It looks like Google is once again revamping their search product by helping users easily find businesses, venues or (in my case) restaurants to dine in without having to manually visit their Google Maps page.
Today we’re introducing Place Search, a new kind of local search result that organizes the world’s information around places. We’ve clustered search results around specific locations so you can more easily make comparisons and decide where to go. […]The new results are marked with red pins, and each one is a unique restaurant with relevant information and links from across the web. I can see that Stubb’s has live music, and I can click citysearch.com, tripadvisor.com and other sites to read reviews. (Official Google Blog)
Although similar to companies like Yelp in several areas, Place Search seems to be more of a way for Google to improve its bread and butter business than disrupt an industry (something they are attempting to do with Google Voice).
It may also help Google more effectively compete against both Bing!, the latter which has not only assimilated Yahoo! search, but has also been able to successfully forge partnerships with Facebook (unlike the search engine king).
Google is rolling out Place Search to the masses over the next few days (in over 40 languages nonetheless), although you can get a “taste” of what Google Places feels like by clicking here (which will highlight results from Chicago).
Originally posted on October 27, 2010 @ 4:15 pm