Say goodbye to Google Local Business Center…and hello to Google Places.

Yes… Google Places will be an enhanced version of the Google Local Business Center. In the past, the Google Local Business Center helped to enhance the Google maps. When you clicked on a business with a pinpoint on a Google map, a bubble would open up to give more information about a business.

Think of it as the Google Local Business Center… on Caffeine (plus some mobile features).

Caffeine is the new indexing technology used by Google to organize and categorize web sites. Caffeine is more open to multiple kinds of web media (podcasts, video, images, blogs, tweets, Facebook and other social media). With Caffeine, you are rewarded for updating your website with fresh content in multiple formats. What is the reward? Higher rankings for the search terms that your targeted visitors are using to find your site.

The same applies to Google Places, where every location (business and non -businesses alike) can have items like photos, videos, a Street View preview, nearby transit, reviews and related websites.

Example of a Google Places account

For our ArcherSEM digital marketing clients with a mortar presence, enrollment in Google Places (as well as the Yahoo and MSN local business centers) is always part of our marketing plan.

But now that Google Places has been enhanced, we are updating our game plan for our SEM clients. In particular, we are planning for the day when Google Places will be included in the roster of geo-targeted mobile marketing sites. Right now, those kinds of sites include Four Square, Gowalla and Bright Kite. The next big players are entering this very hot internet marketing trend: Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is now experimenting with geo-targeting features, and Facebook has announced plans to enable people to “check in” to locations with their status messages.

See more ArcherSEM Search Engine marketing blog entries in the future about Google Places — and what it will mean for marketing your business online. We will be going over the benefits of coupons, video, reviews and metric monitoring of Google Places in upcoming postings. Talk to one of our small business online marketing experts about how we can create a Google Places account for your business and website.