Ever Googled from your telephone?

Ever phoned Google toll-free, said what you wanted, and heard the search results for your area? I'm blessed to be a professional who gets to make a living by keeping up with the latest trends, and then showing my clients how to use those trends in their marketing efforts. Every now and then I find one that clicks so well that I just have to tell everyone I meet, client or not. Google's GOOG-411 is one of the ones that I've been promoting most.

From anywhere in North America (thank you Google for including Canada!), you can phone 1-800-GOOG-411 — that's 1-800-466-4411 for those who hate to look up those keypad numbers, or use a Blackberry Pearl! You'll get a recording that asks for your location, and the product type you're looking for. Speak your answers, and you'll hear a numbered list of the Google search results, for your area and requested product or service. When you hear the one you want, just say, "1" or "2" or whatever the number was for that company, and Google will connect you directly to that business.

You can also have GOOG-411 give a brief description for each company, to help you find the one you want. Very helpful if you need to find a business while away from a computer or phone book. What I'm telling clients though is that it underlines the importance of being very high — preferably in the top three but certainly in the top five — if you want to get noticed. True enough, GOOG-411 is still in the growing stage, but it is indeed growing. And for those of you who would like to grow with it, this would be an excellent time to consider how optimizing your site's search engine results could be a great investment for your company.

Another huge marketing implication of GOOG-411 is that ability to give a brief description of each business, based upon the description meta tags of each site. That's a scary thought for many companies; those description tags can languish in some forgotten part of their Web site for months or years without being updated. It's time to go back and revisit them. Like many aspects of your marketing, they can be a lot more valuable than you ever imagined!