Ask Kalena

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Dear Kalena…

I’d like to target National as well as International Market for my Internet Business. Moreover I want to get ranked high in all data-centers of Google. I’ve already registered my website business with Google local business center. Now I’m in confusion that does Google consider my website for local market only as I’ve business listed in Google local business center? What if i’d like to get high rankings in all data centers of Google? Should i remove my business from Google local business center to get desired results? Please share your thoughts.

Thanks.
Steve

Hi Steve,

Simply having your business listed with Google Places (formerly known as the Google Local Business Center) will not limit the ability of your site to achieve good rankings in other parts of the U.S or internationally.  It will however make it easier for you to achieve local rankings and can significantly improve your local profile, traffic and sales.

Even without a Google Places listing You are naturally more likely to achieve higher rankings for local queries because :

1. there is probably going to be significantly less competiton and
2. Google tends to favour local providers (because people tend to favour local providers).

Unless your product/service is very specialised it is probably unlikley that you will achieve high rankings in ALL data centers, as one of the reasons these centers are in place is to provide customised results to meet different regional needs.  I doubt that you could expect to achieve high rankings for an English website in Japan for example.

To compete nationally you would generally need to have a more established site – preferably with national  content and links from other nation-wide authority websites.  To achieve consistently high rankings internationaly you would ideally have multiple sites in different countries – each targeting the specific needs of that country (keywords, language, links etc).

Andy Henderson
Ireckon Web Marketing

So apparently Google have rolled out a new home page to some regional datacenters today with significant changes to both the search function and Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Search Engine College tutor Micky Stuivenberg (@contentwriteroz) alerted me to the changes via Twitter – which she had been observing on Google Australia since midday today. Micky says she is seeing the following:

1) The radio button options that used to appear under the search box at Google.com.au to Search: *the web* or *pages from Australia* have disappeared.

2) A searcher’s default location now appears under the search box on the SERPs (Micky’s says Sydney although she is located on the NSW mid North coast). See this demonstrated in image 2 below.

3) On SERPs, the main search options that used to appear at the top of the page and are now also listed in a left hand navigation column:

• Everything (default)
• News
• Images
• Videos
• Maps
• Blogs
• Shopping
• Books
• More

These options appear to be dynamic, based on your user search preferences. You can filter the navigation to only display *blogs* for example.

3) Underneath that it has the option to search only pages from your region (a long way from the search box!)

4) Then there are 3 options to search results for

• Any time (default)
• Latest
• past 2 days

5) Then the standard view (default) with Wonder wheel.

6) At the bottom of the redesigned SERPs is a button for *More search tools*.

Here’s a couple of screen grabs of the changes:

A major difference is that all the above options are now displayed permanently on the SERPs, whereas before you had to click *show options* to see all of them. The changes can only be viewed on selected data-centers right now – I’m not seeing them yet so am grateful to Micky for the scoop!

I haven’t seen any posts about it on official Google blogs, although it may be related to the local search changes they announced recently.

I’ve only seen one other blog discussing the revisions so far, so I think it’s fair to call BREAKING on this one.

* images courtesy of @contentwriteroz and Softpedia

Hi Kalena

I have come across a company that guarantees placement in the top 7 of Google local business results within 60 days or they give the money back.  Does this sound kosher to you?

They charge a one-time set up fee of $50 and $49 a month.  Is there a way that you could tell me to do that?  I know they submit to a lot of search engines.  Is this a fraud?  The company is Geo Listing Service out of Las Vegas.

Thank you for your help.

Best,
Lois
————————————–

Hi Lois

It’s just a scam. You can get a site listed in Google Local for free by making sure your business is listed in Google Maps.

More info here:

Google Local Business Center

Google Maps Local Business Help

Just to wind ‘em up, ask this Vegas mob why you should pay for a service that’s provided free by Google and watch them back-pedal. Better still, share the results with us in the comments!