Google Local Business Results in Australia
A month ago I noticed local business results appearing in Google Australia. I’ve been keeping a close eye on it and doing some analysis of the results to get a feel for when these results are coming up and clues to how they are ranked. It’s still unpredictable. For the same industry type the local business results appear for some locations and not others. What you see one day is often different from the next.
I saw local business results for a regional area as opposed to one postcode for the first time yesterday. The area was “Sunshine Coast” and for a variety of business types.
The first three results are clearly very advantageous for businesses. It usually means a spot right at the top of the organic listings with the added advantage of information such as the business phone number on display on the first page and more information such as reviews and images one click away.
Businesses that have detailed, consistent information in a variety of places are given prominence. Information types consist of an overview, details, reviews, photos and web pages. In all the examples I looked at, businesses that have a spread of information across these data types did the best. So businesses that have listings in several of the sources used by Google and also have photos and reviews are ranked highly.
Common reasons for not being present at all in the local business results are:
- The business details are not included in Google Maps Australia. The listings in Google Maps are currently provided by Truelocal so this generally means that the business isn’t listed in Truelocal.
- The business is in Truelocal but the business category is incorrect or the business isn’t listed in all relevant categories.
- There are inconsistencies with the business name and/or the address across multiple sources
I spoke with Truelocal today and was told that they have a data team currently cleaning up the categories and fixing errors. Individual businesses can call and get their listings updated and corrected where necessary. Businesses can also put their details into Google Maps Australia but there is a verification process and a 4 week time span to see the full details.
Posted in SEO, Universal Search
September 17th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Hi Christine, yes everything is changing and it’s hard to know what works yet. My focus is accommodation and I see Google has pulled a lot of their content from ATDW (Australia Tourism Data Warehouse).
I’m pushing all my customers to get their state tourism listings updated and make sure they have the locations correct. This seems to be a better broad spectrum marketing tool than True Local as it goes out to many travel speific websites.
My current issue is whether I should use the spreadsheet approach to add and update listings. I’ve got about 400 unique accommodation businesses that work with and it would be very cool to upload them all in one hit, but I don’t know how it will go with verification. I’ve updated listings on a one by one basis and Google wants to send a verifivation key to each location. How would that work with a mass update?
I’m also toying with the idea of creating a My Map with a range of properties. Have you found this to add value? Looking at Google Earth, this looks like it could be useful along with adding content like picture for Picassa. Google Earth is already one of the to 5 travel websites and its not a website.
Swissotels uses a kml file to create a custom mash up that loads into Google Earth. Is this a direction to pursue.
http://www.swissotel.com/destinations/index.htm
I’m really keen to learn more on this topic and appreciate all your work.
Thanks, Mark
September 17th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Hi Mark,
Thanks very much for the comment. You’ve mentioned a few interesting things so give me a bit of time and I’ll get back to you (busy day today).
I’m pushing ATDW as well.
September 20th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Great article, and I can confirm that I had a call from localsearch yesterday to update our listings. What was interesting was I had been disappointed with their results on a mobile phone the day before.
Also saw the comments from Mark.
To be honest I wouldn’t use Google Earth if I was you. Use maps instead. Reason is that Earth is a download which people might not want. Maps is browser based and can be accessed by any PC, or a mobile phone. You can great custom maps, add images etc in the your map feature. There are some examples that take you through this too.
As you have a large number of sites to upload, try using Blipstar (www.blipstar.com). We used it to create a map of nearly 1000 wholesalers (http://www.electrical-wholesaler.com.au/ please excuse the cheesey front page, what can I say, but that’s our market). The base version is free, but if you pay the developer a nominal amount he will let you host it on your own site as we do. What blipstar allows you to do is upload a spreadsheet of address data, comments etc, It then geocodes them for use in maps. If you host it with them that’s all there is to it. If you host yourself you download some XML and use that as the data for your version. Added side benefit is that the XML contains all the details, including the geocode info, so that if in the future you want to look at your own, you have all the positional information already.
Anyway the whole Blipstar process takes about 5 minutes and you end up with a very usable map. We then split up ours into sections too so that you can search widely, or narrow down to a specific region. You could look at star ratings, or hotel groups, or even proximity to certain things for example.
Anyway hope this helps. I had better get on with some work now!
Simon
September 20th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Does anyone know if a (paid) priority listing with Truelocal will provide a better positioning with Google’s Local Business results?
September 20th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Simon - thanks for the detailed comment and useful info.
Gordon - I’ve looked into this and my conclusions are that a priority listing doesn’t seem to make a difference to the positioning for a particular keyword. What I mean by this is that a search for “mooloolaba accommodation†will have all results from the accommodation category and priority listings don’t seem to be given a preferential position in Google.
However, a priority listing lets you choose 3 categories so if more than one category is very relevant for your business then it will make a difference. So if you want to show up for “Mooloolaba resorts†as well as “Mooloolaba accommodation†then you need to be in both categories.
To muddy the waters a bit, there are many examples of basic listings in more than one category in truelocal but these seem to be duplicate entries – the details have been added more than once rather than multiple categories chosen for one listing. I assume that truelocal will attempt to clean this up.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Hi Christine.
I was wondering what your experience is with trying to change business names of an existing Google Local Business listing. I am ranking ok in local on search terms that are included in my business name, but am not ranking for searches on words that are NOT included in my business name.
By Business Name i mean the name listed as the header line by Google Local which i provided when i set up the listing. I noticed some people have provided keyword driven titles to their business listing rather than their actual business name and this works in their favour.
Do you think Google would penalise a business for changing its title line?
August 7th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Hi Christine,
I gave that priority listing with Truelocal quite few months workout in reliance of what they said they could do in the way of clickthroughs for a florist website I am developing.
Bad bad mistake, my complaints against TrueLocal include:
• Misleading or Deceptive Conduct
• Unauthorised Credit Card Charging
• Appalling Service
• Waste of Money
It all ended up on report at:
http://www.fair-trading.com.au/reports/true-local.html