Google introduces local search results
18 March 2004
Google Inc has unveiled a new local search results service.
The search giant's new product, Google Local, integrates local search results into Google.com, enabling users to find relevant local information with neighbourhood business listings, maps, directions, and useful web pages.
The new algorithmic formulas unveiled yesterday are expected to make Google more money by opening up advertising to small businesses.
Google Local responds to search requests that include a postcode or a city's name and Google claims that geographic queries are now more likely to generate phone numbers and specific addresses on its main results page.
In many cases, Google will display an icon of a compass that can open another page containing a detailed map and directions to a location. The company has also launched a new gateway - local.google.com - for the new service.
"Google's goal is to connect searchers with the information they need whether it's halfway around the world or in their neighbourhood," said company co-founder Sergey Brin. "Google Local combines a wide array of sources including Google's more than 4 billion web page index, to produce the deepest local search."
Last week, Yahoo Inc introduced its own local tool, called SmartView, and Verizon Communications Inc recently added more useful local results to its SuperPages.com site.
Apply for your free web assessment - get a complete health check and optimisation action plan from Weboptimiser, the experts.
Related news
|
|
Leading brand search engine marketing since 1996
Founded in 1996 as an SEO company, Weboptimiser is today one of the Internet marketing sector's best-known and most respected search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) search engine marketing companies.
With a unique portfolio of brand-friendly services, including usability, contextual advertising and web analytics, a pioneering methodology that covers all 4 stages of interaction between a web site and its visitors, we make our clients sites faster, smarter, busier and more profitable.
