Last month Google announced the changing of name from Google Local Business Center to Google Places, aside from that Google also introduce more features:

• Service areas: If you travel to serve customers, you can now show which geographic areas you serve. And if you run a business without a storefront or office location, you can now make your address private.
• A new, simple way to advertise: For just $25 per month, businesses in select cities can make their listings stand out on Google.com and Google Maps with Tags. As of today, we’re rolling out Tags to three new cities — Austin, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. — in addition to ongoing availability in Houston and San Jose, CA. In the coming weeks we’ll also be introducing Tags in Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder and San Francisco.
• Business photo shoots: In addition to uploading their own photos, businesses in select cities can now request a free photo shoot of the interior of their business which we’ll use to supplement existing photos of businesses on Place Pages. We’ve been experimenting with this over the past few months, and now have created a site for businesses to learn more and express their interest in participating.
• Customized QR codes: From the dashboard page of Google Places, businesses in the U.S. can download a QR code that’s unique to their business, directly from their dashboard page. QR codes can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials, and customers can scan them with certain smartphones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for that business.
• Favorite Places: We’re doing a second round of our Favorite Places program, and are mailing window decals to 50,000 businesses around the U.S. These decals include a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to directly view the mobile Place Page for the business to learn more about their great offerings.

The most exciting is it’s because Google Place also add United Arab Emirates in their list of countries. When Goole local business center launched this service, United Arab Emirates is not included in the list, you can check this link http://bit.ly/glbcenter , a lot of people complaining that UAE is not included in the list of countries.

This is an excellent opportunity for those companies in the UAE who have a website… duh!. If your website is not ranking In your local targeted keyword in page one of SERPS(Search Engine Result Pages), this is now your chance to take advantage of the google places service because a map will show above the organic listing (example below).

Go on and place your business on Google Place now, before everyone else..

I have been following this thread for 2 weeks now and a Google employee answered it last Thursday. I wasn’t able to post the reply because our company closed the office  early for the new years eve.

The thread is about google removing local results for map if you type in for key terms “seo” and “web design” followed by a city name.

Let us try the term “seo singapore“.But you will get local business listings if you type in “seo in singapore“.

Joel H form Google said that:

“Today, we’re intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today. We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham]. I’m sure some of you feel we should be displaying local results for queries like [Web Design Vancouver]. I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.

“I’ll give the usual disclaimer that we’re constantly working on improving the user experience and results will vary over time. So, this could change in the future, but I wanted to be explicit about what we’re doing today.”

Aside from  “seo” and “web design”, you will also not get local results for the term “graphic design”, “web marketing”, “advertising agency”, “logo design” and I’m sure there’s a lot more.

But what about searching for the term “seo dubai“.And for “seo in dubai“.What do you think why do we still get local results on map for the term seo dubai?

Dubai’s weather has been getting better and better by the day. I just missed the rain today but I loved the cool breeze on my walk home (Yup my crib is just 20 minutes walk away from office, how sweet is that?!).

So what’s up with this week’s Search Engine News? Well nothing much… We have announcements mostly from Google and let’s see 2 giants finalizing their collaboration deal. So let’s get on it…

I’d always start with my favorite updates and for this week it would have to be Matt Cutt’s presentation on the recent PubCon 2009. It was not an official announcement (which Google hardly does especially in disclosing search elements), but Matt Cutts discreetly implied  that site speed would be a possible ranking factor in 2010. Although I would assume site speed would not be a heavy-weighted ranking element, it will be a noteworthy action. Important note: we are not advocating that you do major changes on your site just to anticipate this update. But if you do build a site, redesign, re-brand, etc., do consider CSS, java, image files as well as codes and scripts that actually affect your site’s loading speed. This is Google’s attempt to make the web efficient and faster for users.

Which brings me to the next update – the SPDY Project. I’m not really a developer SEO hybrid (Yes, there are SEO Hybrids), you can see the technical details of the project on Google’s SPDY Whitepaper. I don’t know how to explain it in simple terms so I’m just going to quote Geek.Com’s description:

The project describes SPDY as a protocol that uses several methods to help improve web page load time through the use of HTTP header compression, prioritized requests and multiplexed data streams.

Another noticeable update on Google is the breadcrumbs rollout on their SERP’s. You won’t see this on all results yet because this is still a limited test. Personally, I think this is Google’s way of rewarding sites with excellent data architecture/structure. If you have great usability features for your visitors, then search engine spiders will benefit from such (of course that’s still a debatable theory). Whether or not Google will fully implement this feature in the weeks to come, only their engineers will know.

That’s enough of Big G, let’s take a look at Yahoo and Bing’s update. When we heard these 2 giants sign of a collaborative endeavor a few months back, almost everyone in the search industry was excited. I mean finally, someone has to stand up to Google and challenge its empire. But there weren’t definitive clauses on who will be in charge of which platforms. So last week Yahoo & Microsoft finally signed the definitive agreement that will govern both the search and advertising platforms. I’d be glad to see Microsoft’s technology and Yahoo’s content delivery performance together. (Psst Microhoo! Please keep Yahoo Site Explorer running, we still need it badly!)

There you go. That’s enough for last week’s search engine news. If I do have missed any important updates, you can drop us a comment or you can send us an email at news [at] seodubai [dot] org with the subject: “For Dave” (duh!)