I've just noticed that G is displaying "local" results in the UK - as far as I can gather it went live yesterday. Can anyone confirm exactly when it went live?
Yesterday Shawn posted that maps.google.co.uk is live as well. It doesn't seem to be as powerful as the .com yet. Many obvious things it won't find. I think it went live yesterday or Monday.
how do you mean showing local results. Do you mean - when you go to .com it auto directs to .co.uk. G's been doing that for about a month.
http://local.google.co.uk/ http://maps.google.co.uk/ ... is what we're on about. http://local.google.co.uk/local?sc=1&hl=en&q=pizza&near=chelsea&btnG=Google+Search&rl=1
It'd be interesting to know how that works. Under location, it even has the name of my town as a suggestion.
I mean that when you search for something in a place the number one result is Google's own result: Try: http://www.google.co.uk/search?sour...-8&rls=GGLC,GGLC:1970-01,GGLC:en&q=hotel+bath and you will see what I mean.
Personally, I feel this is extremely important news for the UK.. Does anyone have any specific strategies for making sure you list well?
Make sure you are in a relevant Yell section. And make sure you mention your contact details and and local geographical names on most of your pages. Include some local towns, areas etc.
And if its a question of a ranking issue - its early days, but only 3 results.. I obviously want to be the top of the 3 if possible (I understand the distance issue) But for example: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=car+london&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 Does this mean i should move my business address to "number 1 London".
No idea how the ranking is done. Probably a combo of normal ranking algo's + geographical location. Maybe they even fetch the visitor's IP and reference it to a geolocation and sort the results accordingly. Who knows...
It looks like they are ranked by distance from some "center" point so if you want to be top you'll need to relocate to the center.
I think they need to get their maps sorted out as we own a Guest House in Aberdeen on a Street that has about 10 Guest Houses yet the map shows them all on the wrong side of the street and the numbers are running the wrong way down the street a bit like a double mirror image of how it should be!