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If you rely on local customers to come to your store or service facility, then it is most important that these customers can find you on Google.

If they do their checking before they leave home using their desktop PC, then they may well use Google Local Search. It may be a problem for you to rank well in such a search as a recent Cre8asite Forums discussion points out. As the topic author pointed out, there are Completely And Utterly Farcical Google Local Verification Procedures. The problem is that Google does not support this local search facility with a customer service function. They rely on computer algorithms to identify the location of particular businesses. If that algorithm handles your website incorrectly, then it may be very difficult for you to get that corrected.

You may not be aware, but if such a customer does a Google search for your business on their mobile device that may give them a very different result. Since your more interesting prospects may be using a Blackberry or an iPhone, this can be an important challenge.

To check out whether you appear in Google Mobile Search for appropriate keywords, the following is a way for you to check this. This is a simulation of how Google mobile search appears on an iPhone using landscape display.

In all likelihood you may be surprised at the results. As usual Google does not reveal details of its Mobile Search algorithm. However it is likely that if your website does not give a good user experience on a mobile device, then it may be downgraded in the listings. Notice also that there is a link to Google Local Search. That of course in this case must be Google Local Mobile search. The results will be different from the regular desktop Local Search.

It is also of interest to note that it is only on mobile devices that you have this direct link to local search. In the regular Google desk top research there is no such link. In that case Google relies on an analysis of the search terms to decide whether to give you local search results. You can try your desktop search using Google Maps but this does not give you an easy route to find local suppliers.

If you wish to make sure that potential customers find you, it is important that you cover all all these different ways customers may try to find you. Contact us if you need help in handling these challenges.

Related Posts

• December 24, 2008 -- Do You Hear How Google Will Search? (5)
• October 23, 2007 -- Free 411: GOOG or CALL (21)

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 10:34 am and is filed under Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.