On May 12, Google introduced a new feature called ‘Rich Snippets‘ that will become a standard part of their indexing algorithm. This feature could be important for any business, but I think local businesses should be especially alert to it — it is one more tactic to use in the local search SEO campaign.  Pay attention to this one, folks – it could have a big impact on search over time.

The Rich Snippets feature is an evolving effort to use structured data in search results. Ordinarily, Google picks up a piece of text, usually the meta description, to insert a brief descriptive ‘snippet’ about a website along with the URL in search results. Beginning now, it will sometimes include structured data in the search result snippet in place of the text description.  Google is currently supporting structured data about ratings and people, but plans to begin using other kinds of data soon.

Here’s one example from Google how a rich snippet might look.  In this one, a local business with a rating on Yelp is shown in search results with rating information.

Google has tested this concept and offers an important clue to the importance they give it: It’s a simple change to the display of search results, yet our experiments have shown that users find the new data valuable — if they see useful and relevant information from the page, they are more likely to click through. That’s the important thing for your business — attracting the click.

It’s not yet clear, to me at least, how individual local businesses will use this feature, but I am sure the issue will be all over the blogosphere for the next few weeks, and we’ll know a lot more soon.  The structured data does have to be tagged by someone who knows what they are doing (your webmaster, unless you build websites yourself), but as always Google is providing examples like the ones you see in the link above.

One last thing:  You might be asking, what is structured data?  Roughly, it is information that is defined by a variable that can take a range of values.  “First name” = “Glenn” in my case.  Ratings information is classic, since there is a structure that includes the name of the business, a ratings system (e.g., 1 to 4 stars), a price range, and might include a testimonial in text.  If you run a business that can be rated, in Yelp or TripAdvisor for example, it is described by structured data.

One more part of your SEO package.  Do use it.

I ran across a post about Microsoft’s mobile Live search and thought I’d give it a test drive (I’m usually a late adopter).   Kind of funny, kind of sad.

I decided to make it easy by dialing in and asking for services in San Luis Obispo since that’s a pretty well-known town (unlike Morro Bay which no one outside of CA has ever heard of).  After going through a minute or so of introduction, instructions, and options, the voice-activated system took me through a quick menu to find the kind of business I wanted to find — ‘restaurants’.  It asked me what kind of restaurant I wanted, and I said ‘california’ — no answer to that one.  So I tried ‘wine country’ and got the same response, and decided to let the system tell me what my options really are:  pizza, chinese, fast food, mexican, italian.  That’s a hip pocket survey of American culture right there isn’t it?

I chose Italian and we started down a numbered list — you choose by saying the number at any point.  I listened and tried #3 and got the response it didn’t have that option, and would you like to hear the list again?  So this time I picked ‘one’ and it clicked, giving me my options for ‘unna avola’  which I think means Buona Tavola, including one option to get directions.

The system did recognize ‘Morro Bay’ and it basically clicked on my home address as well!  I registered the home address and then asked for the directions:  after a few seconds, Live search announced it couldn’t find the directions at this time, and re-opened the main menu.  Square one.

By this time, I would have been half way into SLO and in the usual cell phone dead spot just north of the Cuesta campus.  I gave up.  A good idea but not well executed. I’m sure this is hard to do technically speaking, but when it doesn’t work well, people will leave for other systems.

Owners of local small businesses now use the Internet more than any other source to find other businesses.  Yet only 44% of these owners actually have a website.  This gap is one of the main findings of new research from Webvisible and Nielsen , and reported as the ‘great divide‘ in the Marketing Vox post.

The research confirms that the Internet is increasingly the way people find local information.  82% of respondents in this study use search engines for local info compared with 57% who use Yellow Pages directories.  50% actually use the search engines first, compared with only 24% who turn to the YPs first.  A large majority of the searchers were satisfied with the online search experience even though they often had difficulty finding a specific business they were looking for.

Reading between the lines, this suggests that they found at least a similar business online, and perhaps used that instead of the one they were looking for in the first place.  As the Internet replaces other sources of local information, it will be ever more important for local businesses to have websites and to promote them.  That’s where their competition is.

This is a quickie:  see this diagram for a nice summary of the additional factors you can consider in optimizing a local business website, courtesy of Greg Sterling.  It’s based on the analysis of David Mihm.