Google Local is making so many improvements so fast it makes my head spin, and I do this for a living. It was only late last year that Google Local came out of beta, and maps and local were merged (go to maps.google.com you end up at local.google.com and visa versa).

Well I’m lucky enough to be going on a date, but all I know is the restaurant name and the road its on, and I wasn’t so sure of the town (south florida seems to have way too many towns). So I did a rather fuzzy search on google “royal india on griffin road in fort lauderdale or davie”. Now it was not too long ago that most search engines would have choked on that query, or I would have found it through some tangential web site that mentioned the restaurant.

(you can click on the image for an annotated screen shot hosted on flickr, not a bad presentation tool)

Look what I get now, the name, address, a pin on the map, and 9 reviews, that’s right 9 reviews. My question is, what will this look like in a years time? What will happen when I do a search for “good business lawyer around fort lauderdale” or “plastic surgeon in dallas”.