Mike Blumenthal received a screenshot that seems to show a test of a new presentation of Google local/geotargeted AdWords. Mike suggests this may be an expression of AdWords local extensions:

This is AdWords and not Local Listing Ads, but the presentation (with the blue pushpin) is similar, signifying a local business or a physical location. Here is an example of Local Listing Ads:

Postscript: Here’s another image from a Chicago result sent to me by Jason Normoyle:

While the National Association of REALTORS® is planning to launch its own national property database sometime next year, Google seems to have just stolen the NAR’s thunder. How? By rolling out individual “place pages” for every property that’s listed in Google Maps. Like this one for a home in Seattle:

The real estate listing place pages include property information, photos, map placement, Street View imagery and functionality, nearby public transit details, and even AdWords ads. Google has added links for “Directions” and “Search nearby,” as well as a “Send” link that opens an outgoing email with the place page link embedded inside. The property details in the example above are sourced from two separate Prudential Real Estate web sites, and from NWSource.com, which is the Seattle Times’ web site. It’s all presented just as you’d see on any standard MLS web site, though it lacks some of the deep information (such as square footage of individual rooms) available in a typical MLS listing.

There’s no announcement of this new feature yet on the Google LatLong blog, but it was announced today on the official Google Australia blog. That post says the real estate place pages may also include things like videos and inspection times. Left unsaid is that the place page format gives Google the space and flexibility to add new types of information in the future.

Google Maps has, of course, shown individual property information for some time. But it was relegated to the old, small, somewhat user-unfriendly info pop-up windows. The new place pages offer more information, are more user-friendly, and have short, clean links (like http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=18428966863334951733) that home buyers can easily pass around.

It’s the latest in a string of upgrades that Google has made to how it presents real estate information in Google Maps. For more, see Land Grab: Google Expands Real Estate Listings from July and Google Maps Makes Real Estate Search More Visible from last month. Add them all together, along with other updates that are sure to come, and it’s obvious Google is on its way to building what amounts to a national MLS-like database of property listings.

Seeking to make Latitude, Google’s location-aware friend finder, more engaging and useful the company has added location history and alerts to the service. Location Alerts, which require Location History to be enabled, tell you when friends are in the area. The system is smart enough to recognize routine places like home and work so it will only send alerts when you and your friends are in an “unusual place.” According to the Google blog post:

Using your past location history, Location Alerts can recognize your regular, routine locations and not create alerts when you’re at places like home or work. Alerts will only be sent to you and any nearby friends when you’re either at an unusual place or at a routine place at an unusual time. 

Once turned on, Location History tracks your trip, movements and places you’ve been (that’s how it recognizes common and “unusual” places). It creates a kind of record of travels or activities. One could establish, for example, a My Map later of favorite places through Location History.

Google says that your history isn’t broadcast to your friends — although they can potentially see you move from place to place in real time if you allow them — and can be edited to remove places that you don’t want included in your history. While there are many practical use cases some people may be uncomfortable with the idea of all one’s movements being recorded. Not being of the “no privacy issues” generation, I rarely broadcast where I actually am on Latitude:

Accordingly you don’t have to enable Location History if you don’t want to, but you also don’t get the benefit of location alerts either.

Google has now added Hawaii to Street View, making it the 50th and final US state to be included in the Maps image database. You can also get these images in Google Maps for Mobile.

Google launched Street View a little more than two years ago, in May 2007. Since that time there has been considerable controversy around privacy questions but one now gets the sense that this has largely died down in most places. From early questions about its utility, Street View has become an important part of the Google Maps offering (and is integrated into the new Android 2.0 Maps Navigation). More recently Google has pushed beyond paved highways and onto trials, college campuses and zoos with its Street View trike.

Meanwhile Microsoft’s Bing Maps has added some new features and changed the look and feel of the interface slightly. LiveSide discovered the changes, which include:

• More prominent and simplified directions boxes
• Easier access to user-generated maps and images in “user-contributed places”
• Collections is renamed “My Places”

In the user-contributed maps, users can sort by categories, content and layers.

Microsoft changed the terms of service for  Bing Maps for educators, developers and non-profits, essentially making them more generous. The company also released Silverlight Control for maps. I’m not able to speak to the range of technical issues here, but generally it allows for the creation of richer mapping applications.

Microsoft has a very strong mapping product that has largely been overshadowed by Google, which has done a better job of PR and communications around maps. Indeed, Microsoft offered user-created maps before Google My Maps and has a great product in Photosyth, which Google has emulated to some degree in a couple of ways. And maps is an area that Microsoft and Bing could do a great deal more with online and in mobile. They understand this too.

Meanwhile a short while ago MapQuest, the long reigning but recently deposed maps king, improved the appearance of its mapping interface. We’ll see what former Googler and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong tries to do with MapQuest, which is one of the company’s key properties.

Update: The Bing Community and Bing Maps Blogs lay out the details of the new Bing Maps features, including draggable routing, enhanced zooming, embeddable maps, new navigation and faster load times.

Google AdWords announced two updates including new alerts and place pages in performance reports, let me explain both in more detail.

The new alerts are designed to help you stay on top of your campaigns. In addition to the billing alerts, they added alerts for new keyword and budget ideas in the Opportunities tab. Also, for those that use conversion tracking, you can now create custom alerts for changes in conversion volume, conversion rate, and cost per conversion. These two new alerts are not yet available for those who have My Client Center (MCC) accounts, but Google hopes to add them soon.

A little over a month ago, Google launched Place Pages for Google Maps. On those pages are contextual ads powered by Google’s content network. Advertisers can now see how well those ads are performing via the placement performance reports. Google added:

With this update, you can more closely monitor and optimize your clients’ campaigns. While placement targeting is not available for Google Maps, you can increase the likelihood of appearing on Place Pages by increasing bids on high-performing keywords or by creating ad groups with highly specific keywords to target Place Pages relevant to your clients’ products or businesses.

As SEO rapidly becomes a core task for local business owners, there’s a new temptation to build advertising messages or tracking mechanisms into business listings on the web. Typically, this might mean adding a slogan or campaign tagline to a business name or changing an office address to appear local to more customers. Unfortunately, this misguided enthusiasm can negatively impact the way search engines rank local business listings based on variations in company name, address and phone number (NAP, for short).

Business listings—name, address, phone number—are a company’s fingerprint and single unique identification point—much like an individual’s social security number. If businesses don’t manage their listings consistently across the web, a company could be walking into an identity management problem.

Although some might think adding multiple names or phone numbers to a business listing will increase real estate space on the web, the truth is variations can have an acutely long-term and far-reaching negative impact on a businesses’ online presence. It can even result in a business being delisted by a search engine.

Here are a few important rules for you to remember about your online business listings. These rules are for local business listings, but you can find broader SEO tips for your web site on SearchEngineLand’s Local’s Only columnist Andrew Shotland Local SEO Guide.

Rule #1: Don’t change a phone number in your business listing to evaluate metrics. Do not change your company phone number within a business listing. Although call tracking measurement is important for advertising, remember that your online business listing is not an advertising channel. If a business modifies or adds a different phone number to the foundational layer or the index of local search, search engines will view the business differently and the company will risk being delisted by search sites, including Google’s Local Business Center.

What some businesses do not realize is that if Google finds duplicate listings for a business, they may be deleted or merged with a “similar” looking business listing within the index until further verification takes place to identify the accurate listing. This can take several weeks. Again, a business listing should be a brick or foundation piece and you should layer your marketing on top of it. If you have to add an alternate phone number to your business listing, make sure it is clearly marked as a secondary number so that a duplicate listing isn’t created.

Rule #2: Do not add seasonal keywords to a business name—or any keywords for that matter—to a business listing. A leading financial services company recently tied seasonal keywords to their business name, changing their corporate name for online listing and SEO purposes. The company suffered disastrous results in Google Maps as well as other search engines because duplicate business listings were detected. They were delisted from Google’s Local Business Center for a lengthy period of time because of this change, hurting their local search web presence, fragmenting their reputation and compromising their identity in the long run.

Adding or changing keywords is similar to Google finding various phone numbers for a business at a single mappable address. Changing or adding to a business listing can disturb the linking structure that puts a businesses’ name in the search engines’ rankings, which ultimately puts a company in front of potential customers.

Also, if you are hiring branding agencies, SEM marketers or public relations agencies to raise online visibility, make sure that they understand that your NAP is your local search identity and should remain unaltered in their promotional efforts. Seasonal keywords, products carried, services offered and the keywords that describe your business are essentially important, so provide appropriate keywords within your listing by adding them below your NAP to help drive search results.

Rule #3: Do not add a duplicate address to a business listing to appear local to more consumers. Some businesses trying to market to multiple areas in a region might think that by adding additional addresses to appear uber-local will generate more customer calls.

Not so fast—this seemingly smart trick can create confusion in local search by creating multiple identities for your business location making it difficult for search engines and your customers to find you. It also fragments your reputation by allowing conversations, ratings and reviews about your business to be stored and distributed with a “fabricated” location. It is crucial to have one business address so that the major search engines—especially when dealing with long tail queries—can find all relevant information about your company. Multiple locations appearing within a single listing will only create noise and fragmentation that search engines choke on.

It is crucial that a business owns its name, address and phone number in as many places as possible and keeps listings consistent for all search engines and data providers. Don’t confuse business listings with advertising. Instead, create a solid foundation. Give search engines the ability to aggregate as much consistent content as possible about your business. That in turn, will give your business maximum online visibility.

In the increasingly high stakes game of mobile search, Google is leaving almost nothing to chance. Take the company’s very interesting new partnership with Best Buy stores for example. According to the Google Mobile Blog:

We’re happy to announce today that we’ve partnered with Best Buy Mobile to make Google Mobile App available through Best Buy stores in the US . . . now [users] have the option to get some help installing the app or to see a live demo of what the application can do. Just go to the mobile department at your nearest Best Buy store and talk to an associate. If you have a BlackBerry, Windows Phone, or S60 phone, they can help install Google Mobile App on your phone. And if you’re in the market to buy a new phone, they will help you install the application as part of their Walk Out Working program.

I haven’t been in Best Buy to experience this yet, but out of curiosity I will go and see (just like a “secret shopper”). I would imagine there will be some sort of in-store display or kiosk within Best Buy mobile — the “store within a store” concept — to generate awareness. But will there also be traditional media (Best Buy newspaper circular, TV) to support this and let customers know they can see a demo and get installation help?

What about new phone buyers? Will there be a “would you like fries with that” moment? In other words: “Would you like us to help you install the Google app on your new BlackBerry Bold”?

In the traditional world, retailers are paid all the time for their shelf and floor space by product producers that want to grab attention in the store. In many ways the store shelves themselves represent advertising “inventory” in this context. The Google-Best Buy deal is probably no exception. I’ll seek confirmation but it’s all but certain that Google is paying Best Buy to have its employees promote and install the app.

What’s also interesting is the fact that the Google blog post mentions “BlackBerry, Windows Phone, or S60 phone.” There’s no mention of the iPhone or Android devices. Presumably then Google is happy with what it’s seeing from the users of those platforms. The language of the blog post implies that it’s not as satisfied with the number of searches and usage it’s getting from “BlackBerry, Windows Phone, or S60 phone.”

BlackBerry still has the largest base of users among the various smartphone platforms in the US. (Symbian/Nokia dominates globally). And pursuant to the Microsoft-Verizon deal the Bing app ships with the touchscreen Storm 2.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who don’t know very well that “apps” exist or if they do still don’t know how to install them. Unless this relationship evolves or has other dimensions not yet revealed there seems to be something strangely disproportionate about it. Think about it: we’re talking about an app — not Android handsets.

We’re definitely in what might be called “land grab” stage of mobile, with the major search engines and a broad range of companies scrambling to gain users and visibility. While we can expect considerable evolution in the mobile experience and even “mobile search,” certain user behaviors established now may persist over time. So Google is being quite shrewd and potentially strategic with this deal — though it seems a little excessive for an app.

Postscript: Upon reflection . . . Android doesn’t need a Google app, given that all the features of the Google app (and more) are baked into the UI and OS.

Google has apparently removed phone numbers from the so-called 7 Pack of organic local results. The numbers were present as recently as 24-36 hours ago. Immediately below is an example of a recent search result for “dentist, San Francisco” (within the last several weeks) and then for the same query this morning:

The result on the bottom is cleaned up in terms of the ads presented (the screen above is a bit of a mess in that regard), but there are no phone numbers for the local organic listings. The user must click down to the Maps page below to get the numbers. Does the removal of numbers improve the user experience? Most people would probably answer “no” to that question.

Is Google trying to drive more clicks to Maps? Is Google trying to drive more calls to Local Listings advertisers?

I’ve asked Google to comment and I also have more extensive discussion of other potential angles and issues on my personal blog Screenwerk. And Matt McGee has discussed this on his blog also.

Postscript by Matt McGee: Earlier today, a Google spokesperson offered this statement about the missing phone numbers: “For a few hours this morning phone numbers were not displayed as part of local universal search results on Google. This was a small bug, and we quickly fixed it.”

Both Bing and Google have updated their maps imagery. The Bing blog announced an additional 9,460 square kilometers of imagery added to Bing Maps. Not to be outdone, Google announced that not only are they updating their imagery, but they will increasing the frequency of those updates.

In addition, Google Transit recently added more partners, including coverage of Bordeaux, Tuscany, Reggio Emilia, Brescia and more.

Google has tweaked its guidelines for local businesses that use the Google Maps Local Business Center. The new guidelines are listed on Google’s Business Listing Quality Guidelines page. On Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz shows both the old and new guidelines, while on his blog, Mike Blumenthal charts the differences between the two versions.

According to Mike’s tracking, there are five new guidelines:

1. The business name on Google Maps must be your full legal business name.
2. PO Boxes do not count as physical locations.
3. A property for rent is not considered a place of business. Please create one listing for the central office that processes the rentals.
4. Use a shared, business email account, if multiple users will be updating your business listing.
5. If possible, use an email account with a domain that matches your business URL. For example, if your business website is www.giraffetoys.com, a matching email address would be you@giraffetoys.com.

The first new guideline targets the spamming of keywords in a business name. But it’s problematic in that many local businesses consist of partnerships with legal business names that don’t match the actual business name. As is suggested in the comments on Mike’s post, Google Maps should allow the use DBA names, not only legal business entity names. And if they do allow DBA names, the guidelines should explicitly say as much.

Either way, Google’s heavy reliance on keywords in the business name as a ranking factor means that companies will continue to benefit from generic names like “Spokane Auto Repair” and “Tucson Dry Cleaning,” and continue to try to game the system with keywords and category names in their business listings.

The second new guideline targets businesses that either a) don’t have a physical location, but use a PO box address to get a local business listing, or b) have a physical location, but try to get additional listings in nearby towns by using PO box addresses.

The third new guideline appears to specifically target real estate and property management businesses that list properties as unique business locations in the Local Business Center.

The last two new guidelines are listed as “Best Practices” and don’t really address the long-running spam and gaming problems that have plagued Google Maps and the Local Business Center. Despite the new guidelines, it’s safe to assume that the spam and gaming will continue … and Google will continue to update its business listing guidelines accordingly.