Maybe Google shouldn’t have blogged about its enhanced local listings a week after the debut of Buzz, because people were pretty warmed up and ready to pounce. Here’s the deal: currently, in Houston and San Jose only, local business owners can pay $25 per month to get an “enhanced” listing on Google that places a yellow flag on the listing and builds in a link that can be customized to go to the business’s website (like the example in the screen shot) or to a coupon, menu, or pictures.
Don’t let the screen shot mislead you, however, according to a New York Times article, the guy with the enhanced listing already ranked number one on local listings. The enhancements are added to your listing wherever you may rank. Which means that if you ignore local SEO and your site is located somewhere in the bowels of the listings, it’s not going to get you anything. And if the program rolls out everywhere, will everyone and their brother buy an enhanced listing? If so, the enhanced listings won’t stand out at all.
Of course, there are some people who are predicting the end of organic search listings as we know them, because selling enhanced listings could lead to things like paying for rank, or turning the new program into a competitive bidding program like AdWords. If so, let’s hope that there’ll be an alternative search engine available for those who only want real, organic search engine results.