Update: See below for updated tool info
Hi everyone!
It’s been a little while since my last post as I’ve been very busy setting up my new small SEO company, called Kahena Digital Marketing. We’re just getting off the ground and are extremely busy. We’ve found a great office space, are getting our procedures and best practices in order, and are overall just always ‘ON’.
In the process of doing some keyword research today, I needed to figure out which keywords were triggering the local algorithm. In my on-going quest to make every task easier via Google Doc scraping (using the ImportXML function), I created a quick useful tool which returns whether or not a keyword is triggering the Google Local algorithm (Google Places business listings). Here is the first of many screencasts to come (who reads blog posts anymore – how about a video!).
I know first-hand that many SEOs out there need to make strategic decisions with regards to the local algorithm, and I hope this little tool will help in that process for many of you. The link to the read-only Google Doc is here. Feel free to save a copy and use it for your own keyword discovery projects! (in Google Docs… File / Download As / Excel. Then re-upload to Google Docs!)
Please leave your comments and thoughts below! I imagine it’d be quite easy to check if the Local Results are the embedded or 7-box type – but that will be for a later update. Enjoy!
Update: I’ve updated the same google doc tool to now check for both the 7-box and the embedded local results. Essentially, the tool actually behaves as promised now – it will identify whether a term is ‘local’ or not. However, it uses a different method for checking – the map in the right sidebar instead of checking for the ‘places near’ text. Have fun!
I know I’m not your target audience here but I have another question: how do you film your screen?
Screenflow. But there are cheaper / free options out there as well. Just google ‘Screencast Apps for Mac open source’ or something.
Cheers for this, will have a play.
Thanks Ian! Keep in mind, you’ll need to change the ‘base’ URL string to be: http://www.google.co.uk/#gl=uk&pws=0&q=
in order to get UK search results.
I listened to your entire video. This sounds like an effective tool for locating the key words. While I am not familiar with any of your processes, it’s commendable that you are dedicated to continuous improvement!!
Thanks Ian but there seems to be some issues with it for me. I used the UK base URL string that Ari posted and it didnt work at all. I used my own string ‘http://www.google.co.uk/search?nl=en&q=” which works in the spreadsheet but it doesnt show the actual results that google does.
For specific keywords such as ‘Shops in kingston’ does show a google places pack within organic seach but the table says no.
Great idea though and i will be working on an alternative.
Cheers
Update: I’ve updated the same google doc tool to now check for both the 7-box and the embedded local results. Essentially, the tool actually behaves as promised now – it will identify whether a term is ‘local’ or not. However, it uses a different method for checking – the map in the right sidebar instead of checking for the ‘places near’ text. Have fun!
Hey ‘google places expert’ (i’ll let the nofollow link go live
)
I know what the problem is, I’ve actually worked on a new tool and will release it soon. It has to do with how I was identifying the local algorithm via the “Places near” text. The new tool looks for the map in the upper right which appears both for the ’7box’ list and the embedded local results (which now doesn’t pickup)
When I open the document all the fields are NA, and it tells there’s an error?!
Also I am looking to use google docs to scrape websites indexed pages using google site function. Do you know how it’s done?