Search giant Google late Wednesday night introduced a host of improvements to its beta local search offering, including integrating interactive maps and reviews of listed businesses, to the results.
Google Local's added functionality brings it in line with Yahoo! and America Online's local search engines, which--until Wednesday night--both offered more extensive write-ups about local businesses,
said The Kelsey Group analyst Greg Sterling. He said the local search space is seeing a period of high competition, and the biggest search engines are working hard to keep their offerings competitive
by adding features such as reviews and maps. "There's definitely a tightening going on in the local component of the marketplace," said Sterling. "Google's upgrade is big step forward, and it
makes it more competitive with what Yahoo!--and more recently, AOL--is doing." "We're going to see a number of different features that are going to be common," Sterling said. "More or less, the
same kind of data and features will appear in these products. I think the companies that are going to do well in this space are the ones that really try to orient their products, and the results that
they deliver, to the perceived needs of consumers." The reviews are pulled from other sites, such as CitySearch.com, Gayot.com, and Amazon.com. They include both editorial critiques and user
opinions culled from those sites. But, unlike AOL and Yahoo!, Google does not offer users the chance to post their own reviews directly to the search site. In addition to reviews and maps, Google
offers other information gleaned from sites it has indexed, such as business hours, payment types accepted, WiFi availability, restaurant menus, amenities, and even inspection data from the Department
of Health's Web site. This most recent set of upgrades to Google's search offering is representative of the high-speed development of the local search area, Sterling said. "In a very, very
compressed period of time we've got enormous improvement in the local space," Sterling said. "Now we have sites that have much more robust capabilities and functionality."