Local Business Boost As Google Places Launches

The move comes as the company is ramping up its geolocation and local search efforts under Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of geographic and local services. Formerly the company’s search user experience guru, Mayer is tasked with more closely tying Google’s search results with location.

Connecting Places With People

Google Place Search results will appear when users search for local businesses. Place Search may also be accessed through a new Places link in the left-hand panel of the search results page.

In Google’s example of a search for a barbecue restaurant in Austin, Texas, Google Place Search surfaces new results with red pins representing restaurants. Restaurant pictures, addresses and phone numbers are included along with links to reviews from Yelp.com, Citysearch.com, Tripadvisor.com and Urbanspoon.com, when available.

Previously, the same search for barbecue restaurants would return links about eateries in a so-called “7-Pack” of results on the results page. Search Engine Land offers the best walk-through of the old local search and new Place Search results here.

Results will appear that are germane to the places people are searching for because Google is trying to predict when users are surfing for local information with new “technology to better understand places”.

This new software covers hundreds of millions of Websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. Google also boosted the number of links to 30 or 40 so that users can find the results they need with one search instead of conducting several. Google Place Search product manager Jackie Bavaro said that people testing the new search service saved an average of two seconds per local search.

Place Search is rolling out in more than 40 languages in the next few days, with some results accompanied by Google Boost contextual ads that let local businesses surface their services and goods more easily on Google.