We’ve been guinea pigs ourselves to Google’s SERP tests that are occasionally trialled with (randomly?) selected users, but this latest one was spotted by Peter Young at Holistic Search.
The difference?
The existing result for [Cousin’s Furniture] shows a small version the scrolling map top-left to compliment and the #1 organic esult, whereas the test version shows the name of the business, a wider map giving more context to the business location and also pulls in important “at-a-glance” information like the opening hours and nearest public transport.
Business pictures from the owner are also listed under the map, adding some legitimacy to the listing. The added information is simply coming from the Places Page for Cousin’s Furniture, so this is just Google presenting existing information in a new way, rather than an attempt to show new something it has never had access to before. From the screenshot it does seem like the only pictures being shown are from the business owner themselves, rather than user submitted photos, but maybe that’s just by chance in this photo.
Personally I’ll be a big fan if this goes live for everyone and will mean more screen “real-estate” for companies, and is another nail in the coffin for targting competitor brand names in an strategy.
See the full size image over at the Holistic Search Blog.
This blog was written over 6 months ago and Internet Marketing and is an always changing industry which means the information within this blog may be out of date. Use caution when using any methods or suggestions within it.
