Shared by Yahoos + Google’s map link

Both Yahoo and Google have been experimenting with some new ways to add value to their search results. Both interesting, and yeah, valuable.

When I searched for “baking” today on Yahoo, I found three results at the bottom of the page showcasing user generated content and we all love that user generated content. Yahoo portal members post their Q&A in the Yahoo Answers section. These posts then trickle out and into the Yahoo SERPs.

Google has scraped a number of random (maybe) websites for their address data then posting a Google map link below the SERPs. An easy way to access the address of a business. They may be using the <>ADDRESS element used to find the address. This may give Google a reasonable amount of certainty that “hey man, this block of stuff is an address”.

That said, the address element is not the only way to determine whether or not something is an address. It may be about or contact us pages which have wording like “click here for map” , “map”, “map to our store”, repeatedly and in links to that page, coupled with using the by-now fairly standard line breaks between lines of an address, these random(?) sites have given Google a fair amount of certainty of their physical location. Maybe Google has started with recognizing the most common and standard forms, and will continue to expand the forms it recognizes as they find new distinguishable forms.