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.

Meg, who writes the excellent blog Dipping into the blogpond left a comment on my post about Google local search in Australia.

She talks about searching for local content but getting US results. The example she gives is “palmdale cemetery”. Instead of getting information about palmdale cemetery located in NSW, Australia, the local listings are for cemeteries in Palmdale, California.

I had a look at this particular example. I could find some online references to Palmdale Cemetery, NSW but couldn’t find a Google Maps listing or a website.

That doesn’t alter the fact that the Californian results displayed as “local business results” are not relevant for someone searching in Google Australia from an Australian location.

I guess we’ll see a few more changes to local search and a lot more discussion on it. This is a good post from Bill Slawski. It mentions some of the difficulties with contact information including what to display and when.

The big news this week is that Google is rolling out Universal Search. Danny Sullivan describes it as “the most radical change to its search results ever”.

So what is it? This is what I can gather after reading a few different blog reports:

1. Google has different indexes for different types of data such as web pages, images, video, blogs, news etc. Currently when you do a search you mostly get web pages and occasionally images depending on the query. When Universal Search is rolled out, results will be drawn from all of these media types and blended together on the main results page. This will depend on the search query and how relevant Google determines particular data types to be. So for some queries you might still get a list of web pages. For others there will be a mix of web, video, images etc.
2. These results have always been available from a navigation menu on the Google search page. What is new is that the user won’t have to specifically request different types of results by clicking on the navigation links. Google will present a selection of results on one page depending on what is considered most relevant for the query.
3. The searcher can still have an input to this. So, if for example “video” wasn’t initially included as a relevant data type, the searcher can opt to include videos in the search.

The impact from an SEO viewpoint:

1. Searchers will be much more aware of the full range of media options whereas previously they’ve been somewhat hidden from the average person who doesn’t explore the nav menu. Consequently, there will be much more incentive to optimise for video, image, news etc if these results are going to have far greater prominence. How to optimise is going to be important and early players in this game will have an advantage.
2. The competition for page one spots for web pages will be greater. For some search queries there may only be 5 or 6 spots available.

The impact in Australia?:

1. There might be a delay in the rollout of Universal Search here. I haven’t seen any specific mention of timelines for specific countries so we may see it at the same time as users in the US or we may get to see the impact there before it comes into play here.
2. There are opportunities for people who take advantage of the changes early on. I haven’t paid that much attention to the other data types so far but I searched in “video” for a popular, competitive keyword relevant to one of my clients. There was only one result so if that was blended into the main search page the impact would be noticeable.

The impact on paid search?:

1. Will it make paid search more desirable? I’m not sure whether they have to be looked at as two separate things entirely or whether you take the attitude that there are 20 slots on the page and it might be easier to pay for an ad than optimise for video. I don’t know yet.
2. Also, I’m wondering how users will react to these changes. Presumably, the usability tests have been done but if users find the organic results less relevant rather than more relevant then I think they are more likely to look to the paid ads to find what they want.

Any thoughts?