Google Ties Street View To Local Business Listings

If it sometimes seems that there’s no rhyme or reason to the various tools and products Google adds to its properties, this one will change your mind a bit: Google has (finally, some would say) brought together its local business listings with Street View inside of Google Maps.

As the announcement explains, when looking for businesses in Google Maps, a new Street View link will appear when available as part of the link options for individual businesses. It’ll look something like this:

Clicking the new link takes you into Street View, where the business is now identified in its neighborhood and the red marker remains available so users can continue to access other information and links about the business. A cool feature is that, if other businesses from your search results are nearby, you’ll also see the red pin marker for those businesses while in Street View.

Street View can have a powerful, if somewhat under-appreciated marketing impact. It offers visitors a first impression of local businesses, and that first impression might determine the choice of a restaurant or hotel, for example.

Combining Street View with local business listings makes it even more important for local businesses to claim their listing in Google Maps and make sure the map marker is in the right spot. It also puts more of a burden on Google to prevent business listing hijackings, which sometimes involve moving a business’s map marker to a different location.