Google has added another new element to search results recently (to me anyway) by including phone number results for a name search + location.

Notice the links to a map next to each result.  These are currently leading to the address associated with that phone number in Google Maps.

I have also noticed these phone book results being displayed in conjunction with the new authority one boxes… which I hope to write about shortly (tonight hopefully).

What does this mean?  I don’t know.

It could be nothing…  it could be another signal indicating the importance of information “lining up” before it is gets SERP visibility… or it may be the first glimpse of the slow death of Internet Yellow Pages sites.

(I’m not calling that one… but I figured I would document it so I could throw out a big “I told you so” in a few years if that really happens.)

On a recent trip to Cub Foods with my wife – my 4 year old daughter asked to take a few pictures with mommy’s Droid.  I plucked the best of the bunch and have them for display below.

Watch out breakfast cereal and fruit snack industry – kids might be too busy watching Elmo on YouTube to run around like wild animals in the sugary treats aisle.

*note – I am aware the CSS is off in the Flickr gallery – no time to tinker tonight

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.
• Ed Reese reminds us that “ask wife” is truly a legitimate part of many sales funnels (and had some killer artwork)
• Matt McGee had a good presentation on how to establish trust online
• Mary Bowling discussed how good organic SEO is vital to good local SEO

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:

Option 1 – No service area chosen

If a service area is not chosen, there is no change to the display of the map, as shown below.

Option 2 – Service area chosen, choosing to show business address on map listing

If the service area option is chosen, and a user chooses to continue showing their business address, the only difference to the map is a circle relative to the”Distance from one location” options chosen.

Option 3 – Service area chosen, choosing to hide business address on maps listing

If the service area option is chosen, and a user chooses to hide their address on a map listing, the only difference to the display for “unhidden” addresses is the difference of the placemark shape changing from the traditional teardrop to a circle.

Option 4 – Service area chosen, list of areas served provided

If the service area option is chosen and the user opts for choosing cities to service rather than the default radius option, the service area now becomes highlighted by a geometric shape created out of “connecting the dots” on the perimeter.

These new views prompt a few questions from me:

• Am I shooting myself in the foot by hiding my address?  Google certainly recognizes this and displays it differently on maps… what kind of impact will this have?

• What is the benefit of choosing “serviceable cities” vs. setting a radius in miles?

• How far should my serviceability radius span if I don’t need to be there physically?

EDIT:  See my post a few hours later regarding some limitations of the service area feature: Google Local Service Area Limitations

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.

On the second page of the search results there is a Google Maps result for the custom map I created. I am curious to see if this is a test that will be ending shortly or if we can expect to continue to see maps results (outside of the traditional 7,3, & 1 pack) within Google SERPS.

Page One

Page Two

What You’ll Need:

• Handheld device operating on the Android platform
• Flickr Account
• A site or blog using Wordpress
• XML Google Maps Plugin For Wordpress

Initial Setup Time – Approximately 15 minutes

Have you ever wanted to snap a photo, have it automatically geotagged and added to an embedded map on your site with one click?  If you’re anything like me, the thought of something this awesome is probably causing you to salivate.

A few days ago I was pondering how this could be done and within about 30 minutes of playing with my wife’s Droid Eris (yep, I’m still rocking an EnV 2) and cruising the plugins section over at Wordpress.org – I had found my answer. (a live example of this can be found on my custom photo maps page)

Step 1.

Open your camera application on your Droid.  Click “menu” and choose “settings”. Make sure the “Geo-tag photos” option is set to “on”.  Once you have enabled geotagging, snap a quick picture and save it.

Step 2.

Create a Flickr account (here).  If you already have an account with Flickr, log in.  Once you are logged into your active flickr account, open the drop down menu under “You” and choose “Your account”.

On the policy & permissions page, scroll down towards the bottom of the page and ensure that the “import EXIF location data” setting is set to “Yes” and make sure the “Who will be able to see your stuff on a map” is set to “Anyone”.

Step 3.

Once these settings are in place, it’s time head back to your camera, choose the image you just took, then choose the option to share.  Under these options, choose Flickr.  The first time you access Flickr from your Droid you will be required to authenticate your login (which is easy, it just takes a minute or 2) but every time in the future you want to upload there will be no login required.

Once you have uploaded your image, if you go back to Flickr you will see the image in your photostream.  The last thing we need to do with Flickr is to scroll down to the bottom of your photostream page, right mouse click over the link titled “KML” and choose “copy link location” (in Firefox – if you are using Internet Explorer, choose the “copy shortcut” option).  Once this is copied, paste it into a plank .txt document or somewhere that you can keep track of until it is needed.

Step 4.

Now that we have set everything up on the Flickr side, all that is left is installing the XML Google Maps plugin.  To install this plugin, go here to grab the plugin (or log into the WP Admin section of your site and upload it there if you want to save some time).  For questions regarding plugin installation, please checkout the Wordpress documentation regarding the topic here.

Once the plugin has been installed, head to plugin settings page and configure the display options as you prefer.  (Note, you will need a Google Maps API key for this plugin to work, you can get one here – Google Maps API Key.

Once you have configured your plugin settings the way you want them, head to the post or page you want your map in, enter this line of code :

Save your post / page and you’re all set!

Now, next time you snap a photo with your droid (as long as you don’t disable the geotagging option in your Droid) – simply choose the share by flickr option, click upload and you’re set!  Your existing custom map will be updated with your new image, in the exact location on the map that it was taken!

Nothing in the history of the web has been more customized and mashed up than Google Maps. Small businesses have been taking advantage of these mashups for a few years in order to help attract clients by promoting their proximity to them, providing driving directions and much more.

Whether you are looking for a clever way to present your business to prospective clients or are looking to optimize your site for current local search engine algorithms by increasing your exposure in online maps, the following 5 Google Maps mashups will meet your meets regardless of your motive.

umapper.com

platial.com

wikimapia.org

wayfaring.com

mapbuilder.net

One of the reasons I choose to use Wordpress for nearly every site project I am involved with is the fact that there are literally thousands of free plugins available to help enhance the functionality and findability of sites.

The three plugins highlighted below have saved me loads of time in geocoding  elements of my sites.

1. Geotag

   This plugin adds an additional window to your admin panel providing you the ability to geotag every post or page of your site as well as display an embedded map of a KML or KMZ file, or a map of the geodata of all of your posts or images on your site.

   To use this plugin, you simply enter your address, longitude and latitude coordinates, or drag a placemark to your location on the embedded map within the admin panel and you are all set.  Check the source code of this page if you are curious, you will see I teleported to Timbuktu to write this post.

2. Micro Anywhere

   The Micro Anywhere plugin allows Wordpress to add microformatted data to any post or page.  This allows for the addition of hCalendar data for an upcoming event or hCard data for a company or person’s name, address, geo coordinates,  website URL, phone number, and more.

3. GeoTagPhoto

   The GeoTagPhoto is one of my favorites.  This plugin allows for geotagged photos on your site to automatically link to a Google map.  Any photo on your site that has been geotagged will automatically have a small icon in the corner of the image that users may click to view a Google map with a placemark at the exact location the image was taken.

These last 3 days Google has done a lot to help confirm what most search marketers have been thinking for a long time, local marketing seems to be a large part of the future of Google (which in turn makes it a top priority for all who want to continue to succeed in search marketing).

This all really comes as no surprise to most folks, but they have really opened the gates this week, further cementing the fact that local marketing is here to stay.

Let’s take a quick look at how the last few days played over on the Google Local Places front:

• Tuesday, April 20th Google Announces that they are officially changing the name of the Google Local Business Center to Google Places.  Place pages were launched this past September and have become a very important part of the local marketing strategies of businesses large and small.Along with the  name change, Google also officially announced service areas.

  These have been around for a few weeks, but Google decided to make it official on Tuesday – most likely because it was noted to be rather buggy for the first week or so.  These service areas allow business owners to specify a geographic region for which they will travel to or conduct business in.  This should help many home based businesses and services that don’t necessarily depend on an office location like taxi services and tow trucks.

  

  Another part of National Weed Day at Google included an expansion They expanded the cities in which businesses can take part in the paid/sponsored local search listings dubbed “Tags“.  To date the following cities are able to participate: Austin, Atlanta,  Washington, D.C. , Houston and San Jose, CA.   They also announced that within a few weeks they will be introducing Tags in Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder and San Francisco.
  

  
  In addition to all of this they announced Business Photo Shoots, customized QR codes through the Google Places dashboard and the rollout of another round of Favorite Places window decals.

• Wednesday, April 21stOn Wednesday, the Big G announced the integration of Google Buzz with Google Maps.  To enable it, the next time you are viewing a Google Map, select “Buzz” from the “more” menu in the top-right corner of the map.  This will allow a new layer to appear on the map displaying the geolocation of “buzzes”.  Awesome.
• Thursday, April 22ndThursday Google announced that they have added a search suggestion function to the search box on Google maps.  This operates essentially the same way as the suggestions that populate in the drop down box on a standard Google search do.  This may provide a few opportunities for clever marketers

Let’s see what Friday brings!