Google Places recently enabled its users to easily access all content related to their location: ratings and reviews of those particular places.

When users visit their Google Places profile, they will see a link where they can find all their ratings and reviews. The feed is private by default, but users are free to share it if they want.

Google Places also made it possible for users to write reviews and put ratings on Google the places they’ve stumbled upon, whether in real life or on the web. To do this, users should follow these simple steps:

1. Copy the URL of the location you want to rate or review.

2. On the Google Places search box, paste the URL you copied. Google will display location cards that match the feed.

3. You can click on the stars at the bottom of the box to rate place.

4. After rating, a link will appear that says “Write A Review.” Click on the link if you want to write some tips and insights about the place.

Indeed, users can now easily access and/or share their two cents’ on their favorite (or least favorite) locations in just a few clicks, be it around their neighborhood or overseas. As rating apps become more widespread, it becomes imperative that a business perform well. Every misstep can be read by thousands of potential customers and each satisfied customer could send those same thousands to your door.

The post Google Places: Reviews And Ratings Are A Few Clicks Away appeared first on LocalGiant.

Google Earth and Google Maps are two ways for users from all over the world to access accurate data and view the world as it is right now. They are fast, functional and user friendly to ensure everyone, young and old has the opportunity to learn and enjoy from the simple touch of a button. In order to provide the best service possible for their 100 million+ users worldwide, Google has developed an incredibly powerful infrastructure that can process petabytes of data to deliver information instantly.

With such a powerful process in hand, Google has drawn the attention of many governments and even businesses who would like to access this infrastructure to better manage their geospatial data. Here is where Google Earth Builder comes in. Not only will users be able to process geospatial data in a streamlined manner from Google’s own cloud technology but also build their own personal maps, view and securely share these maps with anyone, anywhere and even save on time, management and server cost.

This is just the beginning; the ultimate goal is to slowly provide more of the geo infrastructure to everyone in order to perform tasks simply and easily in the cloud through Google Earth Builder. With the expected launch in Q3, millions are anticipating this newly opened door to streamline business processes and shape a new world of business both online and offline.

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She said: ” We’re also seeing Click-to-Call taking off with more than half a million advertisers using these features.”. Isn’t incredible that over 500,000 companies are advertising directly to a mobile device through Google’s Click-to-Call option. The app does not have a PC equivalent, so this could be an area to explore to increase your company’s exposure to search engines and potential customers.

Some advertisers are creating separate ads for the Click-to-Call program. It seems to be effective. Google’s third quarter of 2010 earnings hinted at a ”billion dollar run-rate” in mobile. Additionally, Product Senior V.P. Jonathan Rosenberg said, on the 4th quarter of 2010 earnings sheet that, ”Click-to-Call ads are generating millions of calls every month”.

With millions of calls generated through the app every month, it seems that creating an ad targeted directly for it would only make sense. Depending on the ROI, Google may have hit another home run.

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URLs with Generic Content

This can be really bad for local directory sites. Many of them contain thousands of urls with generic content. Many have geo-specific categories like ”best L.A nightclubs”. Since many of these directory sites have the same content and a stated goal of Panda is to weed out generic content, many of these sites have dropped to catastrophically low rankings.

Website Not User Friendly

The Panda algorithm takes into account the user’s experience on your site. This could refer to many factors: page speed, ad density, user-interface design, average time on site, etc. If your site has a cluttered design, too many ads, and/or a high bounce rates, you will suffer in the rankings unless all of your competitors have the same issues.

Social Media

A social media strategy was a great boost prior to Panda, now it is a necessity. All major search engines now incorporate social media signals into the ranking systems.

Brand Recognition

For over a year now Google has been making a lot of noise about showing preference through its algorithm. The problem with most local companies and resellers is that they don’t have a brand or one that is not well developed. To Google a brand is recognized as links, mentions on third party authoritative sites, regular queries for your brand name, and social activity around your brand name among other factors. If no one is talking about your brand, it is very unlikely to be highly ranked.

Google’s Panda has shaken things up quite a bit in the page rankings. Some sites have dropped from the first page to utter irrelevance. You may need to hire a company that fully understands the algorithms nuances in order to recoup your ranking.

The post 4 Items Taken Into Account By Google Panda appeared first on LocalGiant.

Now enters Google. 2011 introduces their most recent evolution called the “Panda” or “Farmer” that promises to weed out low quality and shallow sites that simply wastes the viewer’s time. The new algorithm retains in their high ranks sites that sets the more modern SEO principle of mainly having original and valuable content that the audience can use, refer to or share and “buzz”. This is now applied to all English language queries worldwide and already had a measured 12% impact or effect on the searches made. This is of course continuously subject to updates for a more fine-tuned delivery of quality sites for every query.

Google has released a set of guidelines for three main areas of design and content, technical and with a special emphasis on quality guidelines that are to be followed so that a site wouldn’t be penalized or eventually blocked from being searched on Google. These guidelines boil down to an ideal site that contains good and original, if not outstanding content that is aimed for the user.

A company’s goal should therefore shift from attracting search traffic to that of providing a site whose composition should be well orchestrated and contains enough quality content that is valuable and relevant for it to be “morally” acceptable to Google standards and their new “high quality sites algorithm” as they call it.

The post Site Visibility and the Wisdom Behind What Google Says appeared first on LocalGiant.

Fortunately, early this month, the story changed making the local businesses back on track. The new changes are as follows:

1) Multi listing for multi location businesses.
2) Organic webpage placement does not affect the rankings.

So what does this new change do for local businesses? A study shows that hybrid results are similar to the Google Maps first page results, but the top search results differ in their rankings. The bias effect of the organic-like algorithm is eliminated; instead the conventional way of ranking Maps search results is back. This update favors the local businesses, as their chances to be on the top lists increases.

This update is in accordance with the Google Panda search algorithm update. Officially it has no name yet, thus temporarily, we can call this as the “Google Local Panda update” (or LP).

Have you been doing searches recently and observed this change?

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The iPhone currently uses a Google Maps application that has a certain level of success, but is less impressive than it’s Android counterpart. Apple’s mapping assets were boosted with the acquisition of Google Maps’ main rival Placebase back in 2009 as well as Poly 9 in 2010. These actions were in conjunction with the recruitment and hiring of new personnel for their team.

Google Maps carries sponsored links and Apple wants a piece of that pie as well. Does this spell doom for Google Maps as the default
mapping provider for the iPhone? Maybe, but this might push Google to finally create Google Maps Navigation for the iOS platform or the voice guided GPS navigation system application, which is currently only seen in Android devices.

It will be interesting to see how Apple will come up a mapping product that will illustrate their definition of what a mapping experience is. If they succeed in doing so, then it’s probably “asta la vista” for Google Maps as the default application in the iOS.

The post Apple Poised to Develop It’s Own Mapping System for the iOS appeared first on LocalGiant.