Google Announces New Google Carousel for Local Search Results
Jun 26, 2013
by
1
Google Announces New Google Carousel for Local Search Results
Starting on June 18th, when you use Google’s search engine to look for restaurants, bars, or other local places on your desktop, you will see an interactive “carousel” with your local results at the top of the page.
Want to try it? Try searching “best restaurant” in your search engine and see what comes up. Keep a lookout for this, although it does not apply to every local listing, Google is planning to add more features and languages over time. Soon enough, my prediction is that it will apply to 99% of all local search results for any category of business. 
How can You Use Google Carousel to Your Advantage?
Google pulls the information for the carousel from your business’ Google Maps listing. On that listing, it is important to make optimal use of the targeted keywords, reviews, and location specifications so that you can show up on the top of the search results to your potential clients for this new feature.
So make sure that you have these items:
- A Verified Google Maps Listing
- Google+ Business Page
- Correctly chosen keywords and categories for your listing
- Lots and lots of reviews
- Correctly formatted pictures on your listing
Early Study on Carousel Results
One marketer (Matthew Hunt) found that 48% of searchers he surveyed clicked on the carousel results, 14% clicking on the map. He used the term “Chicago Restaurants” and found that 40 searchers clicked on the Carousel results. View this to see the exact heatmap from the page that was studied.
Be one of the first businesses to take advantage of this new feature on Google Search, and make sure your local listing is optimized so that you can show up on this feature as well!
Comments
Leave a comment
To leave a comment, please log in / sign up
RSS Feed
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube