Recently, Google has added a new tab to it’s home page, Local Search.

Google has always focused their home page design around the features it’s users are actually utilizing. This is a big boost for the local search arena, and shows how quickly the entire arena is evolving.

When asked, Google did not give out Local Search query numbers. They are in quite a fight with Yahoo over local search and seem to be pushing towards utilizing mapping technology to push local search over local based user generated data, which Yahoo and several other properties are now using to grow local user search bases.

This is a good move for local search, and I’m sure as this area continues to expand, Google will start throwing around some numbers of both query share and number of local businesses it’s managed to aggregate.

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