As Google Maps launched in Europe this year, they started based on core business data from Infobell for most countries and Yell as one partner in the UK. Very recently the press reported that qype a German social local search community now is one of the additional sources of content for Google Maps. One other source seems to be a not further described “project” of Uwe Tippmann a German SEO guy. This all leads to the conclusion that Google (oh wonder) has a very flexible, power-full and open Backend structure in place and the flexibility to integrate external sources of data easily.
This could lead to a huge improvement of the quality and user-experience of Google Maps as of today they do only provide little additional information regarding a given business. The web2ground sourced information is often still not relevant and URLs and E-Mail addresses are often not really pointing to the business in question. But they are in Beta phase still and at least doing as good as others like suchen.de, a subsidiary project of DeTag that has left Beta recently and is now integrated into the T-Online search which should give them way more reach and visibility in the market.
Question for all the content providers like qype.com is: Will this increase the traffic for them or have an negative effect to their own business? Sure Google does not collect Reviews & Ratings /at least for now/ and Google historically has always been much more a hub as compared to a community destination site, but will this remain to be this way ….
Technorati Tags: google maps, infobell, t-online, suchen.de, qype,
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