The Growth Wire

Who Decides Which Local Business Is The Best?

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Bill Hansen

If Google has its way, its new local search technology will soon be the arbiter of ‘hot’ or ‘not.’  The latest (local) product, Google “Favorites,” is designed to label one business per specific locale the ‘favorite’ for its business category.  This nod will be driven by consumers in a variety of ways involving social and mobile tools that are part of the new product launch.

If you’re one of the small businesses that hasn’t paid much attention to Google and it’s local search, you’d better start before this tech creates a hard-to-crack stratification of haves and have-nots.  If you’re familiar or active with Google Local, use your knowledge to start fighting for this new beach-front real estate today.  

Google “Favorites”

Google is undertaking an ambitious effort to better serve local businesses and their customers.  This started with their free business listings (photos, coupons, correct contact/hours information, & reviews among other things).  They then upgraded Google maps to determine and highlight the businesses that generate the most online interest.

Google Favorites takes this approach a step further.  Businesses that drive the most online “interest” for specific categories are now being awarded with window stickers and online search tools specifically designed to help consumers find ‘the best’ of what’s local.  Read the Google FAQ here.

There’s a consumer-application to this that’s probably what’s most important to Google in the long-run.  They’d like consumers to start using smartphones and social tools like recommendations, ratings, and friend-sharing to grow the usage of their mobile search engine (there’s going to be a big battle between Google and Apple here in the next year or so).  It looks a little convoluted, involving a $2 downloaded App and bar-code scanning, but you should know how it works.  To learn more, go here and watch the video.

Why Care?

Google has started by identifying 100,000 “Favorite Place” businesses in the U.S.  Since this first cut was from the data that is already published online (local recommendation sites that are easily manipulated) and from queries for driving directions via Google Maps, you’re going to see the first awards driven as much by promotion, market share, and general brand strength as they are by actual consumer passion.

Though we all know that bigger isn’t necessarily better, the label of “Favorite” coming from the ‘objective’ data of Google is likely to create the belief that these are the best businesses in town.  Yikes!

The favorites are going to have a lot of extra traffic driven their way and the “not favorites” will pay the price.

What To Do:

Below are five key steps to help you out.  The first 4 will help you understand and compete on a level playing field.  The fifth will help you actually make the first 4 steps accomplish something:

Step 1:  Understand Google’s local search (what it does/how locals use it).

Step 2:  Understand what drives search results (it’s not nearly as complex as website-focused Search Engine Optimization or SEO issues).

Step 3:  Understand the product features of Favorite Places and how Google promotes them to consumers.

Step 4:  Get to work building your online citations (you’ll learn how in step 2).

Step 5:  Increase your effort to become known.

This last step has very little to do with the online/search side of things.  Unlike their general web page rankings, Google Local (the Maps tool) strongly favors businesses that are KNOWN – maps tend to be used more for things like contact info and driving directions than they are as a pure ‘search’ tool.  These activities are directly associated with consumer awareness.  The same is true with the local ratings and citations on local search sites – larger businesses that have invested in their presence online get most of the consumer’s attention, reviews, etc.

If you’re a leader, great.  You’re poised to see some real growth.

If you’re not the leader, you’re going to have to start aggressively building your brand’s awareness to even register on this important new battleground.  If you don’t, you might easily become invisible as Google focuses consumers AWAY from your business!

This is a BIGGIE.  Get in early and make sure that you take advantage of this before Google starts pointing people at one of your competitors!