Google Using Hyperlocal Blogs as Review Sources
Sometime late last year, I was pleasantly surprised to see our Kennewick Real Estate Blog showing up in Google Maps as a source of reviews and information about local businesses. We do a fair amount of writing about local businesses on all four local blogs, and I’m glad to see them listed almost anywhere — but certainly in a popular setting like Google Maps.
Mike Blumenthal has written a long and detailed post about this, and I highly recommend you read that to understand what Google is doing with local blog content. But I’ll also show a couple screenshots of what I’m referring to below.
First, try it yourself: Go to Google Maps and type your domain name into the search box. Do any local business results show up? If that doesn’t work, use our blog as an example — type “kennewickrealestateblog.com” into the search box, and you should see a handful of businesses/listings.
All of those are places we’ve written about on the Kennewick blog. Some were only passing mentions of a sentence or two. Others, like the bottom one you see, was a full review of a local restaurant. If you click on the listing for that restaurant in Google Maps, you’ll see our blog showing prominently — not under reviews, unfortunately, but under the “more about this place” section.
The placement isn’t ideal, but it’s still a potentially good source of exposure. Google Maps has surpassed MapQuest as the number one site in the Travel/Mapping space, and Google continues to promote Maps to both business users and searchers.
What You Should Do: There’s nothing to install or sign up for; if you think there’s value in seeing your blog listed as a resource in Google Maps, try this:
- (Continue to) Write about local businesses.
- When it makes sense, include the street address or phone number of the business in your blog post. Google uses this information to match your content with its business listings.
- Be patient. This stuff doesn’t show up in Google Maps overnight.
That’s it.
It’s good to see Google recognizing the value of local blog content. I can’t help but wonder if they’re planning anything along the lines of Bing’s Local Lens tool. At the moment, that seems to be the gold standard when it comes to the marriage of search engines and hyperlocal blog content.
CouponMap: Easy Way to Add Coupons to Your Blog
It might be the recession, it might be something else. “It” is Americans growing use of coupons. The LA Times recently reported that coupon use is on the rise — a 20% gain in redemptions between 2006 and 2009.
So, if people are more interested in coupons, should your hyperlocal blog help them find what they’re looking for? If you think so, let me suggest CouponMap as probably the easiest way to add coupons to your blog. The site is primarily a coupon search engine, but it also offers a super-easy-to-embed widget that you should be able to add to your in about three minutes.
Here’s how it works…
Start on the CouponMap widget page, which looks like this:
You can center the map on any zip code, landmark, or street address. I started out by using my local zip codes, then moved the map around to see where the best concentration of coupons was. I chose an address in the center of that map and set it as my center point. You can customize height and width to fit your blog, and adjust the border of your map, too.
You’ll end up with about 10 lines of javascript code that can be embedded anywhere on your blog. I chose to make new blog pages, but you could put the map in your sidebar if you prefer. Here’s what the implementation looks like on our Kennewick real estate blog:
Each icon is a coupon; click it and the coupon detail pops up in the same way you’re familiar with from using Google Maps. The coupons I’ve found are coming from sites like Restaurant.com, Valpak.com, GoGrocery, and others. If you go to CouponMap.com, you can click “Coupon Providers” in the upper right to see more sources.
I’ve installed coupon pages on three of our four local blogs:
The fourth city, West Richland, doesn’t have enough of a retail base to justify adding the map. But these are small towns I’m dealing with. Take a look at the Seattle map I’ll embed below:
Pretty nice, isn’t it? I think adding a map like that on your blog can be a real valuable content addition.
What are your thoughts? Is this something you’d consider adding to your blog? Comments are open for your pros and/or cons.
Nominated for a SEMMY Award
Hyperlocal Blogger has two articles nominated in the Blogs & Blogging category of the 2010 SEMMY Awards. The nominated articles are:
Judges will now decide if either article is good enough to be a finalist. If so, I’ll be posting again next week asking for your votes. 
If you’re not familiar with the SEMMYs, they’re an annual awards for online marketing content. Disclosure: I created the awards three years ago. I did not, however, nominate my own articles for inclusion. One or two of the other seven nominating judges must’ve put mine on the list.
How Often Do You Post?
If you read the tips-based article I mentioned in the previous post, Nine Tips for Starting up a Local Site, Blog, you may have noticed two pieces of advice that seem to contradict one another.
Debbia Galant of Baristanet gives this tip: “Post often: five times a day during the week.”
Chrysanthe Tenentes of Brooklyn Based says this: “Make it meaningful. Avoid content overload.”
Hmmmmm. That makes me curious, so let’s tap your expertise:
How often do you post on your hyperlocal blog? How do you decide what’s too much? Would you post more often if you could? Is there a “sweet spot” that you’ve discovered in your hometown?
Comments are open.
Hyperlocal Blogging hits Fox Small Business Center
Nice to see hyperlocal blogging getting more play on Big Media outlets. This week it’s a couple articles on the Fox Small Business Center web site.
The main article appears to be this one, Launching Local Site Can Be Simple, Fun — and Pay, which profiles (in part) the folks at Baristanet and Brooklyn Based.
Then there’s a secondary piece, Nine Tips for Starting up a Local Site, Blog, which includes some tips from the folks who run those two local blogs.
Have you heard of BlockChalk?
I’m somewhat intrigued by a new service that I just discovered, but has apparently been around for a while now: It’s called BlockChalk and it seems to function as a hyperlocal version of Twitter in some ways, but maybe with elements of Gowalla/Foursquare and even some Craigslist mixed in. Like I said, it’s an interesting idea.
With BlockChalk, you use your mobile phone to leave anonymous messages (“chalks”) about your neighborhood. The service says it has users in almost 100 countries and more than 7,000 cities.
There’s no signup required and, as the video shows, your exact location details aren’t revealed … which, to my mind, limits the overall functionality at least a bit. But maybe not much. I’m not a fan of the anonymity part — that seems like an invitation for potential abuse.
The posting of messages is obviously reminiscent of Twitter, but unlike Twitter, the “chalks” don’t disappear as part of a timeline; the service is more like a bulletin board in that sense. The automatic pinning of messages to a location is Gowalla/Foursquare-esque. And depending on how your neighborhood peers are using BlockChalk, it could serve as a Craigslist-type service, too, with messages about local items for sale, etc.
What’s It Have to Do with Hyperlocal Blogging?
If you happen to have a fair amount of BlockChalk users in your neighborhood, I could see it serving at least three functions for local bloggers:
- Making connections with your neighbors, who are potential readers of your blog.
- Finding local content for your blog by reading what others are “chalking.”
- Promoting your blog by leaving a “chalk” when you publish new posts (just like you’re probably already doing with Twitter).
I just downloaded the new iPhone app and it appears I’m the first person in my hometown to have done so; not a surprise at all on that. But maybe you can get a sense of what it offers by poking around some of the web-based archives, like Brooklyn, NY or San Francisco, CA.
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