Google’s New Mobile Search

 

Google rolled out a very slick update to their iPhone App several days ago. Its fast and essentially makes Place page content almost instantly available. Google apparently upgraded the iPhone Safari app at the same and provided a similarly fast access to the Places data.

new iPhone Google Search App

Unfortunately as you can see in the Google screen shot above, in the app, in Safari search and on some Androids, the button to review a business is missing in action. Google has indicated that they are aware of the bug and are working on a fix.

In the meantime if you are using an iPad or mobile devices to access your Places page so that client can leave reviews you are in a bit of a sticky wicket. There are two work arounds until Google fixes the issue.

To get to a page that will give users the review button you can create a url like this that will work on an iPhone or iPad:

https://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&georestrict=input_srcid:b041566bdd3e5aca

To generate the URL with the srcid code go into the dashboard and click on View and it will generate the URL.

Another tactic is to take the regular cid link and add the “open review box” code (&dtab=2&action=openratings) to the end of the standard Place page link:

https://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=3291747407840809159&dtab=2&action=openratings

This URL will take the iPhone or iPad directly to the mobile review form rather than stopping at the Places page which might be a better solution anyways.

iOS 6 dropping Google Maps for an in-house solution

 

It’s been rumored for a while, and we won’t know for sure until this summer, but it appears that Apple is dropping Google Maps from the iPhone and iPad in favor of an in-house solution.

Over the past few years Apple has purchased companies such as Placebase, C3 Technologies and Poly9, and it’s thought that they’ve successfully combined those technologies in a way that works quite well on the iPhone.  The new 3D mode is thought to be coming straight from C3 Technologies, which has a pretty nice system.  Here is a mock-up from 9to5Mac that shows the potential difference between the old and new system:

The result of this would be quite interesting.  There is certainly a lot of potential for them to do some great things, and losing the Google Maps integration is likely step when you consider the competition between Android and Apple.