Google Local and Yellow Pages
In November last year (2008) Google Maps announced a new partnership with Sensis to integrate data from its Yellow Pages online listings into the Australian Google Maps results (and breaking the previous ties Google had with True Local. In the article discussing the deal, the integration was to take place in the first quarter of 2009… and on April 1, it seems like this has now taken place.
Within the first week of the integration, a number of noticeable changes occurred:
- previously high listed sites dropping our of the local search results (usually displayed next to a map at the top of the Google search page)
- sites with TrueLocal listings and no Yellow Pages presence dropping out of the local search results alltogether
- new sites popping into the top local listings that co-incidentally had premium Yellow Pages accounts that were nowhere to be seen previously
As you could imagine, this caused a great deal of upset and concern within the local search industry as it indicated that the only way of ranking well in this space was to pay for a premium listing – in a system that Google had always boasted would remain free and unbiased like all the other organic search results.
Some argue that Google and Yellow were trying to test these changes to see if anyone would notice or perhaps it was a manual error with the way the migration of data was handled. The good news however is that these issues have now been fixed and the local search listings and Google Maps business results are back to displaying a cross-section of data as it always has done.
Did Google fix this due to the backlash from people noticing the drastic changes or did they simply notice it through further testing once the migration was complete – we’ll never know, but at least local business owners will not be required to sign-up for a Yellow Pages premium listing just to get into the top local search box.
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