SmallBusinessNewz

Google Gets Ready to Give the Whole U.S. Tag Advertising

Back in April, Google changed the Local business Center to Google Places, while also introducing some new features. Among those changes was the addition of Google's tag advertising.

Get the Most Out of Your Google Places Listing

About a week ago, Google announced that it had changed the name of the Google Local Business Center to Google Places. Along with that, however, they announced a good deal of new features that businesses should be aware of. If you are not, they include: service areas, advertising with tags, business photo shoots, customized QR codes, and more favorite places.

The Online Yellow Pages Undergo Some Changes

Is YellowPages.com a significant source of business for you? If so, you may be interested to know that the site has been rebranded today as YP.com, with what AT&T Interactive calls its next-gen local search experience.

Advertise.com Announces Local Search Platform

Today, Advertise.com announced they will be offering fully managed local search marketing on the web's large search engines. They say this will broaden local advertisers' opportunities and deliver a targeted audience. Advertise.com swill supply a solution to fix problems like:1. how to increase exposure 2. how to grow an existing business 3. how to manage online reviews  4. word of mouth with exposure across Google and Yahoo

Local Business Listings With Bing

When WebProNews headed to SMX West in Santa Clara, they caught up with Mikko Ollila, Senior Product Manager on Bing Local, to discuss a little bit about Bing's experience and intentions in local search.

Google Maps Now offered in 30 New African Countries

Google has added new Google Maps domains for 30 countries in Africa. This means that users in these countries will be able to use Google Maps to find local businesses. In the U.S. and other places where such a feature has been available, it has been heavily used by consumers for this reason, and it should open up a great deal of opportunity for these countries.

More Businesses Get Shot at Getting Google's Barcode Stickers

Late last year, Google started sending brick and mortar businesses decals to put on their windows. These had barcodes that people could scan with their phones, which would bring up business listings. The businesses that received these were deemed "favorite places" by Google.

Google Putting Local Business Hours in Universal Search Results

Google continually makes enhancements to not just its search algorithm in general, but to local search elements. We have discussed quite a few of these recently, because frankly, Google seems to be doing a lot more with local search lately. To review, here are some other recently discussed topics related to local search, specifically through Google:

2 Less Obvious Things to Consider in Local Search

Mike Ramsey, founder of local search company Nifty Marketing, conducted an experiment to find out how many and which states Google shows local state-wide results for in its regular web search results pages (if you weren't aware, Google sometimes shows results spanning an entire state, rather than just a city).

Google Favorite Places Could Complicate the Local Search Game

A little over a month ago, Google announced that it was sending brick and mortar businesses decals to put on their windows, with barcodes that people can scan with their phones to bring up business listings. These were made available to the businesses Google deemed "favorite places". Over 10,000 businesses in the US got them right off the bat, and Google will most likely expand that number in the future.