Business Listing Quality Guidelines are now available from the Google Maps Help Center.

The guidelines are largely common sense, and should not significantly affect normal listing management. As a matter of fact, they probably won’t affect malicious list-ers, either. They may, however, allow Google to be more proactive with their enforcement.

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As many early testers have revealed, Google has begun adding more information about their personalization tactics to the results.

In the case of Pay Per Click Ads, the method of customization is added to a non-customizable bottom line of the ad. The description shows who this ad has been targeted at. In the example below, the ad has been “geo-targeted” to the Champaign & Springfield-Decatur, IL market by DMA.

On the same page, Google has also noted how personalized search has affected my Organic Results. More experienced searchers are fully aware that no two sets of results are ever the same. Organic results vary by over 200 factors, including web history, as noted by Google in this case, as well as geographic designations based on the searcher’s IP address.

The decision to begin adding these informative little tags are likely the result of two emphasis changes at the search company:

1. More transparency – One of the most common complaints with web folks has been the feeling of lack of information from the search giant. With more blog posts and chat sessions, the sense is that Google is trying to make users feel a little left out in the cold.
2. Ongoing moves to localize searches – In an effort to filter the onslaught of information that users experience, the search industry as a whole, not just Google, is moving rapidly towards this type of “localization” by both geographic and behavioral targeting.

The hope of both moves is to make each users individual search experience more enjoyable.

TechCruch note’s another new Google acquisition. This one could provide video editing capabilities to YouTube.

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