Google local search results adds business reviews

Google last Thursday introduced upgrades to Google Local search. In addition to the new Google map, which could be expected, Google has incorporated reviews. Unlike Yahoo and Amazon’s A9, users cannot submit reviews on the spot. Google crawls the web for other Web sites and blogs which already provide info, including reviews, for the businesses it pulls up in its local search. These reviews may be more valuable overtime as there will be no ‘hidden agenda’ reviews, good or bad.

By the way, local search will become a huge deal for lawyers and law firms, both small and large, so you should be paying attention to this stuff folks. In the case of the reviews you better make darn sure your blog or Web site is optimized to show up at the top of the referenced reviews I explain below.

I tried the local search for Seattle bankruptcy lawyer. Pulled up in first few entries, as shown below, some law firms in addition to directories. You will see “references” as a link next to the listing. Those references are sites referring to the particular search result. The law firm’s own Web site will be included as well as others.

Not sure how many users will use this today, but I would not bet against Google pulling this local search thing off within the next year. There is a lot of money in selling sponsored links for local searches. Google makes its money selling sponsored links.

By the way, did not find any lawyers.com lawyer Web sites anywhere in the early search results in this local search. Looks like lawyers.com’s search engine optimization efforts for their lawyer home pages and premium law firm sites continue to fail.

Source: John Battelle’s Searchblog