Google Maps getting more aggressive?

It’s been a week or two since I’ve had reason to visit Google Maps. So I’m wondering, is this new?

Right there on the home page Google has added an invite to business owners: “Add/Edit Your Business”. New or not, it’s smart. You have to make this obvious, as obvious as possible to get more business owners to wrap their arms around the idea of local search marketing on the web. If you’re a local search provider, you have to be aggressive in reaching out to business owners, and that’s why Google does things like partnering with Intuit.

But you also have to be careful, because there’s such thing as too aggressive, too.

[tags]google, local search, small business, marketing[/tags]