I’ve just finished reading and very refreshing article by Vanessa Fox letting us know that Google have introduced a new tool that allows Web site owners to specify the geographic location of their website.

Traditionally Google has used indicators such as your top-level domain (.com.au) and the physical location of your Web server to tell where your website/business is positioned geographically.  These indicators, while mostly accurate, do not always provide the best indication of website location.  You can now use Google Webmaster tools to specifically let their search engine know which country you would like to be associated with.

It’s great to hear a company such as Google is continuing to listen to website owners to help improve their service.  If you would like to know more about how to take advantage of nominating your Web site geographic location make sure you read the article over at Search Engine Land.

It really is only a matter of time before Google becomes much more aggressive in it’s targeting of real estate related traffic.  This is only further highlighted by a recent interview of Justin McCarthy who is in charge of Google’s Business Development “Real Estate” department.

A couple of key points that he makes are:

• that they feel that their best model will be to integrate syndicated data with organic search results
• agent listings will be free of charge, moving away from traditional paid classified models.
• that they have been studying user behaviour very closely and that most people searching for “San Francisco real estate” are generally looking for listings.  He hints that the most likely model that they will use to introduce search engine uses to this aggregated data will be by placing links at the top of the search results, offering suggestions through to “did you mean housing listings” links, much like they do now with common misspellings.

If you’re at all interested in real estate I encourage you to watch the video below.

Real Estate Video by - Real Estate Blogger

Below is a video that was recently posted on YouTube by Google about the power of promoting your brand online.

With the recent official launch of Google Maps Australia we also saw the welcome addition of Google Local Business Listings for Australian businesses.  Google Maps Australia are now also displaying local business listings which are currently being populated by News Ltd’s True Local service which is apparently part of the MySpace deal that was struck last year.

Marketing your business through the Google Local Business Centre is now a must do activity for all Australian businesses whether they have a website or not.  The process of adding or editing your business details is fairly painless and I have outlined the steps that I took to sign up eMedia Worx below.

Access the Google Local Business Centre: The first port of call is the Google Local Business Centre which you will be able to access from a standard Google Account.  If you don’t already have a Google account don’t worry, you will be prompted to sign up and the registration procedure is very painless.  A Google account will also allow you to gain access a wide range of other very helpful services offered by Google.

Submitting business details: once you have signed in and accessed the local business centre you will be able to commence submitting your business information.  The submission is a six step process and should take around 15 — 20 minutes, but don’t worry if you get distracted and have to leave halfway through as Google will remember where you are up to allow you to come back at a later date to finish.

The first screen you will be presented with will require you to enter your basic business information such as your name and address:

Once this information has been entered click on the “continue button” and you will be directed to the next step of the editorial process.

Adding additional information: In this step of the process you will be able to add more business information such as your telephone number, mobile phone, fax number, e-mail address, website address, 200 character description, payment terms, operating hours and an optional contact name.

Adjusting your location marker: You will also see a map on the right-hand side with an icon indicating your business location.  My marker was not quite in the right spot so I clicked on “the fix incorrect marker location” link and made the fine tuning adjustments to get it in the right spot.

Selecting business categories: The next step of the process is the ability to choose five categories that best describe our business activities.  Google will give you a window to submit some keywords describing your business and from this provide you with a list of categories that you can select.

Adding custom business attributes: Google has added a nice new feature that allows you to display some custom attributes about your business such as specialties, price type, in business since etc.  You can even add extra attributes if you like!  Here is an example from my account:

Adding Photos for Your Listing: you will also have the ability to add a number of photos with your listing.  I would recommend including a logo, product shots, key personnel and anything else you can think of that would be positive for your business. 

It is really important to go through these steps of adding photos and graphics, as Google will show at random graphics from Google images that it thinks it is related to your business.  Once you have added some graphics click on the continue button (don’t worry if you haven’t added anything you can always come back and change things later)

Preview your listing: the last step in your submission is to preview your information to make sure that it is all correct (once again this can be changed at any time in the future).  Once you have done that click on the “continue button”.

Confirming your business details: the final page in the submission process will show you a thank you page and provide you with some information about how Google will validate your business details.  You will see on the screen shot below that they are posting me a pin number as way of confirmation. Once I receive the pin number I will need to re-access my account, enter the pin number and activate my listing. 

Changing Information: once you have finalised your submission you will be able to access the local business centre and make changes as needed  at any time in the future .  The business centre has also introduced a nice new feature that will show you statistics on how your listing is performing over the past 30 days so it may be worthwhile popping in from time to time to see how things are going .

That’s about all that is needed to list your business with Google local.  I encourage you to head on over and start tapping into all those new local customers!

If you have any questions please feel free to leave them below.

About 30 seconds after posting about Google launching their mapping software in Australia I stumbled across an article on the Sydney morning Herald Web site about Google maps turning a 30 second walk into a 15 Minute Drive.  Maybe they still have some work to do.