Find and compare local businesses

Posted by Ronojoy Chakrabarti, Product Manager

Many people come to Google.com to navigate the web, but are you aware that you can use it to navigate the real world as well? Over the past few months, we've been hard at work making it easier to find and compare local businesses and services right from the standard web results page. Here's what we've come up with:
From now on, you'll see this every time you search for a place, business, or other local information. In addition to providing the basic contact information and map locations for several choices at the top of the page, we also show ratings and provide one-click access to reviews on the search results page so that you can make more informed decisions about where you want to go.

Here are a few specific examples of how you can use Google to search and compare local businesses and services.

• Find the location of and driving directions to the Googleplex (or any specific address).
• Find and compare Mexican restaurants in Pasadena, CA
• Get directions to and read reviews about a local eatery in Pittsburgh.
• Find movie showtimes for films that are playing in your neighborhood.

We're really excited to offer this easier access to qualitative information about local spots. We find the reviews and ratings generated by others in the know to be quite useful when we want to head to a restaurant, catch a movie, or stay at a hotel -- and we hope you will too.