During the last year, when Google announced that its social networking service, Google + would be usable by businesses, there was a lot of speculations about how this would affect Google’s main product: the search results. We all know how the Google search engine works, at least the basics. First, you have the “natural” search results, where the page rank is based on Google’s algorithm in determining how high a website would rank in search results. Then, we have the paid search ads, or Google’s Adwords service.
Google has, however, made changes to how local businesses show up in search results. First, they altered the way search results are displayed, so that businesses that are local to the user would have their websites appear higher in search results when the searcher was from their local area. Then there is Google Places, which is a kind of directory for local businesses. It worked relatively well and had one major advantage: listings were completely free.
But on May 31st, all the Google Places listings have been replaced instead by Google + local pages. This change is automatic and has affected 80 million pages on Google Places.
There are also a few other changes that were made related to this: a “local” tab now appears in the main Google + interface, allowing users to instantly find local businesses while they’re browsing the social network. Google has taken over Zagat and integrated their local business reviews in the Google + Local service. While Google Places had reviews and ratings of businesses, they weren’t nearly as complete as they should have been. In fact, even some relatively popular businesses just had a dozen or so reviews, even though they have thousands of customers each month. The traditional search results aren’t the only place where Google has integrated Google + local pages. In fact, they will appear in search results on Google Mobile Search and in Google Maps as well.
There are a few reasons that could be cited for this change in the way Google operates when it comes to local business search. It has been said that Google hoped to make their Places platform a complete interactive service where local merchants and customers would interact and communicate with each other. However, this didn’t fully happen as they had planned. A big reason was the limitations of the Google Places platform, that wasn’t as “social” as it should have been. Google + Local Pages gives merchants the ability to present a more complete picture of their business and also allows their customers to have more social interaction. When a user is logged into Google +, for example, they will see the reviews and recommendations made by friends before seeing other information. This encourages users to create more content on the platform, by interacting with merchants such as when they ask questions or write a review of the products and services they’ve received from them.