Well A Av Lots To Say About This. But Yes A Feel Av Been Ditched For A Younger Model. But Wat Can A Say BUSINESSES Free Ride Is Over. You Have To Work For Your Meal Now.

The Internet Was And Has Been A Wash With Crap For Years But I Have Noticed Things Are Being Cleaned Up

Think You Have To Take Part In The Internet Now Its Alive More So Now Than Ever. Was Once A Stagnent Pool Of. But Yes If I’am Looking For A Local Business A Dont Want To Find A Porn Star. Now Whats Wrong With That! Even Tho My Page Rank As Gone Down – A Dont Crab – You Just Pass The Buck. But Yes Business Need To Pic Domains Relative To There Business – Drive People – Not Spam Or You Get Never Found Marked Down. Use Maps, Google, Latatude, Mobile, Twitter Qr Code’s On Flyer’s Car Bus Milk Float – If That Rocks Your Boat.

Domains Will Go Up In Value – Un Toched Websites Will Just Float Away

Anyway You Can Read Loads More Good Googleeee Stuf On My Twitter http://www.twitter.com/Airtaxzee

Google has been so up and down with the local results that it is killing me. Back in November they moved to cover service areas for service companies… but they changed that back to city limits… or specific results to IP address.

If they are really about providing the best results then top quality pest control companies should be at the top doing things the white hat, or google outlined way… instead we are ousted by shady tactics of other less then stellar services. Funny thing is that we bought into their intent to put the best results on the top…

Best results for Google are the results they earn money on.

I think it is fairly obvious that Google is doing this because some web designers and SEO firms include cities in their website copy that are actually out of their immediate vicinity just to nab the business. Problem is, most are willing to drive to meetings with clients that are 2 hours away (I know I am) and may not be misrepresenting themselves.

What they should have is an additional verification page that asks you to certify that you will do business in a certain area before they will list you. Mind you, these two industries are being picked on and shouldn’t have to go through any special process.

Cleaning up the net is good, but yeh, SEO / web designing both have some correlations, depnding on what you’re doing.

The logic escapes me. A substantial amount of our business comes from people who want to sit down face to face and not deal with someone on the other side of the country. True many clients come from the other side of the country, even the other side of the world.

There may be more spamming of the index in our industries than many others, but Google should clean up the spam, not “throw out the baby with the bath water”.

At least you can search for “escort service” and find local results. Google clearly doesn’t have a problem with that.

If I want to search for local services I will enter the area such as a city or county and would expect local services relevant to the search query would have prominent positions within the organic results. If Google are saying that their so called ‘users’ are not doing this, then clearly they haven’t a clue about their users.
It is a well know fact here in the UK that any optimisation done on a site, should ultimately and initially be targeted at geographical locations, such as a city or county etc. or if you want to target business/customers in other areas they should be optimised for national results also.

Then again Google say a lot of things and do the opposite. I believe they put out more disinformation than actual information. I ‘ve been designing websites before Google ever existed and they have never honoured their guidelines at anytime I can remember.

One thing I do dismise, when it comes to SEO’s and that is targeting a geographical location, where clearly they are nowhere near that area. To me, thats being deceiving and could possibly give a business a bad name. Afterall if you lie about the area you are based in, what else are you lying about?

Here is why I think this actually makes sense… IF you are any good at SEO, your organic link should already be coming up in these search queries. Why in the world would a client want an SEO company that can’t get their own site to show up for their local area? I know I wouldn’t.

This is nothing new. In fact I have seen this scenario with the automotive field for quite some time. It makes no sense what so ever. There is no consistency to this methodology. If people are going to go to a search engine to find something, Google needs to apply some kind of consistency so people know what to expect. instead it feels like we might as well click on that ‘Feeling Lucky’ button! Is Google starting to get to big?

I noticed the reduction in local listings for SEO and web design a couple of weeks ago when I launched my new site. It does not surprise me at all really. Out of all the listings that used to be displayed in the results for the search phrase “web design my town”, only one of the listings was a “real” local company. The rest of the web design listings claimed to be local, but in fact were not even close to being local at all. Two of the listings were lead capture sites for a company from India. That being said, I think getting rid of the listings was a smart move for Google.