Google Place Search eliminates the local search 10 pack. The example below shows how the search pack appears above the normal results.

10 pack local listing, as shown, is slowly being replaced with Place Search

Google is now more confident in their algorithm knowing when to show local results. Instead of showing results from 2 data bases– the normal one and the local one on top–we now see only the normal results. However there is a twist as you can see below.

Place Search in Israel

The local listings have a Google Maps marker and there is a map on the right. In this case you can see that the 2nd, 3rd and 4th are not local listings.

Place Search eliminates the separate local listings pack and integrates them into the search results

If you click on the new Places link on the right you will get only local results. In the results below you can see that all the listings have a Google maps marker.

Notice the links to Trip Advisor and Frommers under the listings. Google also links to the local review site telavivguide.net. Very impressive!

Place Search results highlight the quantity and quality of reviews

Place Search is just now being rolled out, so it is not always available. In Israel I haven’t seen it yet. However it eventually will arrive. In the meantime you can try it here.

Place Search in Hebrew

It is being tested now in many languages. Below you can see the results in Hebrew for a Tel Aviv Museum search. The 1st result is in English which reflects the language of the home page.

The Hebrew address was pulled from Google Maps because it is to the left of the English address. Otherwise the address would be in English also.

Notice that in the Hebrew results, Google shows photos pulled from Google Maps

One day Google will be smart enough to pull in the main Hebrew page for the Tel Aviv Museum website. In the meantime, the Tel Aviv Museum can learn from the Eretz Israel Museum which shows up in the correct language in both Hebrew and English.

Check your website’s results in Google Place Search. Then, optimize your listing to take full advantage of the rich results that Google is providing people searching for your products and services.

Some people wonder why companies from all over the world want to work with us. After all, we are located in a bad neighborhood–one of our neighboring countries openly says they would like to wipe us off the face of the earth.

And it’s not like there aren’t any good Internet marketing companies in America, Europe and everywhere else.

I believe that the reason is the people. Israelis are innovative, creative and get things done fast. But what has nurtured these qualities?
Dan Senor and Saul Singer attempt to answer this question and more.

“START-UP NATION  addresses the trillion dollar question:
How is it that Israel — a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources — produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK?”

“How is it that Israel has, per person, attracted over twice as much venture capital investment as the US and thirty times more than Europe?”

Aaron Wall of SEO Book fame, wrote a post on how Google’s search results now favor Brand Names. One example was that 4 airlines are now ranking for airline tickets which did not rank before.

We did a quick check for brand names using the keyword airline ticket in different languages and countries:

A quick check in French with “billet d’avion” we can see that Air France holds 4th place in natural search. But there are no other brand names on the first page.

Google France search results for billet d’avion. Click to enlarge.

A search for “pasaje aéreo” in Google Spain yields no brand names in the top 10 organic search results.

Google Spain search results for pasaje aéreo. Click to enlarge.

In Hebrew we see that there are no airlines in the top 10 results-they have plenty of ads though.

Google Israel Hebrew search results for כרטיסי טיסה. Click to enlarge.

An English search in Israel has different results but still no airlines except for the sponsored result at the top.

Google Israel English search results for airline ticket. Click to enlarge.

France is the only country that ranked a single brand name in the top 10 search results, Air France. However no other local airlines were found, so maybe this is a process of localization.

Let’s try for brand names with the keyword boots:

In France we see that the top organic results are mainly online boot shops that sell a variety of brands as well as political articles. No brand name websites.

Google France natural search results for bottes. Click to enlarge.

In Spain the 5^th and 6^th natural search results for the word botas are brand names.

Google Spain natural search results for botas. Click to enlarge.

A Hebrew search shows no brand names in the first 10 search results. There is a store where you can buy a variety of brand named leather shoes.

Google Israel Hebrew search results for  מגפיים. Click to enlarge.

An English search in Israel has very different results with many results for Boots, the UK Pharmacy.

Google Israel English search results for boots. Click to enlarge.

Based on this test, it appears that Google’s foreign language sites, give little to no  priority for brand name websites. Brand name web sites will just have to do SEO work like everyone else.

SEO for Extraterrestrials

It is a good idea to target extraterrestrials in order to break away from the over crowded global marketing scene here on earth. We will use Klingons as a case study to show the best methodology for extraterrestrial SEO.

Our first goal is to help people on Earth to market to Klingons. Although there are many technical problems, this group is worth targeting now that they are allies of the United Federation of Planets. Less money spent on making war frees up more disposable income.

First, we want to see if Klingons are a market. Google has a Klingon interface which proves just that. More on
Multilingual Internet Marketing – The Final Frontier

Google interface in Klingon

Companies that want to market to Chinese speakers must first decide on their target markets. Who are they trying to reach? But first let’s define some China SEO terms.

What is China SEO?

For the keyword China SEO there are a few meanings:

1. Someone who wants find an SEO company to market to China.
2. Someone who wants to learn something about getting natural traffic from people who speak Chinese (This could include one or more of the following: China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and even small numbers of Chinese speakers in other countries).
3. Someone who wants to work with a China SEO company for a variety of reasons. For example, if Chinese is your mother tongue it may be easier to launch a global SEO campaign working with people who understand you easily.

A company outside of China looking for information or SEO China companies would be interested in search results which focused on the meanings from 1 and 2. Search results for number 3 would mostly be in Chinese. However the savvy Chinese company which wants to do a global campaign may search in English or other target countries to narrow results.

Baidu.com is the most popular search engine in China

What is Chinese SEO?

Chinese SEO is more specific than China SEO and one of the indicators of this is that there are fewer searches for Chinese SEO. The intents of these searchers can be:

More about Chinese SEO >>

Is it best to use Hebrew / Arabic / Chinese or Latin characters in the URL? Here is an example of a URL with Hebrew and English mixed in as shown in a Google results page. It is nice that the URL keyword is bolded just like in English.

The only problem is that when you click on the link the URL in the address bar is OK for the English part Hebrew part is not something you are going to remember by heart.

In addition, if you click on the “Highlight all” button in the Firefox browser, the Hebrew in the SERPs gets split up as you can see below. This is probably because the URL is a mixture of right to left & left to right languages.

If you want people to memorize the specific URL of the page, Latin characters is the best way to go. If the specific URL is not important you can mix the languages as shown above. The home page part of the URL will still be readable.

Using URLs in Google Ads works, as you can see below. However the same problem exists with the resultant URL in the address bar.

Other options include transliterating the word–write how the word sounds in its native language using Latin letters. However the word will not bold up in the SERPs or ads because people don’t use this method to search. This is because they would get much poorer results (if at all) from the search engines.

In most cases I recommend using the local language or in the URL or at least the trailing end of it. This gives the person more of an idea what is on the page and results in bolded words in the SERPs. If branding the particular page is important then English or a transliteration should be considered.

For other opinions, check out the Search Engine Roundtable.