In December, 100,000 brick and mortar businesses in 5,000 cities who had claimed their Local Business Listings got snail mail from Google in the form of Favorite Place stickers, with instructions to put them in their windows and use them to promote their business.

Included on each sticker is a bar code that some smart phone users can scan to pull up Local Business Listing information, including coupons, on their phones. Outwardly, this appears to be just another bribe that Maps is offering to get businesses to claim their listings. In reality, Google could be testing any number of things relating to smart phone use, mobile search and local businesses. It's worth noting here that Google encouraged Local Listing Ad advertisers to link their ads to their Place Pages instead of to their websites because the Place Pages render well on small screens and contain all of the information a mobile searcher is likely to be interested in.

Google is continually testing and tweaking, so changes are no surprise to those who watch it. But in 2009, the number, frequency, acceleration and anticipated impact of the changes both in paid advertising and organic results regarding Local Search at Google have been remarkable. In my opinion, these increasingly louder rumblings indicate that once Google finds the optimum combination of the right user interface and profitable local advertising to display, it will unleash a formidable storm in the world of Local Search. Are you ready?