Google releases enhanced mobile search in the UK
31st January 2008 by Matt Hopkins
Mobile search is the "next big thing" and all search engines are
investing heavily in their technology to deliver search services in
better ways to a mobile/local user.
Yesterday, Google announced the release of an improved mobile search interface for the UK market.
One
of its main features is the ability to remember your location for
certain types of searches. This means that you don’t need to add the
location in the search term (e.g. bike shopPortsmouth ). In other
words, once you have entered your post code or city as your location,
any searches that Google considers to have "local intent" will be
restricted to businesses closest to you.
This is great news as we have been anticipating this type of behaviour when working with our Local SEO clients for some time. But it’s interesting to see what Google currently considers as a "local" type of search.
First
of all, you can’t set your "local" location in the "Settings" page for
Google mobile. I don’t know why; to me, this would have seemed to have
been a logical location. So in order to tell Google where you are
located, you need to first enter a query that it considers to be
locally oriented – e.g. "Pizza Restaurant".
When you first enter
this type of search – you get the "global" ranking results as you would
with the web version.. but if you scroll down a bit you will see a box
where you can "enter your location".
Once
configured, you’ll get Google Local Business entries in the results
followed by web pages that are
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