Following the lead of Matt Cutts and the Google Webmaster Central team, the folks at Google Maps have started publishing videos that aim to help and educate local businesses. But, unlike the Cutts/GWC videos, the Google Maps videos are a bit on the … shall we say, low-budget/low-production side of things. And, the Google Maps videos may be a short-lived project.
In this video below, for example, a Google Maps product manager offers a good, simple explanation of how businesses are ranked in Google Maps — Location, Relevance, and Prominence. But, as you can see, the video is a bit homespun compared to what you’ve seen before from the Webmaster Central videos.
A Google spokesperson tells us that the team isn’t certain if the videos will become a permanent feature of its local business outreach. (It’s a great idea and I, for one, hope they do continue. But step it up on the production side.) The Maps team has been taking questions via Google Moderator and using those as ideas to seed the videos. The full set of videos can be seen in the Google Places YouTube Channel.
(via Search Engine Roundtable)