You’ve got to give it to Google, in one fell swoop just over two weeks ago, they single-handedly changed how the vast majority of prospective buyers locate local businesses online around the world!
The good news is they vastly improved the quality of local search, much needed (see my previous columns on topic) and of course it’s free to searchers.
Everyone wins … well not quite. In fact hundreds, if not thousands, of SEO consultants and online directories (verticals in the trade) around the globe face extinction or, at the least, a major shake-up to their current business models.
And many website owners, who have invested massively in SEO to achieve Page 1 or Top 10 status, may have to write off their sunk costs and start all over. If they don’t, their traffic will dwindle as their organic or natural listings on the Google SERP are progressively relegated to Page 2 and further into the digital wilderness.
Some businesses will be forced to seek the ‘safe but not inexpensive haven’ of Google AdWords. Google reserved for themselves the top three spaces for their own sponsored adverts which means, in some instances such as popular local categories like restaurants etc, there will be no organic listings on the front page at all, i.e. they will all be either Google sponsored adverts or Google Places directory listings!
The popular ‘Top 10 Guaranteed Google’ will become a directory offering destined to extinction probably to be replaced by some yet-to-be developed SEM service that guarantees your Google Place on the Top 7 (in the US they used to call the old Google Local the 7 Pack).
No doubt Google will say it’s a free service and business owners should do it themselves but if the latest blogs are anything to go by some companies are already offering this type of service for $600-$1,000 in the US.
In fact, there’s not a lot on the web about how this shake up will likely play out within the SEM/SEO industry.
As I travelled around NSW delivering online marketing training last week I was frequently asked “Will Google change its mind and do a back flip?” My response was that despite upsetting an awful lot of large publishers and verticals (their major customers) I can’t see it happening.
Some industry observers are speculating that the move was instigated by Google to ward off an unwelcome Facebook challenge to its supremacy. The company recently tried unsuccessfully to acquire the massively popular social media giant which has started offering businesses a more targeted performance based advertising platform (and it also now has links to Microsoft).
It does seem ironic that Google, the most successful search engine ever developed, has effectively turned back the clock, ten plus years, and become a directory.
In the event that users don’t like what the ‘do no evil people’ have done it may have opened the door to new search engine entrant Bing, or even a revitalised Yahoo, to challenge Google’s once impregnable market position. Only time will tell.
For a more detailed technical explanation refer to the SMART IDEAS column below. | 
