Expanding in it’s Local Search initiative, Google has rolled out Google City Pages. Local is the future in Search, and Google is working to make their mark in the Local Markets. City Pages combines Google Places and Google Offers, with a user friendly dashboard for business owners to manage their listing.
First Rolled out in Portland Oregon, the service has expanded to include Austin, Texas; Madison, Wisconsin; and San Diego, California. Google has plans to roll it out on major cities across the US.
Google’s City Pages also allow users to: post reviews, find top-rated places; find special deals; see community spotlights and upcoming events in the area.
It includes Categories like, Bars, Restaurants, Hotels, Coffee, Health, Fitness and something that’s kind of cool, special filters like: Family Friendly, Great For Dates, Live Entertainment, Pet Friendly, Romantic, and many others.
Even users who aren’t aware of the city pages may end up using the tool, because these pages are indexed by Google. But this may not go well with competing Local Directory’s who spend big bucks on advertising, like Yelp and CitySearch.
The Business Owners Tab introduces SMBs to a number of Google ad products and services: Adwords Express, Boost, TalkBin (mobile CRM tool) and Offers. New Businesses can “Claim” their listings, and a local number to call for support.
Other Features include a “Community” tab, for local events, and an “Offers” tab, which is not available on the San Diego page at this time.
There it talk of Google offering Free Domains and Web Sites to local businesses for one year, as a way to get them in the door. The program which was initially launched in the UK, then spread to Canada and Australia, now seems to be making its way to the U.S.
We’ll cover more on this in a future post.
[…] has ramped up their Local Search efforts with their Google City Pages. Up and coming Search Engine “Acesse.com” gets their Local Search results from […]