Over the past couple of weeks we have seen Google integrate their Google Places listings in with the organic search results.

We believe that they have done this to reduce the amount of Google Places users spamming their service, by removing the block of 7 map results and combining the 2 results together.

This essentially means in order in appear in the Map listings you need to have an organic authority for a particular area and service before you will list with a map included.

The other dimension is that we now have a larger number of search results on page 1, with members of the SEO team at Creare seeing up to 17 page 1 results.

You can see an example of a regional search results for the query ‘builders Coventry’.

The key points to notice are that the page title and meta descriptions haven’t changed from the organic listing, the Google places listing has then been added underneath.

So, how does this effect your positions in Google and how do you ensure that you have every opportunity to have a combined listings?

Well we have previously done a video blog on optimising your Google places listing which we have linked on the supporting blog post.

Along with that we believe that as long as you are optimising for your local and surrounding areas, have clearly displayed your address on your website and URL on your Google places listing, you have every opportunity of seeing the combined result.

Thanks for watching this week, if you have any questions or recommendations regarding Google Places please leave your comments on the supporting blog post.

Script: Welcome to this weeks SEO video blog, we thought we would review some of Google‘s latest projects and in particular the labs for Google Maps.

There are some interesting new technologies that Google are testing, so we thought we would take you through our top 4 Google Map projects.

Firstly to view all the Google Labs tools, go to http://www.googlelabs.com/. Then select the ‘Google Maps Labs’ link on the right hand side.

You then get a series of options for testing new features, all you have to do is enable the feature you wish to trial and click ‘save changes’.

Aerial views allows you to rotate and see a high resolution image of your selected location. Google has only trialled this for a few location, but you can see the enhanced graphic shown.

Map rotation allows you to change the perspective that map gives, so you can essentially rotate the map to suit your current location and position, rather than just based on default map orientation. This will work excellently for mobile devices.

Drag and zoom is exactly what it describes allowing you to simply drag and zoom on Google Maps.

Where in the world game - is a bit of fun, Google points to a location in the world and then gives you the choice of 4 options. After 10 different locations you are given a score.

We also thought that Google image labeler was worth a mention as it essentially directly contributes towards helping Google improve the relevance of the images shown for a search and image SEO.

The following was taken direct from Google. The rules are as follows:

You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a two-minute period, you and your partner will:

• View the same set of images.
• Provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see.
• Receive points when your label matches your partner’s label. The number of points will depend on how specific your label is.
• See more images until time runs out.

After time expires, you can explore the images you’ve seen and the websites where those images were found. And we’ll show you the points you’ve earned throughout the session.

Lets take a look.

So if you go to Google and query ‘Google image Labeler’ and click the top link. Click start labeling and you will be partnered with another person wanting to play. Then you are given a set of random images to label, lets see how we get on..

At the end of the game you get given a score and you can visit the sites where the images were found.

We think this is an excellent method for Google to label images as the information comes directly from there end users. Have a go and see how you get on.

http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

Thanks for watching this week if you have any questions of comments, please leave them on the youtube channel of supporting blog post.