1. No Auto Map?? – Now I figured this would be standard with any good search engine that if you search for a business name with location information that if there it should show it on the map. I was disappointed to find that when doing this type of search that wasn’t readily available.
The Search – elitegd saint john new brunswick
Bing Result
Google Result

How this effects you? – Well if your like me and you have a website doesn’t really effect you to much as you can see i’m showing in the top 4 returned results directing them to my website. However if you do a search and someone only has the Local Business Listing through Google Maps you now won’t show up at all.

The Search – laundry mat saint john new brunswick
Bing Result
Google Result
If there was any Laundry mat with even a basic website up they would receive 100% of the web traffic from Bing as currently none of them show up at all, even though all three are listed on Google Maps. This is why you don’t want to always focus on Google but focus on reaching all search engines.

2.  Bing Local Listing Center

Now I was very dissapointed when I went to add my own business that being from Canada there is no way to add yourself to Bing’s Local Listing Center, similar to google’s Local Business Center I have tried doing multiple searches to figure out a way for Canadian businesses to add their listing to the Bing Local Listing Center and haven’t found a way. This should be  a staple as well for any real competitive search engines, to at least be able to take submissions if your going to offer local searches. Hopefully this is just in the works and once I find a way I will be doing a post on adding your business to both Bing Local Listing Center, and Google’s Local Business Center.

Recommendation if you are relying on Google Map ( Local Business Center) to deliver your information invest in a small informational website so that you can make sure that other search engines that people use will direct people to your business and not a competitor’s.

Stay tuned i’ll be doing another reaching your target audience for Laundry Mats next after realizing this when researching for this post.