Here’s how the new service works:

When you type in a general search like ‘IT support’, Google will continue to display listings in the same way it always has. But if you type in a locally-focused search like “IT support Chicago,” Google will automatically change its display to a Google Place Search page. Here’s what it looks like:

As you can see, it shares a lot of similarities with the Google Places “onebox” that currently appears: local business listings appear next to a map, with a corresponding red pin indicating where they’re located in that geographic area. The big difference is, the new Google Place Search page eliminates all the non-local listings from the page and includes a lot more information for the local listings that are displayed.

What this means for you: since Google is displaying a lot more local listing content on its Place Search pages, it stands to reason that they’ll give strong preference to displaying Places pages that already have lots of content first. It also stands to reason that if your small business’s website appears at #1 in the organic search results for a local query, but has no Google Places listing (or a poorly-optimized local listing), you’re about to lose a lot of market reach.

We’ve recommended that small businesses optimize their local search listings for a long time on Small Business Tech Tips – the new Google Place Search results are a perfect illustration of the benefits of having a well-optimized local listing. If you haven’t claimed and optimized your business, do it! And keep in mind, it’s not just about optimizing the Google Local Business listing itself – the more directories across the web that include your listing, and the more reviews your business has garnered at various different sites, the more content Google will pull in.

The read the full announcement from Google, click here.

Numerous advertisers have experienced exceptional results after adding ad extensions to their local advertising campaigns. From pizza delivery companies to paint stores, they allow bricks-and-mortar retailers to more effectively compete in the online marketing world.

At the end of last week, Google made a significant change with their location extensions system – you can now show up to 4 locations in your ad. As seen in the screenshot below, clicking on an ad with location extensions now reveals a pull-down menu with a map that has multiple nearby locations targeted.

Locations can be added by hand, but the more effective approach is to simply link your AdWords campaigns to your Google Places account. Doing so makes adding location extensions a one-click process.

For local retailers with multiple bricks-and-mortar locations, this new addition is a huge step forward. By combining this functionality with geotargeted ad campaigns, you can deliver much more relevant ads to potential customers at the exact moment they’re looking for your services. Even better, you can let them see whether the location is close to them before they click through your ad, thus better-qualifying your leads.

For those with multiple locations, we recommend revising your AdWords ad groups to take advantage of this new feature immediately.

Each year David Mihm surveys a number of top SEO practitioners regarding the local listing results they’ve seen, and compiles all the data into a list. The result is a comprehensive explanation of almost all the factors that contribute to a local business’s Google Places position.

Today, Mr. Mihm released the 2010 Local Search Ranking Factors. Anyone in the business of local internet marketing should stop what you’re doing right now and give it a read. You’ll learn a lot.

Last week, a new service called ChoiceVendor launched. Essentially, it’s the Yelp for B2B companies. Businesses of any size can create an account on ChoiceVendor and review other businesses they’ve worked with.

The implications for small and medium-sized businesses here are huge. As you know, Google Places leverages reviews from across the web to determine a company’s star ranking (hence, the importance of sites like Yelp for locally-focused businesses). Every positive review on Yelp can be extremely valuable to a company’s local search ranking, since Google places extra weight on listings with reviews.

Additionally, there’s an intangible value – the value of trust. If a customer finds a company where customers have gone out of their way to write 4- and 5-star reviews, they’re more likely to consider that company to do business with.

Which brings us back to ChoiceVendor. Up until now, small businesses haven’t had a great venue for their clients and customers to post reviews. With the deployment of this new service, that all changes. We expect to see Google indexing ChoiceVendor’s reviews sometime in the near future. If you have clients who operate in the B2B world, they would do well to make sure they have a claimed listing on ChoiceVendor, and try and solicit reviews from happy clients.

In the long run, the dividends will be huge.

**UPDATE 9/23/2010 – Looks like we weren’t the only ones to take notice – as of today, the ChoiceVendor team has announced that they’ve been acquired by LinkedIn. Congrats, Yanda and Rama!

Although the service is no longer available, we wouldn’t be surprised to see something coming from LinkedIn leveraging their data and technology soon. In the meantime, if you haven’t yet claimed your business on LinkedIn, now’s an excellent time to do it!

Thanks to Google’s extensive API, developers for web and mobile applications can leverage the Google Local Search data in their applications. Since the mobile web is the hotbed of local search marketing, Google’s dominance is a big deal…and it’s poised to only get bigger.

For local small business advertisers, what this means is that optimizing your local listing on Google Places is crucial. But as David Mihm points out in his in-depth Local Search Ranking Factors article, since Google uses the data from other directory sites to calculate who shows up on top, it’s not enough to just optimize your Google local listing. You need to make sure you have a presence on various other directory sites, too – and that your listing is consistent across them all.

But there are thousands of online local directories – how do you find which ones you need to focus on to rank highest in Google?

The folks at SEOMoz have a great answer to that question – to find out which sites are working to help people’s Google rankings, they recommend simply doing some local searches yourself. It’s a dead simple tactic to rank higher in Google Local search results – and while it can be tedious work, the benefits gained translate directly into traffic to your local business.

Today, Google announced a rebranding of one of its key features: the former Local Business Center is now known simply as Google Places.

One out of every 5 searches is location-based, so naturally Google wants to find ways to improve their local search results and make money off of the space, too. For that reason, along with the new name, Google is rolling out a slew of features including local search and map listings, realtime updates, custom QR codes and coupons, and more.

The three features we’re most excited about are:

1. Service areas. A pizza business, for instance, can now only focus on advertising to customers who are in their delivery area.
2. Local business photo shoots. That’s right – Google will now come to your local business and take photos, then add them to your Place Page.
3. Tags. For $25 a month, local businesses can buy “tags” which will turn their businesses up in local searches, including Google Maps.

Obviously, this new update is a huge deal for local online marketing. Local businesses of all sizes stand to benefit from a well-optimized Google Place Page.

The impact of reviews on local search marketing results – I think people intuitively understand that having reviews of your business is better than not having reviews, but how does it impact your local search results, and what specific strategies should you use?

The following post does a fantastic job of looking into the impact of reviews on your local search results; it’s the best explanation I’ve seen so far:

An Extremely Nifty Guide to Reviews and Local Search

Once you’ve read that one and your convinced that you need a strategy for getting more reviews, check out this great post on Online Reputation Management Strategies – The “Rate Us” Page and Local Reviews.

Mike

GetListed.org

Here is a look at Everon’s results for our listing in Broomfield, CO:

It’s got some great features, like being able to save your listings to a dashboard for easy future reference, and a handy list of “To do’s” that are automatically generated to help determine next steps to get the most from your listing.

The service is free. It was put together by local internet marketing expertsDavid Mihm and Patrick Sexton – nice job and thank you, guys!

Mike

Google just made the answer a whole lot easier with the new ‘Nearby’ feature they just added into the search engine. Take a look at the following example:

My first search is for ‘pizza’, and I am searching from my office in Broomfield, CO. Here are the results:

By clicking on the ‘Search options’ button in the top of the results, I can display a list of options on the left that reveal the ‘Nearby’ option:

I can then select a ‘Custom location’, which I have entered ‘Chicago’ into to get the following results:

As you can see, I am now getting the local results for Chicago. That’s pretty easy, and makes it simple to research the local results in your clients’ markets.

Thanks Google.

Mike