Google has just released Local Business Center to enable business owners to analyze their company online listing through Google data in a dashboard.

Introduction to Google’s Local Business Center

▲ Official Introduction Video of Google’s Local Business Center

▲ Google Map Listing of Pizza Hut Restaurant in Taikoo Shing, Hong Kong

Customers have already search products, services and places through search engines like Google, while a nice business listing which is informative and with postive review in Google Map definitely bring more customers to you.

Local Business Center it the web analytics tool you can extract data from Google, which is impossible before accessing their data, to optimize your listings as well as for business development.

In Hong Kong, thanks to OpenRice.com, there are many restaurant listings in Google Map. Not only those chain restaurants should adopt Local Business Center immediately, individual restaurants should also take online medium as an effective channel to promote their business with analytics results as well.

Related Posts

• Online Ad Spending Steady in Economic Recession
• Google Hong Kong Finance Beta launched
• Pixazza: Crowdsourced AdSense for Images

Pixazza launched a service similar to AdSense for images on March 24, 2009, it prompts relevant product details and listings onto the images. Google is also one of the biggest investors for Pixazza, and it once again helps bloggers and long tail participants to turn their photo into money after providing contextual advertising in text by AdSense.

Pixazza inserts tiny yellow-and-blue tags onto the images, and detail product listhings show up once users mouse-over these tags. You can see the available offerings by different retailers, and just a few clicks away from purchasing the products.

More than just AdSense for Images

• Crowdsourcing. Unlike AdSense which analyzes the content on a web pages, Pixazza relies on its crowdsourcing platform to enables groups of volunteer and paid experts to identify the products in the photos and tag them.
• Visually Trigger Buying Intention. AdSense provides content-related advertisements in text and hope to get users’ attention, while attrative photos can trigger immediate buying intention and Pixazza can increase the conversion rate by directly pointing users to the retailers.
• Rewarding Consumer-generated Media. New media enables people to create and publish their own graphics and photos easily, Pixazza can turn their creativity into cash if they drive sales to any related products. It creates a new win-win affiliate marketing network of photos besides the text and banner ads.

You can check Pixazza out in I’m not obsessed, and see if you’re interested in those designer brands worn by those celebrities. If you’re publishers, sign up to give Pixazza a try and share your reviews here. Perphaps I should bring Pixazza to this blog some day.

Extended Reading

• Pixazza “Product in the Picture” Service: AdSense for Images by Business Week
• Google Invests in Pixazza, An AdSense for Images by Mashable
• Pixazza開站策動三贏革命，把每張圖片自動變成廣告賺錢 by Mr. 6

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• Beyond Photo Tagging: Face Recognition
• Analyze Your Online Listing in Google’s Local Business Center
• Ignite Your Game in New Media

Google just launched Google Hong Kong Finance (Google 香港財經) Beta on March 30, 2009. It is a localized version of Google Finance, which has already been launched for over 3 years in U.S., and offers users with comprehensive finance information for Hong Kong, China and major worldwide stock markets.

Awesome and Unique features

 Streaming Stock Quote. Besides offering real-time stock quote for China and U.S. market and 15-minute delay for Hong Kong, the displayed prices are updated automatically like streaming quote without any clicks and refresh. And most importantly, it’s free.

Goolge Trend-like Chart. The charts come along with relevant news with labels associated on the timelines which is similar to Google Trend. It helps users to identify any possible causes of the price movement. The relevant news which suggested by Google serach engine consolidate the major local financial news sources like AAStocks.com and 128128.com which is very handy for users. I hope Google will introduce the relevant blogs feature of which Google Finance in U.S. offer real soon.

Interactive Analysis. The interactive charts and analysis tools faciliates users of all-kind. Chart analysis is handy with comprehensive tool in Flash with 10-year historical data. Technical analysis is also easy by specifying criterias in “Stock Screener” (“股票篩選器”).

Promotion Event in Causeway Bay

Just read about in Twitter today that Google has temporaily rented a store in crowded Causeway Bay to introduce Google HK Finance Beta to the public. I have got a chance to be there but realized there are not many passer-by interested, and I am one of a few to sit down and experience the new awesome localized service by Google. And I was surpised by their “Google Chupa Chups” and Octopus card case with a bull in 2008 :p

Extended Reading

• “Google Finance” by Wikipedia
• “Google Finance Blog” by Google
• “Google香港財經Beta正式推出　提供一站式股票市場資訊” by e-zone 討論區

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• TVB.com released myTV Live beta
• WordCamp Hong Kong 2009
• Microsoft’s Bing Surprises Us With No Surprising Features