Skype Extension and Google Local

People have been noticing that the rather funky Skype extension picks up and converts phone numbers in AdWords and AdSense.

I have to say - thank goodness - Barry Schwartz was around to point to the SEO forum member that this isn't a Google feature! Gosh. I cringe just thinking the question was asked!

I think a great illustration of just how significantly the new Skype feature overlaps with Google is via Google Maps. Check out that map to our brand new (bigger) bigmouthmedia office in New York. Not only is the Skype dropdown on the local list on the left it even sits on the bubble on the AJAX element on the right.

Yeah. I know Yada Yada Marketing seems to be bidding on our brand name. I take it as a compliment.

In fact, I suspect we'll see a mini battleground here. As Map search and Local search heats up and improves there will be a number of companies that'll want to control those phone number clicks. We're also bound to see webmasters, companies and brands who don't want their web pages to be parsed in that way and will be looking for ways to block the effects of the extensions.

P.S. You can get pretty close to the new bigmouthmedia America office via Google Streetview which is also cool!