So finally Bing has come out of Beta and is fully available to us in the UK. This now means we can finally begin to optimise for local search and with it look at local business listings. From reading a post from Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land over the weekend UK business listings have been listed differently form that in the US using Multi-Map, a company acquired by Microsoft. Well Bing has now updated its maps for the UK also. (more…)

In its ever increasing attempt to show the most relevant search results, Google has started showing local search listings – a map and business listings – even when generic terms are searched for without a location specified. For instance, I searched for “restaurant”.

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Google has been busy this week, first off introducing click-to-buy buttons on YouTube, then AdSense for Flash games and now text ads on Google Maps. A good idea in principle, but you have to question the motivation behind this when the ad takes you through to the advertiser’s website (as with usual search ads) rather than to the specific placement on the map (as expected). The ads are local business ads, but triggered by search terms.

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