Among the recent minor changes to Google Places is an upgrade to its photo-gathering capabilities. Google has long been pulling information from other sources on the internet, but, until recently, the photos in Google Places had remained fairly untouched. These photos were typically just uploaded by owners. Now, Google is gathering photos from a few different sources around the net. Most notably, Google is gathering photos about local businesses from YellowBot, CityVoter and Panoramio. As you know, Google values a complete Places profile over one that is lacking. A simple and great way to ...

For most local businesses a sale often begins with a phone call. Whether the local business is a flourist, lawyer, accountant, dentist or auto repair shop, the fact is that most of these transactions start with a phone call. It's the reason that Yellow Pages were successful and the reason why we still have internet yellow pages. No matter how much information a business includes on its website, a phone call is often required. With the proliferation of phones capable of accessing the internet, phone transactions are becoming even more important. This is demonstrated by the integration of ...

Optimizing a local business websites for search engines is likely to have the great impact on the online presence of any business. Local search engine optimization (SEO) must distinguish between two types of searchers: 1. People in the local area who are looking for the business 2. People who are not in the local area, but may be researching for the future The reason that it's important to distinguish between the two is that their search queries will often differ. For example, someone who lives in San Diego may search for "homes for sale" when looking for San Diego homes that are ...