Google's $10 Local Search Play

thefickler writes "Google has come come up with a novel way to boost the information it has about local businesses. As part of its Business Referral Representative program, Google is offering individuals up to $10 to visit local businesses and tell them about Google Maps and Google AdWords, collect information (such as hours of operation and types of payment accepted), and take digital photos of the business. Reaction to the program has been mixed."

Comments

Smacks of desperation

[yahooligan]

I think Yahoo! Local has the most accurate local listings. We didn't get there easily -

• we pay a lot of money to acquire data from partners;
• we focus a lot of development resources on improving data quality (and this is a non-trivial problem, spanning years of development)
• we use human editors where appropriate

Google, in contrast, seems to just scrape the web (including Yahoo!) and attempt to parse the results. Like the magic 8-ball, the result is sometimes very accurate and sometimes ... a bit misleading.
There are no shortcuts here; there is no clever algorithm that will yield an accurate Local database in the face of innacurate primary sources and willful abusers.
I think this purported $10 offer reflects Google's dawning realization of that fact. I'll let others comment on the attractiveness and credibility of the offer.

Re:What about Canada?

[paul7e]

Uh... no.

Ignoring Mexico City, on this continent New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Atlanta all have metropolitan areas over 5 million. I think you are confusing metro areas in Canada with cities in the U.S., or as we like to call it, America.