An article in Bloomberg appearing just after the announcement of Apple Maps for iOS 6 last week asserted that Apple will come to market with more business listings than Google:
This is a worldwide effort,” said Forstall, who’s in charge of iPhone software. “You have to be able to find businesses and points of interest. And so we’ve already ingested more than 100 million business listings around the world to make a great local search.”
Google has 80 million local business listings available in its mapping software and search engines, a spokeswoman for the company told Bloomberg.
One hundred million vs. 80 million: but what about the quality of those listings? The local data business is very hard and it’s often a big mess. Just ask any of the companies in the segment.
Apple is relying on a number of partners, most notably TomTom (TeleAtlas) and Localeze, for local POI and business listings data. However there are numerous other data partners involved.
Google has been dealing with the local data/business listings mess now for years. It arguably captures more local data from more sources than anyone and its data are still far from perfect. As an aside, YP.com and Google were found to be the top two most comprehensive local sites in the US by Implied Intelligence in a recent study. (More on that later.)
If Apple succeeds in becoming a major player in local search, which could happen literally overnight, then marketers, brands and local businesses will all be seeking a way in. They’ll want ways to claim, correct and enhance profiles. Yet Apple is likely to remain a black box. The company will probably rely on partners and third parties to monitor and maintain data quality rather than open a direct channel itself.
Yet it would be beneficial for local businesses and for users to enable some sort of direct access and crowd feedback — allowing businesses to claim and update their listings, while enabling users to identify incorrect listings and other errors.
If Apple were to recognize the value in that more direct approach the company would have to get its hands dirty and create a team to deal with the craziness that is local business data. In the meantime, all the conventional rules about data hygiene and local syndication would appear to apply albeit with new emphasis on Localeze.
Finally, local marketers will be clamoring for advertising and sponsorship opportunities from Apple. The company doesn’t really care that much about advertising it appears; iAd seems to be fading. So it’s unlikely that we’ll see much in the way of sponsored listings opportunities — at least not in the immediate term.
Without knowing much about the backend here it may be the case that Apple has had to build what amounts to a local index of content to be able to serve business listings on the map or otherwise through Siri. If that’s so it’s very interesting in terms of the company’s competition with Google and its potential impact on others in the local space. (I think many publishers are underestimating how impactful Apple could be in local.)
It’s going to be fascinating to see how good Apple Maps are when iOS 6 hits general release “in the Fall.” Then we’ll have a real opportunity to compare it to Google Maps.
See also: mostly positive early impressions of the Apple Maps beta from GigaOM and TUAW. Both point out that Siri integration is a winning feature.
June 18th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Very good one about Apples challenges in local search. For sure they need something like Google+ Local Dashboard to be able to handle all those businesses that will prove to be wrong or not just there at all. To handle this trough all their partners will be a nightmare. On the other hand, user may just use their favourite local search app instead… I know that the current Map app in iOS is widely used in the States as a local search tool but as far as I know it’s not the case in a lot of other countries user go to their YP-provider, some review app or just use Google in their Safari browsers
June 18th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Greg: One can only hope the Apple back end is nothing like the google back end.
6-7 years after the introduction of Google maps the presentation of data is still highly unstable.
Hopefully some smart Apple engineers have reversed engineered why google’s back end is prone to changing data all the time and come up with solutions that minimize that possibility.
Otherwise you’ll have people driving to the wrong location, calling the wrong phone number, looking at info for competitors….ie all the problems that the google.maps index has been presenting for years.
If Apple does a far better job on that end…and it gets wide acclaim for having done so…maybe that will spark a change in google that will make accuracy and stability a priority rather than an afterthought.
My $0.02 :D
June 18th, 2012 at 11:08 pm
I think it would be more beneficial for local businesses to own and control their listing rather than claim and update it. They know their business better than anyone else and so long as they recognise the need to keep it fresh, relevant and updated, users will have less need to identify incorrect listings and other errors. If they do spot some, they simply contact the business direct and it gets changed. This process through most YP companies and even Google+ Local/Places is pretty clumsy. Apple have the potential to be a game changer in local search by enabling SMBs like Donna to instantly change her listing by simply updating her domain. They could facilitate that rather than aggregating data of variable quality and accuracy. One day a .tel will feature on my iPhone keyboard as well as .com. http://www.donna-mariemalone.tel/
As David Mihm’s recent excellent research into Local Search ranking factors revealed – the no.1 on-site factor is the domain authority of the website. SMBs should own that domain.
June 19th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Great another place for us local SEO’ers to have to manage. oye!
June 22nd, 2012 at 4:34 pm
[...] also not clear how Apple is going to handle the challenges of managing local data. Apparently there is a form that allows users to submit corrections or problems directly to Apple. [...]
August 29th, 2012 at 5:23 pm
[...] the impending arrival of Apple Maps. Whether Apple knows what it’s getting into with Local remains to be seen…hopefully they’ve got a pretty flexible database architecture locked and loaded, in [...]
September 19th, 2012 at 3:27 am
[...] I haven’t used iOS 6 maps and can’t affirm or contradict any of the statements above. But if the data in Apple’s maps are as bad as Bardin suggests then Apple will have to scramble to swap out TomTom with another vendor or vendors. In the end they’re going to have to do much more to bring mapping in-house. They’ll find (like Google) that if they want to offer a top-notch mapping product they’ll need to get much closer to the horrors of local data. [...]