Today, Google Director of Product Management Johanna Wright took to the official blog to point out how popular local searches have been. “Looking at these lists, I was surprised to see that, from city to city, almost all the terms across all the lists were related to local news, education, civic services or entertainment and activities,” she says. “I wanted to take a minute to take a deeper dive into these specific local trends that you won’t see published in Zeitgeist.”

These local trends?

“In nearly every single U.S. city we looked at, the top ten local terms showed that people were using Google to find local news stations and learn more about educational organizations,” she says. “Searches for school districts, universities and local libraries made the list in ten states, from the Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis, MN to the Chicago Public Library in Illinois.Pittsburgh, PA was the most media-hungry city in Zeitgeist this year, with all of their top 5 terms related to local news stations, while in New York City and Houston, TX, no news sources made the top ten lists.”

Another key trend was regional differences within states. 40% of terms for Orlando, FL, for example, were related to education, but in Miami, no education-related terms whatsoever made the list.

Other major trends seen in different cities included heavy searching for local civic services, local unemployment and job-related queries. Other local-related trends in heavy searching included lotteries, amusement parks, sports teams, etc.

The point Wright is trying to make, as best as I can tell, is that Google is an important tool for people looking for local information. I think that was pretty obvious already, but seeing the trends laid out does kind of emphasize this point.

Why do you think Google keeps making all of these local-related acquisitions? Recent examples would be Clever Sense and Zagat. This is another reason why a Google acquisition of Foursquare might not bee too far fetched.

As you can see, this is more evidence of the rise of Facebook ads.

A report came out this week indicating that Facebook is getting ready to get into mobile ads. It’s a little surprising they haven’t already done so, but the big IPO is expected to be just around the corner, so that should be another big money maker for the social networking giant.

In terms of group deals, it’s worth noting that more businesses surveyed intend to use Google Offers than Groupon in the future. I’d say there are two main reasons why it is in last place for those people have used right now. For one, it’s still fairly new. For two, it’s not available in a whole lot of markets yet, though it is rapidly expanding.

It’s a pretty good sign for Google Offers that it is so close to LivingSocial in the chart. It’s really interesting to see that nearly twice as many people are using “other” as Groupon, though it makes sense, with all of the local-based and vertical-based deals offerings out there.

Google has acquired the company for an undisclosed sum. TechCrunch, which got the scoop (and was also the source on the Groupon talks), got this statement from Google:

“The Clever Sense team is at the forefront of developing a recommendation engine that connects the online and offline worlds by delivering personal and sophisticated information to users at the right time, the right place and within the right context. By combining their technology and expertise with our team and products, we’ll be able to provide even more people with intelligent, personalized recommendations for places to eat, visit and discover.”

Clever Sense co-founder and CEO Babak Pahlavan writes on the Clever Sense site:

When we embarked on our mission to curate the world around us, we knew we were taking on a huge challenge. We worked hard to build the Clever Sense Platform to tackle the problem of information overload in the real world. Using that platform, we built Alfred to create a simple, enjoyable, and powerful way to discover new places and help make decisions on the go. It’s exciting to see that our passion turned into something people around the world use regularly to make everyday decisions that are just right for them.

We didn’t achieve this success alone. We sincerely want to thank our users, investors, our amazing board and superb advisors. We will be your loyal fans for life.

Here’s a look at Clever Sense’s app Alfred:

Yelp, which has already complained frequently about Google’s practices in its territory is probably not going to like this acquisition very much.

“MapQuest Vibe helps people cut through the ratings clutter by providing actual rankings based on key criteria within a richer neighborhood context,” said MapQuest VP of product, Vijay Bangaru.”Presenting neighborhood data in a structure that’s enhanced by geographic context is critical to accelerating exploration of what’s around you. We believe we have a unique platform to give people contextually relevant information that helps them make decisions.”

The product will automatically populate the user’s current city or neighborhood (assuming that city/neighborhood is available, which mine isn’t, though it is still in beta), and let you search for other neighborhoods and give you the most popular and most frequented hotspots or clusters of businesses on streets, intersections, etc.

The product determines the best-ranked businesses in the dining, shopping, activities, beauty/spas, local services, health/med, and lodging/accommodations categories.

It operates based on “vibe score,” which is generated by interactions on MapQuest.com, cartographic analysis and “user signals”.

“When you think about it, neighborhoods are fuzzy by nature – constantly changing as businesses come in and out of service and people’s interests shift,” said Simon Hill, principal product manager, MapQuest. “MapQuest Vibe evolves in the same way, providing current information to help people feel like a local wherever they are and wherever they visit. Additionally, the voting mechanism helps create wider local community purpose that reflects the online, social and physical reality of urban communities.”

“Our users have long been using MapQuest to discover what’s in and around their area, but with more than 18 million domestic points of interest, we felt there was a need to dive deeper into what we could deliver to our users,” said MapQuest SVP and General Manager Christian Dwyer. “MapQuest Vibe takes that enormous pool of information and helps people make better decisions on what appeals to them using the social heart and wisdom of the crowds.”

AOL says MapQuest gets 39 million unique visitors per month.

There are plenty of achievements on Foursquare, known as “badges,” that are city-specific. For instance, there’s one for checking-in above a certain street number in New York City and there are badges for specific events that taken place in certain cities like SXSW. The new Windy City Badge is the first badge that really promotes checking-in around an entire city.

Users can unlock the badge by visiting 5 of the 21 places on the list. The places on the list are all local attractions or small businesses that are historically significant or popular around Chicago. The list includes “Dat Old Fashioned Donut” Donut Shop, The Oriental Institute Museum, The Garfield Park Conservatory and the 63rd Street Beach.

Of course, the badge serves as a motivation to get people to visit local establishments. It aims to help people explore the city and find some of its best local venues.

As part of this launch, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined Foursquare as “Chicago’s Mayor.” He currently has over 1,000 followers on the service, and says that he will be checking-in to locations all over Chicago to help promote the new Windy City Badge.

Cities everywhere could benefit from this kind of specialization in the future. Like the Windy City Badge, other badges can be based off the new Foursquare Lists feature. This could promote local businesses and attractions by harnessing the power of the achievement. Everyone loves to win something – and badges like this can serve as an incentive to visit locales in the same way holding down a Mayorship does.

Would you like to see special Foursquare badges for your city? Let us know in the comments.

As big a fan as I am of the snarky comment, however, this one doesn’t ring true for me.  I totally understand how Yelp reviews are very important and I see why Google went after them first, but I am left wondering whether Google ended up far better off than people think, perhaps even better off than if they had bought Yelp.

First, regardless of whether they bought Yelp or Zagat, Google has desperately wanted to have its own reviews to add to its local offerings and now they have them. What’s more, I believe that Zagat reviews have a better brand image than Yelp’s. Whatever advantage Yelp might have had in cachet over Zagat was that Zagat might have seemed old school, but now that Google owns them, you can bet they can overcome any dowdy image that might have dogged them. How long before you see a Zagat app on Android that allows you not only to search for restaurants but to be one of the raters yourself?

Then, there is the question of the price. That same TechCrunch article linked above pegs the price at somewhere below $66 million, because there is no government review needed for acquisitions under that price. Contrast that to the half-billion dollars reportedly rejected by Yelp. Even if you print money the way Google does, having an extra $400+ million to spend on other things can’t hurt. They could buy six more content companies the size of Zagat, for example and still have some change left over.

But people who criticize this deal are missing something else. Zagat is not like Encyclopedia Britannica, because Zagat reviews are not written by one person based on one opinion. Zagat’s has a system that uses hundreds of thousands of surveys to combine for their restaurant ratings. Their system is full of fact checkers and other checks and balances to make sure that the reviews are accurate.

Now, think about that. Suppose you take that systematic process that Zagat has painstakingly worked out over the years and you hand it to Google. Google could very easily start with Zagat reviews and then add a social media ratings and review component that allows Zagat’s to scale their reviews way higher than they do now. And fact checking of reviews is woefully missing from ratings systems today and sorely needed. Even simple things like, “Is the restaurant still open?” or “Is that phone number still accurate?” would be a major improvement to Google’s local offerings, because Google just doesn’t keep data up to date today.

So, stay with me here. On top of what Google bought that everyone knows they bought–Zagat’s restaurant ratings–is it possible that Zagat’s system of collecting and curating ratings could be applied to other businesses, too? All of these rating systems have developed the Yelp way, aggregating many ratings of unknown quality. Google, for all of its love of technology, was the first one to implement a search ranking system based on links, allowing the human element to affect search quality–permanently for the better. It wouldn’t shock me if Google wanted to use humans in a scalable process that improved ratings quality.

But even if this deal is about nothing more than buying a set of restaurant ratings, it is still a very good deal for Google. Expect to see these ratings incorporated into Google forthwith, which is a major improvement for all restaurant searches.

Check out Biznology for more articles by Mike Moran

If you’re unfamiliar with Google Map Maker, it’s an offering from the company, with which users can add their own knowledge areas to improve Google Maps.

With the new program, mappers Google deems “distinguished” get increased reviewing capabilities within their state, country or region of expertise.

“Our Regional Expert Reviewers earned their appointed positions by making an impressive number of high quality contributions to Google’s base map, and by actively participating with Google and other mappers on our Map Your World discussion forums,” explains Google Map Maker software engineer Robin Anil. “Much as Google reviewers are differentiated by a ‘G’ icon next to their username in Google Map Maker, you can recognize a Regional Expert Reviewer by an ‘R’ icon next to his or her username when they review your edits. These moderators are located all around the world, and the Map Maker team is thrilled to be working alongside such expert mappers to ensure our quality of reviews remain high in our ongoing effort to build better maps.”

“Map Maker is rooted in the belief that local knowledge is essential to creating accurate maps, this is the very reason we put mapping in users’ hands,” says Anil. “They can be reassured that their edits may be reviewed by other locals who are familiar with their area and are invested in the quality of mapping around their community. Additionally, all Map Maker contributors can, at any time, review and comment on the edits in their communities. After all, contributors know their neighborhood better than anyone else. Now, their reviewers can, too.”

More information about how to use Map Maker can be found here.

Zagat is of course a big name consumer review service.

On the Official Google Blog, Marissa Mayer writes:

Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering—delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.

With Zagat, we gain a world-class team that has more experience in consumer based-surveys, recommendations and reviews than anyone else in the industry. Founded by Tim and Nina Zagat more than 32 years ago, Zagat has established a trusted and well-loved brand the world over, operating in 13 categories and more than 100 cities. The Zagats have demonstrated their ability to innovate and to do so with tremendous insight. Their surveys may be one of the earliest forms of UGC (user-generated content)—gathering restaurant recommendations from friends, computing and distributing ratings before the Internet as we know it today even existed. Their iconic pocket-sized guides with paragraphs summarizing and “snippeting” sentiment were “mobile” before “mobile” involved electronics. Today, Zagat provides people with a democratized, authentic and comprehensive view of where to eat, drink, stay, shop and play worldwide based on millions of reviews and ratings.

What other Googlers are saying (on Google+):

Vic Gundotra: “+1 to this news!”

Kavi Harshawat: “Super excited about this! I love Zagat and use them every time I visit a new city.”

Hunter Walk: “Love Zagat as part of GOOG family. Wrote in 07/08 about their missed opportunity on the web.” He also said, “Pro tip: Zagat (just acq by Google) pronounced like ‘the cat’ not ‘zay-gat’ or ‘zah-gat’”.

Here’s what others are saying:

Terms have not been disclosed.

Facebook gave us the following statement: “After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks. We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses. We remain committed to building products to help local businesses connect with people, like Ads, Pages, Sponsored Stories, and Check-in Deals. We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.”

Much of the commentary around this move is painting it as one less competitor for Groupon, and perhaps that is the case as far as “daily deals”. But as far as where local businesses are spending their ad dollars, I would hardly say Facebook has any less an edge because of this.

For one, you have to consider that the the daily deals and check-in spaces are becoming much more integrated with one another, and appear to be essentially merging. Facebook probably doesn’t need a traditional Groupon-type version of deals. Facebook users don’t necessarily need a daily email about a businesses they may or may not care about. The check-in deal, where users can check-in to a store they’re already at for a deal is likely more appealing to more users, and these deals are more likely to consistently be taken advantage of by users.

It’s not as if Groupon and its other competitors don’t know this. You may recall a recently announced partnership between Groupon and Foursquare.

Facebook already offers some very good targeting options and an enormous user base that is irresistible to advertisers. They even continue to improve on the targeting. They also recently opened up the Ads API, so you can expect third-parties to do some even more interesting things with Facebook advertising.

Meanwhile, in the deals space itself, Groupon is down 50% while LivingSocial is up 27% in traffic this summer, according to new numbers from Exerpiean Hitwise. Here are some highlights of the firm’s more recent findings in this area:

• The drop-off in Groupon traffic this summer has been significant nearly 50% since its peak in the second week of June 2011 compared to last week.
• During the same time, Living Social has achieved 27% growth in visits to its site.
• Overall visits to a custom category of Daily Deal & Aggregator sites were down 25% for the same time.
• Please note that this is web-based traffic to both domains and does not include mobile or app specific traffic.
• Perhaps it is simply a case of increased number of competitors and deal fatigue among consumers or simply not enough of the right deals.
• PriceGrabber released results from its Local Deals Survey in June, stating that 44% of respondents said they use or search daily deal Websites. However, 52% expressed feeling overwhelmed by the number of bargain-boasting emails they receive on a daily basis.

The service originally launched in Boise in early June. Two months later, it launched on Groupon’s home turf in Chicago. Now NYC, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago’s northwest suburbs, Northern Virginia, Orlando and the San Francisco Peninsula.

“Since our initial launch in Boise in June, AmazonLocal has rapidly expanded to 30 distinct locations in 10 states. Whether it’s an amazing deal on local services or, in the coming months, on Amazon.com, MYHABIT.com and endless.com, AmazonLocal customers can expect to find significant savings every day,” said Mike George, vice president of AmazonLocal. “In New York, there’s no better way to truly understand the Big Apple than by getting the best deals the city has to offer.”

Amazon says NYC customers can expect deals like:

• 50% off tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s newest show, Zarkana, in Midtown
• $50 for $100 at Uskudar Turkish Restaurant in Uptown
• $13 for $27 worth of cupcakes at Brooklyn Cupcake
• 74% off one month of unlimited hot yoga classes at Bikram Yoga Harlem
• $15 for $30 worth of groceries at any Upper East Side Gristedes

Amazon is also including deals from affiliated sites, such as: $25 for $50 to spend on jewelry and watches at Amazon.com, $40 for $80 to spend at MYHABIT.com and $25 for $50 to spend at 6pm.com.

Customers that use Amazon Rewards Visa cards will earn five points for each dollar spent on AmazonLocal in 2011.