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Joseph Suh
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Google local search changes - implication for churches?
star it|4 comments|January 30, 2007|1293 reads
 

Straight from the Google blog, any local search now lists 3 listings in the OneBox results at the very top

The Google blogger goes on to say:

From now on, you'll see this every time you search for a place, business, or other local information. In addition to providing the basic contact information and map locations for several choices at the top of the page, we also show ratings and provide one-click access to reviews on the search results page so that you can make more informed decisions about where you want to go.

This is BIG. Restaurants and local businesses will be vying for those top 3 spots. The yellow pages (at least in its hardcopy form) will be obsolete. Google will lead the way to their extinction.

Here are the Google SERP (search engine result pages) for San Jose restaurants and dentists. With rich results like that, even my mother may one day use Google over the yellow book to find her favorite Korean restaurant.

The SEO's are already trying to figure out the algorithm to get in the coveted top-3 results. It appears to be some combination of number of reviews, stars, and pagerank.

Who stands to lose besides the yellow pages? Vertical search engines perhaps? No, I think it empowers vertical local search sites. Sites like Yelp will be the de facto standard in getting into Google's OneBox. Look at my restaurant or dentist example. Yelp is the source of the majority of the reviews that propelled those businesses to OneBox.

What does this mean for the church? I won't go into the details of MyChurch's strategy. But I will say that we want to be the best source of church reviews. Only a vertical directory with a social networking engine is in the right position to do this (I think!).

Keeping in mind that OneBox is new, Google will tweak their display and search algorithm - adding other review sites it deems credible. But this first roll-out indicates Google is increasingly leveraging vertical social networks to provide richer results for local searches. And local businesses may one day live or die by the sword that is Google's OneBox.

 

 
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noah kagan
 noah kagan
January 30, 2007
Sounds exciting. Looking forward to what you guys launch=)
Joseph Suh
 Joseph Suh
January 31, 2007
Thanks to you Noah, I'm now deeply curious about this dark SEO world of PPC arbitrage and landing pages. Its addicting stuff!
noah kagan
 noah kagan
January 31, 2007
Tell me about it. Reading about it as I comment=)
Michael Han
 Michael Han
February 22, 2007
A bold statement to make, albeit very true in a localized sense (no pun intended). It is true such search results are changing the bottom-line of local businesses, but I would have serious doubts about it affecting local churches in any significant ways. Most of people looking for a local church online are either new to the neighborhood, thinking about starting to attend a church for God-knows-why, or church-"hopping." Even in the last case, people normally trust direct referrals rather than the next result in a Google search--I would assume this is especially true if it concerns their spiritual pursuits. "Only a vertical directory with a social networking engine is in the right position to do this" But who would "rate" or review churches? If anyone, it would the members themselves. Of course, you would have both happy and disgruntled members in a church and they would be able to somewhat give stars to their own church, if what you have in mind is that kind of direct rating system. If not, then it may be based on the level of activity for a MyChurched church webpage, which wouldn't be very practical or even helpful. Knowing very little of how Google search works, I know that the recurrence of church names in MyChurch would affect the result, but that is also impractical. I think people rating a church not of their own would be a complete mistake. So, it may be that self-rating system would work out to be the best option. Somewhat like a point system, you could have users fill out a type of "church personality" test something like one found from eHarmony.com and match that with end-user's profile. Broadly speaking, it would be something like an access to a list of Baptist churches for a user who is a Baptist for example. The same user would also have to answer some questions about his or her own church. Anyway, how all of these would fit into the equation you are trying to come up is beyond me. Maybe I'm thinking as only as someone in his 30s, and someone in his teens may have different level of trust for Google results, but as somewhat of an experiment, I did attend a local church here after looking up "mynewtown church" on Google. I'm not putting all the details here, but after about 6 months I ended up going back to my old church although it takes much (much) longer to get there from mynewtown. I don't know, maybe it's that tech bubble of late 90s, but I keep thinking that Google is only another passing thing in the back of my mind (maybe I'm getting old). =)