Local shops for local people

This morning I had a few local errands to run, and took some shoes to be resoled at the local locksmith/key cutter/cobbler just off the Muswell Hill Broadway. They said I could wait white the boots were repaired, so I sat reading the paper to pass the time.

Working for Google, I tend to hear the name of my employer quite a lot in snatched conversation, and I could hear the guys in the shop talking about the rankings of their web site and that of a rival. In particular they were wondering if they could complain to Google.

It seems there's a lot of competition in the locksmith trade. I asked what the issue was, and apparently it was a rival locksmith which isn't based in Muswell Hill but operates in the region. They've managed to get their site above that of the local shop on the local map search using a dubious tactic or two and this had raised the hackles of the "true" local shop with phrases like "this has lead to the widespread misunderstanding that shoe repairers (aka cobblers) are also Locksmiths [...] and we certainly do not engrave trophies etc". I didn't want to get drawn into the rights and wrongs of it, but was intrigued. 

Anyway, I explained how Google's ranking system worked at a high level, the importance of other sites linking to yours, how to use Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to see what's going on and ended up in a bit of a product pitching session.

As a thank you, I got my shoes cobbled for free, and some bonus light bulbs thrown in too. Marvellous. So here's a thank you (and one of those all important links) to my local locksmith Tony Andrews.

Here's to local shops!