Google Rolls Out New Search Engine

[KRL]

Google Rolls Out New Local Search System

Google Inc. is introducing a new system designed to make it easier for people to find things closer to their homes, paving the way for the company to make more money selling ads to small businesses.

The new algorithmic formulas, scheduled to begin working Wednesday, will allow Google to display more local information in response to search requests that include a ZIP code or a city's name.

Google says these geographic queries are now more likely to generate phone numbers and specific addresses on its main results page. In many cases, Google also will display an icon of a compass that can be clicked upon to open another page containing a detailed map and directions to the location.

Web surfers who want a broader selection of parochial information will be encouraged to visit a new gateway, http://local.google.com.

"Google's goal is to connect searchers with the information they need whether it's halfway around the world or in their neighborhood," said company co-founder Sergey Brin.

With the new features, Google is joining an accelerating push to become more local in search. Last week, Yahoo! Inc. introduced a similar provincial tool, called SmartView, and Verizon Communications recently overhauled its SuperPages.com site to deliver more useful local results.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google believes it will have a major advantage over its other rivals -- the Internet's biggest index, consisting of 4.3 billion Web pages.

The emphasis on more local search results reflects an emerging change in how people are hunting data online.

As more homes sign up for high-speed Internet connections that make it easier to call up Web pages, people increasingly are turning to the Internet before the Yellow Pages for business referrals, said Greg Sterling, who studies local search for The Kelsey Group.

About 70 percent of Google users seeking information about a merchant are primarily interested in local results, said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products. "People like to find and buy things in their neighborhoods."

Despite their rising popularity, Google and the other search engines still haven't found a way to siphon much of the estimated $22 billion that small businesses spend annually on local ads in the Yellow Pages, newspapers and direct mail, Sterling said.

By making it easier to find local information, Google hopes to entice more small businesses to buy text-based ads that eventually will be displayed next to its search results, Mayer said. But Google won't begin selling ad space next to the local search results until the new feature is better established and small businesses see how the system works.

Text-based ads tied to search results, often called "pay-for-performance," have become a lucrative business for Google, Yahoo and a wide range of other Web sites. Merchants spent an estimated $2 billion on the ads last year and most industry observers believe the market has barely been tapped.

[KRL]

Just checked it out. Cool enhancement for Google! Searched Pizza and got all the local pizza shops.

[hova]

Thats cool, smart move from Google

[johnbosh]

nice

[tbabe]

very cool.

[chemicaleyes]

Interesting.
When is Google planning on taking this new search set up world wide?

[schiz]

Very nice!

[Shoehorn!]

Neat

[cool1]

That is interesting

[Tuga]

But how can WE take advantage of it?

[KraZ]

Originally posted by KRL
Just checked it out. Cool enhancement for Google! Searched Pizza and got all the local pizza shops.

I wonder if you could check other establishments like ... whorehouses

[IPK]

Originally posted by Tuga
But how can WE take advantage of it?

We get to find all the local pizza places.

[Juicy D. Links]

http://local.google.com/local?sc=1&q...+Search& sl=1

[LauraLee]

another huge step by an AMAZING company.

[Ash@phpFX]

Originally posted by IPK


We get to find all the local pizza places.

nice call

i dont think adult will be benefiting from it as much as other industries though, except maybe escorts

[Brujah]

no beer delivery :/

[Nicky]

we can start using the city name we live in much more on out porn sites......"this bitch is from denver, where she sucks cock daily"

[Dildozer]

shut the fuck up tbabe you sig whoring twat

[Bigfuck]

Hmm will make it more easy to find local hookers

[Dynamix]

wow, very cool enhancement.

[Cash]

Interesting development...

[beergood]

I like that. Its exactly what I was bitching about less than a week ago. Way to go Google.

[Tuna]

very nice feature

[Toolz]

Searches seem fairly relevant, that will be the key, keep the spammers from manipulating it and returning all junk results.

[Trax]

indeed a nice feature

[sumphatpimp]

their has been an online phonebook for some time.
not a new idea.

[Basic_man]

Thanks for sharing !

[goBigtime]

Originally posted by KRL
Just checked it out. Cool enhancement for Google! Searched Pizza and got all the local pizza shops.

I hate google sometimes.

[boris77]

Nice Google move !!

[goBigtime]

Originally posted by sumphatpimp
their has been an online phonebook for some time.
not a new idea.

[gornyhuy]

smart move on their part... they have to keep innovating or they are going to die.

[WiredGuy]

Originally posted by Toolz
Searches seem fairly relevant, that will be the key, keep the spammers from manipulating it and returning all junk results.

[cluck]

http://local.google.com/local?q=esco...9242,-74047951

Related searches. *thinks*

[Hustler DJ]

Originally posted by Nicky
we can start using the city name we live in much more on out porn sites......"this bitch is from denver, where she sucks cock daily"

Maybe you were kidding, but I seriously doubt that in itself would work. Google's almost certainly using actual physical address information (from a InfoUSA or the like) and tying it back to website information as best they can. Unless you're gonna say "this bitch is available for your escort needs at 555 High Street, Denver CO 30103", Local Google probably isn't gonna touch you.

Dun & Bradstreet (among others) has been trying to do something like this at the data level for a long time now, but they never had a good enough data store of addresses parsed out from websites to make it more than 10-20% effective (in terms of coverage of their US B2B databases). They've got a great index of businesses, but their ability to reconcile that to actual websites has been spotty at best (at least it was as of a year ago when I inquired into leasing their data).

Just a few more self-indulgent random blatherings (local search is near and dear to my heart... )

Search matching:
LocalGoogle has most likely taken a tach different from D&B or others who've dabbled on this front before. They're clearly way ahead of the game on mining address information (and of course keywords) out of websites and other data sources. They've got the web page index, and they're using it (again). If you've got "pizza" or "ethiopian restaurant" and a usable address on your page, they're most likely serving your results in the appropriate way.

I like that they're doing some very basic (non-intrusive) spell checking and correction. I'm seeing that you can misspell lots of basic terms (try 'piza' instead of 'pizza') and you'll get first the sites containing the misspelled 'piza' (a reward to the spelling-challenged among us ), then all sites containing the corrected 'pizza' below it. Smooth, non-threatening, but helpful.

Geolocation: Looks like their process is good enough (not hard to do - lots of algorithms readily available these days - at least for the US -- check out opensourcegis.org if you give a shit) -- seems that they're doing it based only on ZIP codes, not on radius from the center of your search (inefficient, but tolerable). Could be a planned enhancement tho -- they've got a CGI arg in their results URL where radius=0 for every results set I was able to generate. Biggest disadvantage to this approach is that ZIP codes in the US (and most other places) are inherently inefficient -- they're misshaped and bound more by political gerrymandering or outdated population estimates, instead of by actual distance from a point or, better still, traffic data assessments for travel time from point A to B.

Purpose of Local Search:
I took a bit of liberty with that last statement -- I assumed that the purpose of local search is to find somewhere that you want to *go*. That's certainly not always the case -- oftentimes you may just be looking for a phone #, etc. That's the easy stuff for a search engine -- if the data is available. To me, wWhere the smart stuff comes into play is in the ability to tell me how to get to the local search result location I'm interested in. But that gets into integrating GIS technology with local search, and that's not what they're trying to do (yet).

When you do a city-based search (e.g.;l 'restaurants' in 'los angeles, ca'), they use a mappoint (latitude/longitude) which appears to be at an arbitrary point within the city - city hall or the like. Something they can use as a fixed mappoint. Nothing very novel about this -- I seem to remember that the guy who won their 2002 programming contest basically wrote this for them.

I think what bothers me most is what they didn't do with this project (yeah, I know it's beta, but this is kinda block-and-tackle stuff). Local search, at its core, wants to grow beyond the Yellow Pages (or whatever color the B2C telephone directory is in your part of the world). Google's stopped short of that -- the only results you'll get are businesses with some sort of web presence containing the search term you, as a consumer, would use to find them. Reality: Mom & Pop's Liquor Store down the street isn't going to have anything more than a billboard webpage (at best) anytime soon. Reality #2: I want to find them, but if I can't remember their name (or if Google/someone doesn't have them indexed with better metadata), I'm still screwed.

Unless someone gets smarter about how local business web pages get built -- sprucing them up with more keyword-enriched details and information about the business itself or, better still, categorical, parametric, and *standardized* metadata along the lines of a consumer-focused SIC code system -- we're still better off using a yellow page search tool. At least that's going to be a lot more complete than a purely algorithmic product like this.

The real hippykiller here will be when someone does what I'm yapping about above, but also ties it into those big brother traffic cameras posted at stoplights and on freeways to tell me the most effective way to get to where I want to go *now*. Feed the information to the Wide-Fi-connected GPS nav system in my car (powered by my car's hydrogen-powered engine), and have the system effectively recommend the best route for me given time of day, historical traffic patterns, current traffic conditions, etc. Maybe then local search (and big brother) will both be a little more useful.

</ rant>

OK, back to slingin' porn now...
<br>

[cluck]

Yep, working on owning the shit out of it now. Doesn't look *that* hard.

[dougeetx]

Really nice!

[Chris E]

Always innovative those google guys. Can't see yahoo being as good as this as they are continually playing catchup. Google is the biggest SE for a reason.

[MattO]

Hmm... I can't figure out why my parent's Florist isn't listed under their city. It's a PR5, which isn't bad for a little shop's website. Hmm...

[KRL]

Originally posted by juicylinks
http://local.google.com/local?sc=1&q...+Search& sl=1

Good one.

[Mr.Fiction]

When you search for "porn" and a city name, it comes back with law offices as the results.

Should we all be worried?

[VeriSexy]

Very cool, google rocks

[SetTheWorldonFire]

google rules!

[reynold]

That's just great!

[pimplink]

That's nice to hear.

[Jimbo]

only US addresses works for now, cant write postal codes from canada there