San Francisco — Google has just plugged itsGoogle Tags, formerly their ‘enhanced listings’ for local businesses, which the company unveiled in April as part of a transformation of its Local Business Center into Google Places, is now rolling out the program nationwide with new features. The search engine leader also announced that Tags will be showing up in mobile search results.
With local search gaining more and more significance in the Internet marketing landscape this is a great news for many who are struggling to figure out the best way to get the most mileage out of listings that is displayed in the 7-pack map listing.
If you are operating a local business throughout the U.S., this feature is configured for those who wants to energize their listings on Google.com and Google Maps, you can enhance your listing with yellow tag emphasizing specific information about your business such as coupon, video, website, menu, reservations, photos and even custom messages.
Tags delivers local businesses (or locations) a way to showcase their listings in the 7-Pack map listing. Below is an example for “massage, Houston”:
This latest features make program more captivating for the local businesses, and at the same time Google Tags; the program meant to give local businesses a better way of becoming noticeable from other search results, is growing up. Google announced late last week that it is concocted a couple new features, and that it is rolling out the program on a nationwide basis, too. Getting this yellow tag to appear on your Google listings is not free though. You would have to pay a flat monthly fee of $25. The tags will not affect your listings’ rank and Google will clearly indicated which parts of the search results are sponsored when you as a local business is displayed.
In another example, users who searched for “massage houston,” will see that two of the businesses whose listings appear have created coupon tags to promote their current offers — Businesses can highlight a range of items through Tags: “a coupon, video, website, menu, reservations, photos, or a custom message.” Clicking on one of links in the result above takes users to a coupon-related landing page:
The search engine giant said that this release will correspond with states where Google already had tags available in select cities. Business owners in California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, and Washington are due to see Google Tags become available before everyone else, and afterwards, Google’s just said it will update a FAQ as things progress.
Apart from unveiling the Tags nationwide, Google is also geared up to make this available on Google Mobile search too. In addition, Google is also introducing Posts which is actually a new kind of Tag which enables you to create a custom message that you can change as often as you like. This will make it easier for you to announce special discounts that you are currently offering.
More details about Google Local Tags can be found here.