Vivek Nair: Google Reviews Are Prominent With An Official Knowledge Of Graph Update

Google GOOG +1.66% officially announced that some big changes to a Google Local LOCM +1.19% Search feature with its new “Carousel” of local results at the top of the search page. These results show above advertisements in a large banner (see image to right) and are quite prominent. This change has been coming for a while, however, its roll-out signals a range of opportunities for business owners and marketing executives.

Google Officially Launches Knowledge Graph Carousel

While these new results are at their most visually-compelling on the desktop, the results are mirrored on mobile devices. They do not look the exact same, but when I compared the results on the iPhone 5, iPad 2, and Samsung S3, the results were very similar and highlighted most of the same results in a Maps/Places “box.”

Some pundits have argued this is a move toward “smarter search” and not necessarily “social search” and no doubt that is true to some extent. However, I see it as an incredibly social search type move. By making consumer-driven reviews more prominent in local search results, Google makes results far more social than before. The first thing you notice after the photo is a Zagat score and the number of reviews, which are done by consumers and possibly those within your network although that is not clear at this point.

Google Reviews Lean On Google Maps

As others have written here before, and I have said in my own posts, Google Maps is at the very core of much of Google’s work. The latest acquisition of Waze proves some of that out, for sure, and how Google desires to make its social efforts far more practical and useful – more than simply showing you photos of cats. Social media-driven maps are a slice of how local search/places could become more significant to searchers. Google is always iterating on search and on how we experience it. Bringing real-world locations to the top of search results benefits consumers and certainly local merchants who are also potential advertisers.

With its new “Carousel” of local results at the top of the search page, Google presents users with a faster way to get local information. If the carousel can deliver a more accurate result, packed with more useful information at-a-glance, that will likely have far-reaching implications for how consumers use Google on the desktop, on mobile devices, new tech gadgets — for example, those all-too-fashionable, up and coming, glasses that Google introduced recently. I’m sure it isn’t far behind that the reviews you see from Google Places will be pulled out or highlighted if they come from someone in your Google+ network. Smarter search, for sure, but social as well.

Hi, I'm Vivek Nair an professional SEO Worker and pure content writer. You can catch me and follow me, or could join me too.