Google Maps: From "OneBox" To Ten Local Links.

www.youthsprouts.blogspot.com

For ages -- through OneBox results and its successor of Universal Search -- Google Local results have sometimes shown on regular Google search pages, with three local listings and a prompt for more results. Except now that seems to be changing, with 10 results showing.

Last week Paul Jahn at Search Engine Guide discovered that as many as 10 local listings were showing up on Google search results beside a map. Mike Blumenthal has also been following this development closely for the past several days. Google now appears to be serious about showing as many as 10 local listings beside the map and appears to be

Ten local links are now being seen in Australia and, I'm told, India and various places in the US. Search Engine Land editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan says he sees it in the UK as well. However, despite trying in numerous ways, I have not yet been able to duplicate this myself.

Here's an example of the familiar, "old" presentation of local search results on Google.com:

And here's what the new 10 links presentation looks like:

I had thought this was simply a Google Labs experiment, but other sightings, as indicated, seem to confirm that Google is changing the volume of local links it presents to users on Google.com proper. Over time, placement in these top listings has become very significant and, in one case, disappearing from one of the top positions had a severe impact on traffic and business for a local florist.

We've asked Google officially for an understanding of what they're doing and will postscript or write more when we hear back.

Postscript: Google said today that the reason it's showing more links is because usability testing revealed that many people didn't realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings, despite the "more results . . ." prompt. Accordingly, Google said that with the 10 links it is hoping to signal people that there is much more local content a click away.

The ranking of those ten results is based on a range of factors, including the query, proximity, availability of ratings/reviews and their quality, and several other variables.

Google also said that it wouldn't always show 10 results; it might still show three sometimes or one if the query is very specific.

It's very interesting to see that the other general search engines (Yahoo, Live Search, Ask.com) link to pages from their local search engines, while Google links to the homepage of each business. Another difference is that Google's box has a variable position, depending on the relevance to user's query. Search Engine Land asked Google why it decided to increase the number of results. The reason is that "many people didn't realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings, despite the more results... prompt. Accordingly, Google said that with the 10 links it is hoping to signal people that there is much more local content a click away. The ranking of those ten results is based on a range of factors, including the query, proximity, availability of ratings/reviews and their quality and several other variables." __

Add your business in Google maps now only in USA and some more contries try it

www.youthsprouts.blogspot.com To find this feature, go to Google Maps, search for an address (e.g.: Madison Ave, NY) and you'll see a new option in the left sidebar: "Can't find what you're looking for? Add a place to the map." You can also edit the details from existing listings and even remove places from the map. Among the possible reasons why you could delete a place you can find: the listing is a duplicate, the place doesn't exist, it is permanently closed or it's not of general interest. While business listings are changed almost instantly after you edit them, they can be removed only if someone from Google accepts your removal request. Each local listing can have a status like "Added", "Edited", "Removal requested" and the changes history is available to everyone. Until now, only business owners could add places, using Google's Local Business Center. "We gather business information from numerous websites, Yellow Pages directories, and other sources to populate Google Maps search results. If you'd like to be included, you can easily enter your information into our online Local Business Center for free. (...) Once you've submitted your business information, you'll need to verify the listing before it goes live. You can verify using a touch-tone phone, SMS, or a PIN that will be sent via regular mail to your business address. Once the listing is verified, your information will normally appear in our results within six weeks," explains Google. It's great to trust your users, but the places added using the new feature should be verified to make sure they are real. Turning Google Maps has a lot of practical advantages and could be used to keep the geographical information up-to-date. __

Google Analytics -- analyz your site or blog for free and earn more

www.youthsprouts.blogspot.com Two weeks ago, Google Analytics added a new feature that lets you compare your site's traffic with average data for other similar sites. "Google will remove all identifiable information about your website, then combine that data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in comparable industries and report them in an aggregate form." There's also an option to enable data sharing with other Google services that will allow a better integration between Analytics, AdWords and other services. The benchmarking data is now live and you can see it if you go to Visitors > Benchmarking (Beta). Google compares the following values for the last 30 days: visits, page views, pages/visit, bounce rate, average time on site and new visits. By default, your site is compared with other sites of similar size, but you can restrict the benchmark to general categories like: Internet, Travel, Shopping, Reference etc. Since the data is aggregated from the sites that agreed to participate in the program, it may not be representative. Google says it will add new categories once more sites will enable the data sharing option. "When benchmarking is enabled, Google crawls the websites in the account then categorizes them by vertical and the amount of visits. The data is then made anonymous through aggregation. For sites of a similar size, a category of industry verticals can be chosen when there is a sufficient number of accounts in that category." It's interesting to compare your site's traffic with these aggregate data as it will help you put things in perspective, but you shouldn't be disappointed if the comparison is not favorable. Each site is unique and has a different raison d'être. __

PicLens. See images on site all at a time cool

www.youthsprouts.blogspot.com PicLens is a browser add-on that detaches the images from a web page and lets you explore them in interesting ways. The add-on, which is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, works for a small number of sites: image search engines and photo sharing sites, as it requires to understand the structure of a web page. PicLens is a great way to visualize the results from Google Image Search as a never-ending list of thumbnails. Once you find an interesting photo, you can double-click on it and view it in full-screen. PicLens can also create slideshows from Google Image Search's results so you can enjoy Dali's paintings or Google's doodles. For Picasa Web Albums, the slideshow doesn't include captions or file names, but it lets you navigate inside an album. The slideshow also works for Picasa Web's search results and it shows the images in full-screen. __

Google Docs all new look and performence great

www.youthsprouts.blogspot.com Google Docs replaced the tabbed interface with a traditional menu. The File menu looks cleaner and integrates the revision history, the Edit includes some of the options that are missing from the toolbar (cut/copy/paste) and also the HTML code editor. It's amazing to see that Find & Replace is still in alpha and doesn't work as advertised. The Insert menu has the same features as the homonymous tab, Format replaces the Styles dropdown, while Tools lets you select the document's language, check the spelling and read stats about the document. The Table menu was previously available as a contextual menu for tables and there's a new Share drop-down that integrates the options to share a page, publish it on the web and preview it. Google Docs includes all the menus from Microsoft Word 2003, except for View, Window and Help, but there's enough room to add more menus in the future. The team's blog explains the changes by invoking a user study, but the truth is that most people are used to Microsoft Office's classic interface:

A while ago, our Docs User Research team worked on a "card-sort" study in which we disconnected all features in the application from the places we had put them in the UI, and asked some people what the labels and icons meant to them, and how they would group the concepts they represented. One of the things we found was that names such as File, Edit, Format, and Tools resonated as "where you might look" for certain editing features. Check spelling? Seems to fit in a "Tools" group to many people. Find and replace? People generally look for that in an "Edit" group.

These updates are only for the word processing application, as Google Spreadsheets and Presently continue to use the old interface. Having an unified interface and a set of features that work consistently in all the three applications should be a priority for Google. __

Google Tests Video Ads Alongside Search Results

www.youthsprouts.blogspot.com We found out that Google intends to test video ads next to search results and now we can finally see some examples. Digital Inspiration spotted an AT&T ad targeted to the query [phone], but there's also an Intel ad when you search for [laptop]. Google uses plusboxes to show that there's a video ad that complements the text and labels them with messages like: "watch commercial", "watch demonstration", "watch The video ad is triggered only after you click on the message and it's a small 160x140 video that uses the Google Video player. The ads are very short (around 30 seconds) and they end by displaying a clickable URL to the landing page. Google uses the same visual elements as for the search results and user are already used to previewing YouTube videos by clicking on the small plus sign bellow the snippets. Unlike the video search results, Google doesn't include thumbnails next to video ads, but this may change in the future. Overall, the video ads from Google's search results aren't annoying, they must be explicitly selected and they offer more details that couldn't be included in the short text ad. __