I’ll be speaking at 1pm on “#winning with Google Places”. Come learn how to get your Google Places listing to the first page of Google for your most important keywords.

There’s great content throughout the day, and at only $119, it’s quite a bargain.

But, I can make that bargain even better. If you put the coupon text EM95 in the Discount Code field during registration, you’ll get a price of only $95!

And with this coupon from ionadas local LLC, the price is even better!

It is good for 15% off, and is valid until 10/21/2011. The code is placed in the “offer code” box at the bottom of the first registration form page and will automatically deduct the correct percentage off of the registration price.

Coupon Code: bc-4592015

Tuesday, November 8th

10:00am-11:15am: National Company – Local Focus, Salon C (panelist)
11:30am-12:45pm: Google Places & Hotpot Optimization, Salon G (panelist)
1:30pm-2:45pm: How Do You Optimize For Universal and Personal Search?, Salon A (panelist)

Wednesday, November 9th

1:00pm-3:00pm: PubCon Labs

Thursday, November 10th

10:15am-11:30am: WordPress SEO & Installation, Salon G (moderator)
1:30pm-2:45pm: Protecting Your Brand – Competitive Intel, Salon B (moderator)

Note: Locations are subject to change, so check the schedule there.

See you in Vegas!

Web Equity by Mike Blumenthal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.blumenthals.com.

On March 8th and 9th, a Can’t-Miss online marketing conference, is coming to town. PubCon Austin 2011 will have dozens of top speakers over its two days.

The thing I like about PubCon is its focus on real world problems and solutions, rather than the vague theories you hear discussed at many conference.

And, best of all, I’ve negotiated a 15% discount for you. When you sign up, use the discount code “bc-8430915″. It is valid through February 2011.

Hope to see you there!

It was to be the first published survey of eye tracking patterns as applied to local search techniques. We planned to publish the research under a Creative Common Attribution 3.0 license.

Twelve days ago, however, Google released Google Place Search, and completely changed the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for local queries. One could argue that this invalidates our hard work.

“No so fast!” I retort in my best Lee Korso voice.

There are currently multiple page types for local queries. One of them draws much of its structure from the old 7-pack. It’s reasonable to assume that many of our findings apply to this new SERP as well.

And our most surprising finding certainly still applies. The conventional wisdom has been that the map itself should be one of the greatest draws on the page. Our research found that the map actually receives very little attention. Most people hardly notice its presence at all.

If anything, this should be even more the case with the new SERPs. Google has moved the map to the right, where paid advertising usually languishes. Most users have spent the last fifteen years learning to ignore that part of the page. I believe it is unlikely to be noticed now.

So, even with the changes, we’re publishing our research report and the heatmaps:

• Research Paper (.pdf, 11.1MB)
• Heatmap One (.jpg, 147KB)
• Heatmap Two (.jpg, 152KB)
• Heatmap Three (.jpg, 135KB)
• Heatmap Four (.jpg, 127KB)

This research and this report are © 2010, ionadas local LLC and Sentient Services, LP.

They are being published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, allowing businesses, organizations and individuals to download, use and reproduce the data in their own promotional and research efforts providing proper attribution is made.

Proper attribution means listing the above copyright statement and including links to www.ionadas.com and www.sentientservices.com for web usage. For other uses, the copyright statement, www.ionadas.com and www.sentientservices.com must be listed.

Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from ionadas local LLC.

It’ll take some time to tease out what exactly they’ve done, but at a high level it appears that the new ranking algorithm is a combination of the old Google Maps and organic algos. This is great news if you have strong organic optimization. You’re probably seeing improved rankings today.

If you’re targeting local queries without a local presence, however, life just got harder for you. For most queries, I’m seeing only a couple of organic listings above the fold. This is about the same as for the old page structure, but additional organic listings are multiple clicks down the page now. You’ve got a grand total of four spots on the first page of results. Good luck.

The seven local listings are now spread out down the page, with only one or two above the fold. This greatly increases the need to be at the top of the Google Places listings.

So, get to work building citations and encouraging your customers to place reviews!

Information tagged in this manner is easier for Google to categorize, and can show up as a citation in Google Places, or even a more prominent link.

Mike Blumenthal has a great write-up on why hCard Microformat is important.