These days local map optimization has been grown up as the buzz word in business community. No matter whether you have any virtual presence or not, being listed in local maps can offer significant benefit in driving local buyers to your business place.Though all major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing offer local map listing opportunities, and listing to each of them is really important to gain more exposure for your business, but in this article today, we will mainly focus on the current trend of local search and how Google map optimization brings positive impact to your business growth.Shifting TrendGone are those days when people sit back and read yellow pages to find information about local companies. These days they mostly depend on Internet to search for local businesses. It’s not just convenient, but it is easy to get the most updated and accurate information about local companies and their services.According to answer.com, it is estimated that nearly 300 million people use Google every day and Google logs nearly 2 billion searches per day. Quite a B-I-G number, isn’t it? Google Places is the new face of Google maps marketing that dramatically changed the surface of search marketing strategy.Today, it’s not just displaying results against keywords, when it comes to Google map optimization, but significantly altering the structure of conventional organic optimization method. Since map listing is more universally present in local search, the end product of general marketing strategy demands an elemental reallocation. This is why a new discipline, local map optimization, takes place as the critical and one of the most dominating components in the local SEO techniques.Impact on BusinessBusiness owners, on the other hand, take the advantage of it. Most interestingly, when you count on Google map optimization, you can dominate your competitors without really paying for that. This is why more and more business owners are taking interest in Google map optimization.According to the survey conducted by StatOwl.com, search engines market share of Google is 81.14%, which is definitely quite an impressive number compared to other major search engines like Yahoo (7.46%), Bing (8.07%), Ask (1.74%) or AOL (1.57%). It is also estimated that 35% of all online searches are happened to be local search, 61% of local searches are converted and 73% of online activities lead to acquisition of local content.So, if you count on the above statistics, you can easily imagine how important it is to get rank on Google Places. Whether you claim or create listings in Google Places, it drives two major benefits -(1) firstly, it sends signals to the search engines that the updated and accurate information about a business is obtained;(2) secondly, it offers the owner (claimer) the opportunity to outrank his competitors by optimizing business listing for targeted keywords and geographical locations.Therefore, as you can easily understand that Google map optimization technique (along with map optimization for other major search engines) offers businesses an all new surface of promoting their products or services in the marketplace, it is important to take action as early as you can.