Searching for “Toronto Lawyer” brings up the local 7-pack with Timothy’s World Coffee ranking towards the end at #5. To make matters worse, when you go on their place page, you’ll see a barrage of reviews for a Toronto based general physician “Dr. Daniel Wong” . Additionally, Timothy’s World Coffee is being categorized as a “General Practice Attorney” instead of coffee shop based categories.

This example clearly indicates the importance of owning your business listing in order to avoid such results. Being a verified owner not only allows you to have full control of the information that is represented on your Google profile page but also gives you added benefits such as local analytics and tracking for your local business listing.

• Category customization & spamming penalties
• Google One Box gains authority over the 3 & 10 pack
• Introduction of Google Place pages
• Sudden drop in local rankings of business listings

Let’s take a closer look at some of these concerns:

Custom Category Penalization

Google is now penalizing businesses for utilizing custom categories and geo targeted phrases in the category fields. The Local Business Center now demands at least one suggested category to be used while uploading business listings on the maps. In order to show up for more search related keywords, business owners choose to enter multiple keyword rich and geo targeted categories ignoring the strict guidelines provided by Google. In response, Google has penalized such listings by dropping their local map rankings drastically. However, not all businesses are paying the price for this change as yet. According to the conversation Mike Blumenthal had with Chris Silver Smith, Google is currently detecting such listings based on manual checks and running detection scripts to inspect all listings with geo targeted phrases. With Google now showing suggested and custom categories in regular map search and Google Places, it won’t be long until all spammy listings are penalized.

The Domination of Google One Box

Another interesting observation was the appearance of the Google One Box for several broad searches such as “Toronto Bankruptcy” or “Personal Injury Lawyer Calgary“. While fruitful for the business which has this authoritative positioning, others have left concerned messages on the Maps Help Forum. In some competitive Canadian markets, we are even seeing the 3 pack instead of the usual 10 listings. It is still unclear why Google is favoring only one or few businesses in a market of plenty.

The overall consensus is that it’s becoming more difficult for businesses to take advantage of this low hanging fruit. However, by following the basic guide to optimizing for Local SEO and engaging with your local community by attracting reviews to your business listing can help re-gain local positioning.

Sudden Drop in Local Rankings for Various Businesses

My twitter feed received numerous RT’s and replies to my tweet about observing a major drop in rankings for many businesses across Canada and US. Many regular dominators lost their top local positioning to other businesses. Upon researching further, I also noticed that unoptimized local listings gained prime positioning in the maps over the optimized ones. According to Mike Blumenthal’s pie chart on how to make your local profile 100% complete, businesses that have implemented some or most of the best practices are still behind in their rankings to business listings with little or no additional information.

As you can see in the example above, the first result for “Toronto Carpet Cleaning” shows an unoptimized local listing with no additional information about the business, no website or email address, photos, videos etc. The business which ranks number 9 in the 10 pack is better optimized with additional information, photos, citations and even has a user review.

This 10 pack used to show a different set of optimized local businesses as of yesterday but due to today’s sudden changes, search has shown a completely different set of results. In response, many businesses have posted their plea of help and concerns on the Maps Help Forum regarding their loss in local rankings.

Google is definitely making ranking factors more vague for Local SEO experts to understand and implement. It is also effecting the DIY business owners who largely depend on the traffic they recieve from Google maps. I would be interested in knowing your thoughts as a Local SEO or a business owner with regards to the recent update in Google’s local algorithm.

However, this has all changed now. With the new and improved LBC Dashboard, business owners can now see information about their listings in a way they haven’t been able to before. With the help of impression and view count graphs detailing the traffic trend month over month, which keywords drive that traffic to your business listing and where your potential customers are located, tracking progress of your local business listing is easier than ever before.

Note: Existing businesses on LBC will be able to track their local analytics dating back from May 1st 2009. No previous data for dates prior to that.

In addition, you are also able to view and track the completeness of your business profile with the help of a progress meter attached to your Dashboard. As I mentioned in my initial post, Local SEO Simplified, you want to be able to have as much information attached to your profile so you can stand out from other local shops across the street and gain authority in local positioning.

Unfortunately, this enhancement has not yet been introduced for the local businesses located in Canada. But don’t feel left out fellow Canadians! With Google recently correcting the phone verification anomaly for Canadian businesses, it is not much longer till we receive these new enhancements.

Here is a quick teaser before you go check out your own Local Business Centre Dashboard. Enjoy!

2 months ago, I was asked to write a guest blog post on the topic of local search by Ethan Bloch and Dan Martell of Flowtown, a small business consulting company based in San Francisco. I had initially met Dan Martell at Twestival Toronto and we got talking about the rising importance of Local SEO for small businesses. Shortly after our meet, Dan and Ethan were kind enough publish my article on Flowtown.com and I am re-posting my work to kick things off on my own blog.

More Online Searches Are Now Local

The importance of local search has increased dramatically since the launch of the local 10 pack in early 2008.

With local search statistics like:

• 35% of all online searches are local
• 61% of all local searches result in purchases
• 73% of online activity is related to local content

Deciding whether to optimize your small business for Local SEO should be a no-brainer.The following is a comprehensive guide on how to optimize your listing on Google’s Local Business Center:

1. Getting Started – Add a business location on Google by visiting the Google Local Business Center (GLBC).

2. Business Name – It’s not about who you are but what you do. The opportunity for any local small business to attract new customers lies in attracting people who are looking for what the business does rather than who they are. Before you could get away with having the type of your business present alongside your actual business name and location, but now Google has clarified the guidelines on business titles on map listings.

3. Telephone Number – Always provide a local telephone number. A local number oozes good customer service and an 800 oozes automated telephone systems and call center representatives.

4. Description – Having a brief description of your business and associated products or services is vital. Ensure that the main keywords for which you wish to be positioned for are included in this 200 character description and avoid copy/pasting in this field. Writing a unique and catchy business description will entice consumers to click through your listing.

5. Categories – Perhaps the most important section of your business listing. GLBC allows you up to 5 categories for your listing. The key to obtaining top rankings for your main keywords is to avoid using the auto suggest feature and actually list the main keywords + city in the fields.

6. Photos/Videos – Having business related photos such as your company logo or product shots can add value to your business profile. However, it is important to name your images such that they reflect the type of your business. Eg: Having your company logo image named as image001.jpeg will not add any context to the image. Instead name each relevant image in the format: city-keyword.jpeg.

Adding videos is another value-added feature to your business listing. Not only does it improve conversions, but it also helps your business rank better as it contributes to the completion of your profile.

7. Additional Information – GLBC allows you to add additional information such as your payment options, hours of operations etc. Following the same reasoning as mentioned above, the more complete your profile is, the better your local rankings will be.

8. Reviews – As local search is becoming increasingly social, user reviews are becoming extremely important in securing top rankings in the local 10 pack. A combination of having a complete business profile and enabling your business to be listed on various review based local search engines is the ideal mantra for optimizing your business for Local SEO. Some of the important U.S based local citations include Yelp, Superpages, InfoUSA but for a complete list, refer to David Mihm’s “The BCS of Local Search Engine Optimization” and Dev Basu’s “The Canadian Guide to Local SEO Citations”, for Canadian specific citation sources.