Seeing Forests

Greg takes Another Look at Google Places Pages and it’s a good one.  Realizing there was only so much you could put in a pop-up tabbed window, Google moves to creating a set of place pages at varying levels of geographic scale, from cities through neighborhoods to attractions and finally to businesses themselves.  Of course, it’s done in the “Google Way” which is like “when the student is ready, the master will appear” or “when the data is ready, the algorithm shall appear.”  And you get content accordingly.  Here’s a quick analysis of what content’s available at what levels.  Of course, the more you “zoom in” the more detailed information becomes available (cities just don’t have phone numbers).   We came at this from the user-generated side with Local Guides (aka Guidespot).  We provided tools users could use to generate place pages (or guides) like this to Copper Mountain that included adding descriptions, photos, videos, lists of popular businesses, directions on getting there, and related areas.  Of course the “Local Paradox” means that such strategies will continue to be challenged by providing highly relevant pages but generating relatively low traffic.  Having more such pages may push the traffic as people realize they will be more rewarded by conducting these kinds of searches.  I continue to think that the answer lies somewhere in-between the auto-generated and the human-curated.  Apparently you still can’t beat “Cats inside Sinks!” for traffic, though.

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