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Archive for the ‘Local Search Marketing’ Category

Event Highlights (Afternoon Session)

• Aaron Weiche opens the event with some Mitch Hedberg
• Mike Blumenthal inherits the name “Professor Maps” on Twitter.  Seconds later the professor blows some minds with his demo of Google 411 .  Ed Reese promptly followed with the best tweet of the event:

• An attendee asks Google’s Jeral Poskey about the process for having businesses like domestic abuse shelters removed from Google Maps.  Within a couple hours a tweet from @mapsguide advises the #LocalU crowd via Twitter that the shelter in question had been removed from Google Maps.

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I posted earlier today about the variety of service area options in Google Places and wanted to follow up with a few more observations I came across while tinkering.  It relates to a questions I raised in regards to whether or not it is more advantageous to set a service area radius or to choose “serviceable cities” when inputting your settings in the service area options.

Observation #1

The farthest away one can set their service area radius  is 625 miles.  I have tried this under a few different business listings across a couple different industries and was unable to find any fluctuation here.

Observation #2

It seems to be pretty “wide open” if you decide to list your areas served. The below image displays a service area map in which over 20 locations around the United States were selected.



It’s interesting that there is an ability to go well beyond this 625 mile limit set by the service radius option (in fact, for the hell of it I played around with international cities – and they were also included on my map) – my gut says trying to extend beyond this 625 mile listing is probably a waste of time.

Since Google added the ability for businesses to add a service area option to the map on their Place Page, there have been many questions about whether or not they are more effective than the traditional options.  Along with this, many (all) people are also wondering how this update may translate into additional visibility for the Place Pages of their businesses.

Unfortunately I don’t have the time or data to make any claims – but there are a few observations worth noting.   The below images offer a breakdown of the multiple service area options available to users:

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This past Thursday, May 6th I noticed the inclusion of 2 KML files and a custom Google Map in the universal search results for my name. I’m not sure of the exact date this change took place, but it seems to have been on either last Wednesday or Thursday.

There are currently 2 KML files on page one and a custom Google Map on page two. As you will see on the image below, the first KML file is hosted on justinblase.com and the second KML file is from a Google custom map I created.   Read more...