Wot No
Local Search
The character on the right appeared in the most unusual places during Word War II asking similar very basic questions. You might have called him Kilroy if you are in the US or Chad if you are in the UK.
The comment is particularly surprising currently since there is a great deal of discussion and concern about Google Local Search and how it works. You may therefore be a little surprised to find that it does not exist. It is widely acknowledged that providing local results when people search for stores or suppliers is very important. Not least because you can then show relevant advertising close to the point of purchase decision.
It is even more surprising because the opposition does provide local search facilities. Just type in local.yahoo.com and you will be shown the following search screen.
It is very similar to the format for a Yellow Pages search for local suppliers. It would seem to be the natural way to help people find what they are looking for in their neighbourhood.
With Microsoft’s new entrant Bing, you can also arrive at a somewhat minimal local search page by typing in local.bing.com. This is presumably a work in progress since it is somewhat sparse and even enigmatic.
Now try to get a Google Local Search by typing local.google.com and you are in for a disappointment. Here is what you see.
The word local does not appear at all. Google has decided that you really preferred to do a search among their Maps. Indeed it is impossible to find a link to Local Search on any of the desktop PC search pages.
Google has accepted the much bigger challenge of trying to guess in the Universal Search Page whether or not you may wish to be seeing local results. If Google guesses this is so, then towards the top of the search results they will show a block of local services that may fit your search. Why they have gone this route, only they can say.
The only place you can find a link to Local Search is on the Mobile Search Results web page as shown on the right. Even then, you are just served up a list of local results without any opportunity to give a more precise indication of where you are located. Given the interest in Local Search and the need to get it right, this guessing on the part of Google hardly seems adequate, since it is not very reliable. Perhaps it is time for Google to follow the others and provide the obvious way for people to do Local Searches.
