires April 9th at 5pm central). We hope to see you there!

You can choose whether or not your listing has a physical address associated with it. According to Google Maps Help:

Service Area Listings With An Address
Listings with a designated service area and a physical address appear the same in Google Maps search results as results without a service area. Once a you click on the listing title, the information window that appears allows you to toggle service areas on and off by clicking ‘Show/hide service area’. By default, service areas are hidden. On the map itself, the listing appears as a red pin. If you’ve chosen ‘Show service area,’ the service area will appear as a see-through red shape.

Service Area Listings Without An Address
Listings with a designated service area and no address appear in Google Maps search results with a red circle and the city the business is located in. Once you click on the listing title, the information window that appears allows you to toggle service areas on and off by clicking ‘Show/hide service area’. On the map, the listing appears as a red floating circle. If you’ve chosen ‘Show service area,’ the service area will appear as a see-through red shape.

Unfortunately, there is no interface for this functionality through the bulk upload system yet. You have to add the Service Area by hand.

Service Areas are something that we’ve been looking for in the Local SEO world for some time. Many businesses do not have customers coming to their location, but rather go to the customer’s location. While these firms certainly have a tight geographic focus, the Google Local system has been failing them until now.

It’s not clear what the limitation is on geographic range, but I expect that the further a location is from the center of your range, the harder it is going to be for you to rank for your target search terms.

Details:
Monday, March 8th at 11am, Dave & Busters, Austin, Texas

This workshop will help you to:

• Determine your website’s goals and metrics of success

• Create a detailed list of steps to take to build your new website
• Know what you can do and what you should outsource

Specific examples will be shown using the WordPress platform, an open-source, industry standard Content Management System, but the strategies and ideas will be applicable to many web management system.

The workshop is free, but space is limited, so sign up today!

A constant stream of information is flowing across your screen. Some of it looks useful. Most of it looks like something you’d overhear at a restaurant.

And none of it seems like it would help your business.

I’m not one who believes that Twitter is the right tool for every business. But in the right situation, with the correct plan, and with solid execution, it can be a powerful method of communicating with current and prospective customers.

The Outsource Resource is hosting a workshop on Twitter for Beginners on February 11th. The workshop will be hands on, focusing on how to leverage Twitter to have a material impact on your business.

The instructor, Chris Anderson, is an avid user of Twitter for business purposes. He’s very experienced in explaining digital media to small business owners, and in educating them in its proper usage. He’s also a witty speaker, so the workshop is bound to be both entertaining and useful.

The seating in this workshop is very limited, so it’s sure to sell out. Signup soon!

ionadas local is holding a workshop at Dave & Busters in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, February 2nd from 11am to 1pm. SEO pioneer Brian Combs will be providing hands-on, actionable instruction on how to ensure that your business is found by searchers with local intent.

The workshop itself is free of charge, other than the food and drink you order. Seating is limited, so sign up now!

This event is sponsored by Trish Beach Marketing and Apogee Search.

Austin, Texas, January 11, 2010 – Brian Combs wants to help companies hit it big in 2010 by tapping into a profitable new online market—their own back yard.

Combs’ company, ionadas local, specializes in search engine optimization (SEO) for Google Maps, the online search giant’s feature that allows a company to display its location in geographically-specific Web searches.

Combs, who worked in online marketing for nearly 17 years before founding ionadas local in 2009, has seen the impact of Google Maps on web search visibility. “A couple of years ago,” he recalls, ” I worked with a team trying to figure out why a travel company’s Google traffic had dropped by 20% and its sales from Google had dropped by 25%. All their tools indicated that everything was fine because they still ranked third on this keyword and fourth on that search term, and so on.”

The investigation revealed that for many of the company’s keywords, Google returned results dominated by a map and associated text listings at the top of the page. “That third-place organic ranking for the company had been pushed so far down on the page, people had to scroll down just to see it. This, to me, was an object lesson in just how powerful this map was. It’s really the biggest change we’ve seen in the online search universe since people first started putting PPC ads on there a decade ago.”

Smaller businesses face sobering competition from big companies when using traditional web search strategies. “The real estate industry is a good example, “ says Combs. “The real estate scene in major cities tends to be dominated by the national players such as Realtor.com and Rent.com. These companies are search result aggregators who collect your contact information and sell it to realtors. In the financial world, Lending Tree may re-sell that information four times to various mortgage companies. That gives them a huge advantage over local firms when it comes to organic search.”

Google Maps changes the game by emphasizing physical location as a search criterion, according to Combs. “That physical presence is much harder for the big national aggregators to establish, allowing small, local companies to compete effectively with the big guys on the Web playing field. The outstanding majority of brick-and-mortar companies, no matter how small, can use their keyword information to score well on Google Maps.”

ionadas local helps businesses nationwide to devise optimization strategies to get the best possible local search results on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. According to client Krisstina Wise, Principal at The Goodlife Team, “ionadas local helped us evaluate and implement a strategy for visibility in the local real estate market. With Google changing the game in local search constantly, it’s essential for us to work with a skilled professional to make sure we show up where buyers are looking.”

Combs predicts the appearance of even more precise search techniques in 2010. “I think we’re going to move from local marketing to hyper-local marketing. For instance, when you search for ‘Austin coffee shop,’ instead of getting results for coffee houses all over Austin, I believe that Google will determine what part of town you’re in and deliver targeted results for that location.” Combs notes that searches conducted by smartphone will allow Google to determine the searcher’s precise location.

“Even now, if you’re in Austin and you just Google ‘coffee shop,’ Google will return results for Austin coffee shops because it assumes you want a localized result,” says Combs. “The near future will hold even more opportunity for businesses to compete using super-precise online marketing.”

About ionadas local
ionadas local of Austin, Texas was founded in May 2009 to help marketers of local products and services. Working with companies in all industries nationwide, ionadas local provides optimization of Google Maps business listings to increase phone calls, foot traffic and website visitors from targeted prospects. For more information about ionadas local, please visit the company’s website at www.ionadas.com or call (512) 501-1875.

I first heard the noise during the brief pause between commercials. I was sitting at home watching TV. Tom and the kids had gone to watch my son’s soccer game, and this was a rare chance for me to enjoy some weekend alone time. What I heard would change that. It was the sound of water dripping under the sink. I instantly pictured water seeping into my wood floors, warping them, molding them, ruining them.

When this woman — let’s call her "Sally" — gets to her computer and opens Google, what keywords is she going to enter? She might type in "emergency plumber," "weekend plumber," or "water leak help."

If you are a plumber, are you interested in hearing from her? Do you work weekends? Do you maintain a fleet of trucks around the city? If so, these are keyword phrases that will compliment your business strategy very well. How would you have know to target these keywords if you didn’t know her story?

The Source for Search Keywords

I have a lot of respect for people who create search engine keyword lists. They sit with you for an hour or so, asking questions about your business and your customers. Then, they go away for a day or two, returning with a list of hundreds or thousands of keyword phrases, prioritized by potential value to your business. It’s a beautiful thing to see.

Unfortunately, this is what they usually have to work with:

Sally is a 44-year-old female living in an upper-middle-class ZIP code in suburban Dallas. Her family income is between $150,000 and $200,000 per year. She is married. She has three children between 12 and 18 years of age. Her home is 15 years old and has three bathrooms, five sinks, and a sprinkler system.

Based on this, can you predict what is Sally going to type into Google at any given moment? It’s hard to say without knowing her story.

Segmenting Misses Opportunities

I’ve been thinking about remodeling our master bathroom. We’ve lived in this house a long time and it’s time we started updating it. Mary down the street just finished hers and said I should look for a plumber that can work with the new materials used in modern bathrooms. Apparently it was a problem for her.

This is the same Sally. Same income. Same ZIP code. Same house. But she is going to search very differently, and remodel projects are probably going to be very desirable to a plumbing business. While terms like "bathroom remodel" may be very competitive, a search professional may find valuable terms that focus on bathroom materials such as "plumbing for tile counters," or "toilets on wooden floors."

Same person, different approach.

Naturally, such insights will also affect the content you choose for your site. Your search professional should be able to help you prioritize content based on your customer commentaries.

The Power of the Customer Commentary

The four sentences that I began this post with contain a power that demographics alone can’t deliver.

First, the "story" is written from the point of view of the prospect – the potential visitor to your Web site. This means that it is written using the vocabulary of the customer, not the vocabulary of the business or industry. Sally would rarely say something like, "I suspected the elbow pipe was leaking around the seal and my wood floors were being ruined."

Second, it tells us exactly why she is searching for a plumber, giving us more potential keywords to investigate. In the hands of a talented search professional, phrases like "emergency plumbing," "after hours plumber," and "how to shut off water" could be parlayed into hundreds of otherwise overlooked opportunities.

Third, it highlights the importance of Google Maps and the "seven pack." Because Sally can feel her wood floors rotting, proximity is going to be a key motivator in her selection of a solution. In most searches, the map is a convenience to the searcher. In Sally’s situation it is crucial to be in that list of seven.

Aren’t these stories too specific to be helpful?

You may feel that these stories are too specific, and that you would be missing a great many searches by focusing on a few specific customer commentaries. If you are the only plumber in your area, you may not need such detail. Chances are, you are not. Furthermore, your competition is learning every day how to make the search engines work in their favor.

Neither of these stories omits the broader keyword phrases that you would be interested in. However, your ability to specifically target those customers who fit your strategic advantages will ensure that you stay one step ahead of your competition.

If you’re going to be depending on search engines for leads and sales in 2010, you need to help your search term research along. Write the stories of your best visitors in their words and find those valuable search terms that everyone else is missing.

Brian Massey is The Conversion Scientist™ and he has the lab coat to prove it. Brian develops visitor personas for businesses of all sizes so that they can focus their marketing dollars in the places that will deliver the leads and sales that help them grow.

All opinions expressed in guest blog postings are those of the specific post’s author, and may or may not reflect those of Brian Combs or ionadas local.