Big Bill, an SEO friend of ours, has spotted as of yesterday that Google Local has launched in the UK and it appears that the listings are coming, in some part,from www.yell.com. If you go to www.google.co.uk, you will see the link ‘Try Google Local’ where you can search by entering your desired business category into the ‘What’ field and your town name or postcode in the ‘Where’field. Relevant local business listings, together with a map of their location,will appear on the page.

Alternatively, you can access Google Local search results by entering a town name or postcode along with your search terms. Relevant local business listings will appear at the top of the page next to a Google Local compass icon. For instance, if you type ‘restaurants w1’ (quotes unnecessary) Google will return listings of restaurants in the London, W1 area.

How relevant are these listings currently? Well, we could debate the relevancy of McDonalds being listed under ‘restaurants w1’ but we won’t chance the lawsuit ;-) However, Big Bill is not too convinced as he’s been listed at No 2 in Google for SEO UK for yonks and yet doesn’t show up in Google Local for SEO even under his own postcode. He suggests they might be having rather serious teething trouble and that perhaps we ought to call it Google Distant!

Time will tell!

Thanks Big Bill - http://www.kruse.co.uk