This results from a kerfuffle between Yelp and Google over the usage of reviews and other data from Yelp by Google within its Google Places listing. There’s a long history between the two companies of one using the other’s content, that one stopping using that content, one trying to purchase the other, and the other walking away from purchase negotiations.

Yelp’s current stance seems to be that they want to be paid if Google uses their content. Google isn’t all that interesting in paying.

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has stated that they’re fine with being excluded from Google Places. I suspect they see most of their traffic coming from their smart-phone apps, which include the powerful, useful, and very cool Yelp Monocle.

If Google limits them to the increasingly-irrelevant-for-local-queries organic results, then that works for them.

For several years now, the recipe for business success online has been to worship at the Google altar. Now yet another major playing in local marketing has pushed Google away.

All indications are that this is a very limited test at the moment and there’s no way of knowing whether it will become generally available. But the implications of such a change would be huge. For certain types of queries (i.e. those that tend to return the map today), traditional SEO efforts would no longer be of any value.

Only AdWords and Google Places listings would matter.

I doubt the screen capture the linked article shows reflects what Google would use in the long run, as it seems fairly clumsy. There are only 2.5 listings above the fold, with a great deal of wasted space.

But we certainly could see something like this in the near future.

Hat Tip to WebmasterWorld for pointing this out to me.

Being known as a fan of PubCon, I’m often asked about discount coupons for attendees. So, I asked the crew at WebmasterWorld if they could help me out, and they gave me the following coupon code for 15% off PubCon Las Vegas:

bc-9237415

The code will expire on October 31, 2010 and must be used at the time of registration. They do not offer retroactive discounts.

I hope to see you there!

This has been my Monday.

Be deleting all the plugins for my site, I was able to get things running again. I’m currently reinstalling the plugins (and updating them). In the meantime, some of the functionality of this site will not be working.

So, remember this, boys and girls: Keep your WordPress plugins up to date!

This is especially welcome for home-based businesses, who might not want to list their home address on the internet for all to see.

Businesses owners should realize that there is a significant disadvantage to this approach, however. A large part of Google ranking calculation is based upon the Citations a listing has received. Citations are pages that Google has found that list the company’s name, phone number and address (and are trusted by Google).

Yes, you can list your home-based business with Google and prevent the address from showing within Google, but you’re going to have a harder time building citations. You can try listing just your company name and phone number, but those citations tend to not be as strong.

So, do you use your home address or not? At the end, it comes down to a value judgment, but you need to be aware of the pros and cons of various approaches.

Being in Austin, Texas, an offer for this advertising program popped up in ionadas local’s Google Maps management system this morning.

“Learn More” takes you to Google Help pages. If you “Preview and select a tag, the following dialog box is shown:

You have the option of highlighting coupons, photos, videos or your website. If one of these is not available in your Google Places, it won’t be offered for tagging.

Here is what the ad looks like, in the 7-pack, the 3-pack, and the 1-box, respectively.

It’s too early to tell if this will result in an uptick in traffic, but watch here for updates. In the meantime, here’s the dashboard the advertisement adds to your management system, although it does not have any data yet.

Details:
Tuesday, April 27th at 11am, Dave & Busters, Austin, Texas

This workshop will help you to:

• Monitor the internet for conversations impacting your business.
• Know when and how to engage in conversations online.
• Push problem search results down the page so that they receive less traffic.
• Avoid the potential pitfalls in online reputation management.

The workshop is free, but space is limited, so sign up today!

ionadas local will be attending and speaking at PubCon South 2010 in Dallas the second week of April. CEO Brian Combs will be speaking on the “Personalize Search – Universal Search – Life Goes On” panel with Michael Gray and Dr. Amanda Watlington.

Brian’s panel is at 1:30pm on Wednesday, April 14th, and he will be discussing developments within Google Maps and other local search engines as they pertain to universal and personalized search.

If you’d like 20% off your ticket to PubCon South 2010, use the code “rc-7200720″ when registering (coupon expires April 9th at 5pm central). We hope to see you there!

You can choose whether or not your listing has a physical address associated with it. According to Google Maps Help:

Service Area Listings With An Address
Listings with a designated service area and a physical address appear the same in Google Maps search results as results without a service area. Once a you click on the listing title, the information window that appears allows you to toggle service areas on and off by clicking ‘Show/hide service area’. By default, service areas are hidden. On the map itself, the listing appears as a red pin. If you’ve chosen ‘Show service area,’ the service area will appear as a see-through red shape.

Service Area Listings Without An Address
Listings with a designated service area and no address appear in Google Maps search results with a red circle and the city the business is located in. Once you click on the listing title, the information window that appears allows you to toggle service areas on and off by clicking ‘Show/hide service area’. On the map, the listing appears as a red floating circle. If you’ve chosen ‘Show service area,’ the service area will appear as a see-through red shape.

Unfortunately, there is no interface for this functionality through the bulk upload system yet. You have to add the Service Area by hand.

Service Areas are something that we’ve been looking for in the Local SEO world for some time. Many businesses do not have customers coming to their location, but rather go to the customer’s location. While these firms certainly have a tight geographic focus, the Google Local system has been failing them until now.

It’s not clear what the limitation is on geographic range, but I expect that the further a location is from the center of your range, the harder it is going to be for you to rank for your target search terms.

Details:
Monday, March 8th at 11am, Dave & Busters, Austin, Texas

This workshop will help you to:

• Determine your website’s goals and metrics of success

• Create a detailed list of steps to take to build your new website
• Know what you can do and what you should outsource

Specific examples will be shown using the WordPress platform, an open-source, industry standard Content Management System, but the strategies and ideas will be applicable to many web management system.

The workshop is free, but space is limited, so sign up today!