One in five searches on Google, and an estimated one in eight in total, are location-specific, and these types of queries are being requested of the search engine giant by 82 per cent of its users.

So to cater better for this type of query, Google has announced that it is changing its Local Business Centre’s name to Google Places.

“Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real world, and we want to better connect Place Pages – the way that businesses are being found today – with the tool that enables business owners to manage their presence on Google,” an announcement on Google.com said.

The new facilities being offered on Google Places include:

1. Service areas – allowing businesses to specify the geographical area they cover;

2. Free photos of businesses in certain areas to accompany their listings. At present this service is only available in 23 cities in America, five in Australia, and two in Japan, and;

3. Instant access, via a smartphone with a barcode-scanning facility, to an individual business’s Places page. Google is hoping that many retailers will offer customers special deals when they produce this code, as a reward for their custom.

Google is clearly targeting Places at small and medium-sized businesses, as, at an event aimed at just such an audience, it also announced ‘Favorite Places’, a refinement of its Google Places service, on which celebrities have been invited to post details of businesses they endorse, which are then displayed on a Google map.

Among the statistics Google rolled out at the announcement of Favorite Places were that:

• More than four million business owners claim listings on Google Places
• There are 50 million Place Pages, and
• Place Pages are viewed millions of times each day.