Earlier tonight I came across one of GrayWolf’s newest blog posts on blended local search. In it, he featured a SERP of “royal crest golf club” on Google.

Now, if you weren’t able to make it to my presentation on Local Search and Blended Results at SMX West — here’s the deal…

First off, take a look at the following screen shot. It’s that of a blended search result on Google for Kobe Japanese Restaurant, which appeared while searching for “sushi santa clara“.

Okay, so the important thing to note here is that the listing is verified via trusted data sources for local search. Specifically, the listing shown above cites reviews from tripadvisor, citysearch and even yahoo as well as from one google user. Now, without these references, it was my understanding that Google would not feature the blended, drop down maps — since the information was never once verified.

Before jumping into Gray’s example, let’s recap one of the tips provided in my presentation (download here) — the one about the following link appearing in listings.

Any time you see that graphic, it means that the listing has not yet been verified through the Local Business Center.

So, if we sniff out the example that Michael provided, you’ll notice that the Local / Maps Listing is simply that of an address — not one from a business profile. As such, there is no verification from trusted sources like citysearch, infousa, etc.

This is the first time I’ve seen Google providing maps to otherwise unverified listings via the blended search results. In my presentation’s example, I used a SERP for “sushi santa clara” that I pulled last weekend. In it, there was the 10 listings in the oneBox results (at the top, as there is now) but the *only* blended / drop down map integrated was for the example I provided above.

Now — take a look at how many maps there are for that same SERP (four, plus the 10 in OneBox!):

Really, really interesting find here. Major tip of the cap to GrayWolf on this one… I’m curious to see how all this will play out.