Google Officially Launches Knowledge Graph Carousel For Local Search

After reporting yesterday that the Google Knowledge Graph Carousel was showing up more frequently and for a wider variety of searches, a Google+ post today announced the official launch of Carousel for local search results.

According to the announcement, when a user searches for “restaurants, bars or other local places” from their desktop, they will get the horizontal Carousel display of images against a black background at the top of their SERP.

Users can scroll through more images by selecting the arrow on the right side of the carousel or zoom in on the map to pull results for a restricted area. By clicking on an image in the Carousel, users will see more location details, including overall review-based score, address and photos.

Google confirmed that Carousel results are rolling out today in English in the US, with more features and languages to come over time.

4 Google AdWords Updates You Might Have Missed

Google AdWords has launched a series of new changes for advertisers, including updates to AdWords Editor, a new Display Benchmarks Tool, and improvements to enhanced campaigns with flexible bid strategies. Here's a recap of the latest AdWords updates.

1. Google AdWords Keyword Planner

The biggest news from AdWords for many webmasters is the introduction of a brand new keyword tool combined with a traffic estimator, called the Keyword Planner.

The new tool allows you to find new keywords related to a keyword or keyword list, URL, or category, which can be very helpful for those trying to do keyword research or expand their targeting keywords.

You can also use it to get performance and cost estimates, which can be helpful for planning out potential budgets before actually putting it in action.

Lastly, you can import the data and use it in your account without having to manually enter it from other research tools.

2. Advertising on Google Maps

We saw the preview of new advertising on Google Maps when they showed it off at I/O, and now AdWords is updating information for advertisers wanting to target Google Maps locations for advertising. The new ads will show right on the location for those with on-page location extensions, or in a box below the search box.

It is worth noting that advertisers will need to do two things to ensure their ads are showing up on Google Maps. First, you need to run search ads with location extensions and also include search partners in your campaign network settings, since Google Maps is considered a search partner for AdWords campaigns.

3. AdWords Editor Changes

If you use Google’s AdWords Editor, they have made some updates in the new 10.1 version of the editor to include tools for making bulk changes on enhanced campaigns and to include performance stats and metrics.

Some of the new features for advertisers are:

• Set bid adjustments for placements, topics, and audiences.
• Set mobile bid adjustments at the ad group level.
• Upgrade campaigns in bulk using CSV import or the add/update multiple campaigns tool.
• Use the new ValueTrack {ifmobile}, {ifnotmobile} parameters.

4. Flexible Bid Strategies for Enhanced Campaigns

Google AdWords included flexible bidding options for advertisers when they upgrade to enhanced campaigns. This allows advertisers to manage different parts of campaigns or even cross campaigns with specific bid strategies, which is very useful for those wanting to promote certain keywords while leaving other keywords to the current bidding setup.

Flexible bid strategies will be available to advertisers in the next few weeks once those campaigns are upgraded to enhanced campaigns.

Google Maps Gets a Brand New Look

Google has announced a revamping of Google Maps and it is much more than a few changes. It is a reworking of the entire Google Maps interface from the group up, designed to make Maps more intuitive for users.

One major change is users can now click on any area of a map, and Google will respond by showing you information about what is in the area that you could be interested in, such as restaurants, businesses, and hotels. This is designed to make it easy for visitors to see what is near a particular location, such as discovering what is located near a hotel when someone is visiting a city.

There is much more connection with Google+ and what they display on the map popups, meaning it is much more critical for businesses to make sure their Google+ page is active with correct information, including hours and photos, and user reviews of their business.

What businesses are displayed are also influenced by each user's Google+ network, highlighting specific businesses that Google+ connection have given positive reviews for. So that also makes it well worth it for businesses to promote their Google+ pages to engage users for more reviews, increasing the likelihood that their business shows up first for more people.

Google Maps search results are much more clearly added to the maps page.

For example, they included a screenshot highlighting a user searching for an Italian restaurant, it not only displays the first result as an overlay on the map, it also shows all related Italian restaurants in the area with restaurant names and short blurbs about each one.

They have also redesigned how advertisements are placed on Google Maps. Formerly, different colored pins on the map represented paid advertising versus non-paid, however, engagement wasn't that high as many users didn't understand what the different colors meant. Now, short snippets of ads are placed directly onto the map itself with the business name, alerting users to an advertisement or special deal for that business.

The new style of ads are in the testing phase and advertisers aren't being charged for ad clicks at this time. However, this ad style is for desktop only, not mobile.

The new version of Google Maps is by invite only. You can request an invite here.

On a related note, Google announced that Maps users will now be able to rate businesses on a scale of one to five stars, as opposed to the Zagat 30-point scale. Though Google noted Zagat reviews will still be available throughout Google.