In the near future, Google Maps on mobile phones will also start including businesses as points of interest. Google calls these “smart maps” internally. “They are selected based on their PlaceRank,” says John Hanke, VP of Google Earth, Maps, and Local. PlaceRank is like PageRank for places It tries to figure out how prominent a place is based on factors such as “references on the Web, reviews, photos,” says Hanke, “how many people know about it, how long its been around.”

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/06/google-local-maps-qr-code/