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This kills businesses like mine (a local business directory of sorts). Ultimately, my content will be better than Google's (because I'm on the ground building relationships), but if they control search results presentation (read: manipulate), then I'll lose--or I'll fight harder to do off-line marketing.

Posted by: Chris on January 17, 2008

Could this be a possible outcome from Google Local Symposium?
While I noticed similar results earlier today, others whom I asked to test it from different cities got the standard A, B, C...not the A-J results.
A definite victory for local business if this Google Maps/Local presentation continues. Don't you think?

BringBuyers.com
Local Business Search Marketing

Posted by: Local Business Will Prevail on January 17, 2008

That is a ton of real estate. Looks like they really know what they're doing (assuming their ppc bidding is low enough to support their prices / the lifetime crv for folks that had not previously tried them).

Thanks for sharing, Paul. I've seen up to 5 local listings included before, but I don't think ever that many.

Posted by: Justin Seibert on January 18, 2008

Chris, one thing that came to me... while doing the screenshot, I narrowed the window to accommodate image specs, so the local results on a full screen would take up much less space than the image shown above.

There's still plenty of room for the natural results. ;)

Posted by: Paul Jahn on January 18, 2008

Mmmmm, pizza. I love pizza, oh yeah you were talking about local results. Works for me, having that more than just a few results at the top with local numbers. What's with Leaning Tower of Pizza? url shows maps.google.com, no website of their own?

Posted by: David Temple on January 21, 2008

Good question David. From what I can tell they don't have a site.

That's one thing that has been fluctuating too. Sometimes they'll show the maps.google.com link even if a company has a site, sometimes they'll have a link to the site. I guessing they're experimenting around.

Posted by: Paul Jahn on January 22, 2008

Our business has taken a nose dive since Google Local kicked it up to 10 listings that come before our's in the Chicago market. Our company covers all of the Chicagoland area, but our main office is located in a suburb. After years of link building and payments to an SEO specialist, we just dropped ten slots.

Posted by: Jenny on January 25, 2008

This is a win win win relationship for the consumer, local business owner, as well as for Google.

CONSUMER - The integrated map allows the consumer to pick a pizza restaurant that will service their location, therefore saving clicks & browsing time.

This applies to many local industries such as lawn service, pool service, transmision repair, all restaurants, etc.

LOCAL BUSINESS OWNER - The local business owner is more likely to convert a lead into a sale increasing ROI.

As a local advertiser, the thought of "paying per click" to drive clients to your site who will never hire you because of your location is the same as "throwing money out the window".

GOOGLE - Displaying the Map and Bold Face Listings in the search results really drives the popularity of this marketing stream.

Local business owners are now more likely to set up an account in the Local Business Center for Google Maps in addition to their Adwords account increasing Google's Revenue.

I LIKE IT! WIN WIN WIN!

Posted by: Patrick on February 6, 2008

I totally agree with everything everyone has said. It's loco. What i'm trying to find out is the stats on how many people click on the local listings versus natural listings overall in the US. Maybe even a timechart for the past couple years, and the increase, but i'm sure that's not really available, unless you pay, and i can't find it from google'...

Posted by: jpshaw23 on August 20, 2008

I like this option because it allows business to gain more exposure with very little extra work. The numbers stay the same if you are in the natural results and the business listing. Also, this is a way to separate the businesses that are truely local.

Posted by: Lee Keadle on October 24, 2008

hi, what i know from this articles, a single business getting more than one local listing in google maps. Is is possible? or is any spamming? Apart from that, I like to know how to get first place in google local business listing.

Posted by: Latest SEO News on April 13, 2009

Doesn't seem that the ol' 10 pack is consistent in its behavior. Some searches show 10, others show only 1. Any idea why that may be?

Posted by: Healthy Progress, Chicago Personal Training on October 8, 2009

What's strange is that now I've found myself in some of those "top 10" local listings and I don't even normally see myself in the first 3 pages of the Google results. This is great for me, but I'm sure that some of those higher up naturally on the first page don't like seeing me up there.

Posted by: Mike Ciucci on October 20, 2009

This is definitely help to the smaller companies that couldn't afford exposure. Now everyone has a somewhat more fair of a chance.

Posted by: Bill Goody on November 16, 2009