Google is making news in the search world, again. In his most recent ClickZ article, “Google Places: Does Local SEO and Google Boost Make for a Local SEM?”, Gregg Stewart, discusses the potential impact Google’s new Place Search and Boost will have on their attempts to grab sales channels and further penetrate the local market.

Google now has a grasp on only 8 percent of the 25 million businesses in the US and has recognized that in order to capture more businesses, it needed to simplify its offerings. Google Place Search and Boost do just that. They are a simplistic way for business to establish a local presence on the top search engine.  Ideally, these two services will leverage growth and market share for Google within the local search marketplace.

Google Place Search, which was released toward the end of October, now rewards local businesses with organic positioning when complete content is found on a businesses’ Place Page, Web site and in directories across the Web. Gregg explains that to take advantage of these changes, marketers should apply traditional local listing SEO techniques as well as focus on building a rich resource of ratings and reviews for their businesses. As Gregg puts it, Boost is “Paid Search for the Masses” and similar to Google’s  previous attempt to capitalize on local paid search with Local Listings Ads; which ironically were discontinued before they were a year old.

It will be interesting to see how significant these changes will be, or if they will they fall by the wayside like the 7-Pack and Local Listing Ads that came before them did?