I wrote about it here on SEL — Google showing 10 links instead of three — and finally was able to generate the result myself (e.g., restaurants, San Francisco):
It’s uncertain at the moment what impact this will have on user behavior or traffic to local business sites. I’d love to hear an SEO perspective; I’m sure this is a welcome development.
Based on a call a little while ago with Google, I appended my SEL post:
Google said today that the reason it’s showing more links is because usability testing revealed that many people didn’t realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings, despite the “more results . . .” prompt. Accordingly, Google said that with the 10 links it is hoping to signal people that there is much more local content a click away.
The ranking of those ten results is based on a range of factors, including the query, proximity, availability of ratings/reviews and their quality and several other variables.
Google also said that it wouldn’t always show 10 results; it might still show three sometimes or one if the query is very specific.
Screenwerk 
January 24, 2008 at 12:47 am
[…] Sterling has received “official confirmation” from Google that the Local OneBox will now often contain 10 listings (although could include 3 or 1 […]
January 24, 2008 at 12:51 am
Their new results and rankings do appear to vary from query to query.
Interesting outcome from the usability tests.
I would think the larger screen space will increase both awareness and click
throughs.
Any ideas why some of the new 10 local search results are placed at the top of the page while others appear near the fold?
January 24, 2008 at 1:32 am
Meaning some maps/links are further down the page? If that’s a correct understanding of your question it’s the Universal Search architecture on the back end and their algorithm making decisions about what content is most relevant to a query.
They’re not doing pure “onebox” any more re maps/local.
January 24, 2008 at 2:45 am
Yes…
I believe I have discovered some other new and unique local results and will write about them tomorrow.
Thanks.
January 24, 2008 at 8:12 am
Certainly an interesting development. It’s interesting that Google is now competing for the same clicks that could have generated CPC revenue. “best restaurants” or “restaurants san francisco” are top bid keywords and with more results showing up in organic search, it would be an interesting experiment. Also, wondering if this is an intermediary step to driving more local traffic to maps.google.com?
January 24, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Re traffic to Maps.Google . . . yes, it’s certainly part of that effort. It’s not clear whether this is “intermediary,” however. Users probably will continue to use Google.com much more than navigate directly to Maps.Google for some time to come.
January 24, 2008 at 6:36 pm
[…] As you may know there have been numerous sitings this week of expanded Google Local results in Google’s Web Search. Previously when […]
January 24, 2008 at 7:31 pm
This is a continuation of Google apparent strategy to drive increasingly more of their search results traffic to yet another Google page (where they control monetization with no rev share) vs a third-party content publisher’s page.
When Google is where most local searches start AND Google controls who gets the lion’s share of the traffic from local search SRPs AND Google has a vested economic interest in getting the lion’s share of said traffic, I think you have a potential conflict of interest.
January 28, 2008 at 2:58 am
[…] reported and since confirmed by Greg Sterling, Google is now showing up to 10 local business results for geographic specific […]