Guest contributor Matt Beswick on the past and future evolution of Google’s localized search offerings.
In the hyper-competitive world of search, no lead remains insurmountable for very long. Even though Google currently dominates the market by a wide margin, there are plenty of rivals vying for the top spot.
For the longest time, the major search engines treated all queries equally in that they didn’t take into account the location of the searcher when evaluating a keyword phrase. Today, that’s no longer the case.
Nowadays, local business is the biggest growth sector when it comes to search and search-related advertising. The evolution of Google Places in recent years represents a growing trend towards the supremacy of local search data.
In the beginning…
Google Places grew from a desire to capitalise on the lucrative local search market and to deliver better results to normal users. Launched under the moniker “Google Local” in March of 2004, it began as a way for small businesses to help local customers find them in the real world. As a natural consequence of this early focus on location, the service morphed into an adjunct to Google Maps in 2006.
Google then launched Google Places on April 20, 2010, creating a sort of Geocities-like tool for businesses looking to flesh out their public profile.
Google Places’ run was ultimately a short one, ending with the birth of Google+ Local in mid-2012.
Great idea, average execution
While Google Places was a good start, there were frequent issues with the service. For one thing, the local search market evolved too quickly for Google Places to maintain its relevance for long without an overhaul.
In addition, it was plagued by problems like duplicate or inconsistent NAP data and rampant spam as illustrated by the locksmith debacle of 2011.
As with the Foursquare-esque Facebook Places, Google Places proved that achieving success in the local search arena is much harder than it looks. Clearly, Google needed to return to the drawing board and tweak their formula.
R.I.P. Google Places, long live Google+ Local
Though it was billed as a “Facebook killer,” Google+ was never really intended as a direct competitor to the reigning social media powerhouse. Rather, it was designed to build on the success of Google’s search advertising by incorporating social cues gradually.
Google integrates local results and user-generated reviews with raw data for a more nuanced end result. As of May 30, 2012, the merger of Google Places and Google+ into Google+ Local is a fait accompli. What began with the acquisition of Zagat ended with a more clear-cut reorganisation and consolidation of Google’s local search services.
Google+ Local moving forward
At the moment, Google is maintaining their search lead and Google+ Local should help them to cement their local dominance for the time being.
However, the top brass at the world’s most profitable and popular search engine are smart enough to realise that a competitive edge is often a fleeting thing. Competitors like Facebook would love nothing more than to wrench the local search market from Google’s clutches.
The only thing that can be said for sure is that social media data will become an ever more powerful indicator of value when getting ahead in local search in the future.
What it all means
When the average consumer goes bargain hunting online or researching service providers, they’re not just interested in the basic facts regarding a given business. They want to know how others feel about them as well. There’s wisdom in crowds, given a feedback sample size that’s large enough.
Local search queries currently number roughly 2 billion per month, which is a decent chunk of global search traffic. Expect that number to increase as more small businesses go online and get in the game. Compared to the available alternatives, Google+ Local is their best bet at the moment.
