Got Questions For Big Players In Local Search?

Mar 24, 2010 at 5:29pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Next week, I’m moderating a session at the Where 2.0 conference involving big names in local search: Bing, Google, Yahoo and Yelp. Got some questions you want put to the panel about current challenges in local and where things are going? Let me know!

The panel, The Big Picture, from the Big Players, begins at 2pm on March 31. The panelists are:

John Hanke, Google
Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Microsoft
Tom Wailes, Yahoo
Dylan Swift, Yelp

I expect to ask challenges in getting local businesses to participate in local search, handling the arbitration of user reviews, how mobile is changing the local space, how our local world is being visually indexed in pictures and more. I’d love thoughts from others!

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is a Founding Editor of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also serves as Chief Content Officer for Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He has a personal blog called Daggle (and keeps his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan

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http://niftymarketing.com/blog niftymarketing

What are the best practices “in their minds” for small business owners handling online reviews?

How are the engines solving problems for “addressless” businesses? I know news has came up on Google today about a change, but it seems the change is a good way to remove your business from ranking well as “location prominence” still plays a vital roll in rankings.

The #1 problem in the local space continues to be the relationship between listing centers and business owners. Nobody has mastered support for paying or non paying customers. What advances are being made to provide better support?

How do the Engines feel about companies providing optimization for local? Do they want business owners to take responsibility for themselves?

Sorry to go overboard on questions but those are a few I have been wondering as of late.
http://ItsTheROI.com Jonahstein

I want them to make it easier to consolidate multiple listings. As hard as I try for clients with multiple location, there isn’t a simple way to canonicalize local listings or close locations that are not current.

Jonah
http://ItsTheROI.com Jonahstein

Beyond canonicalizing, the Google Local bulk upload only works if the business name is identical in all locations. What if the company is a home builder, for example, and each community or sub-division has its own name. Does it really help the user to have the same name on the map 10 times instead of the community they are building in?