New Google Carousel for Local Search

Google recently released a carousel for local search, which displays businesses more visually and allows users to scroll through them. When you click on a business in the carousel, it opens up a knowledge graph card about the business that includes all information that was there previously, such as address, phone, prices, and hours.

According to Google, the carousel is activated whenever a user searches for “restaurants, bars or other local places” from their desktops only. Although there’s no mention of how it will impact mobile search yet, I’m sure it will eventually find its way there once they find a good solution.

As shown in the screenshots below, the carousel allows the users to compare all the local results easier by location and total reviews. When you mouseover a business in the carousel, it highlights that business in the map below.