Survey: Older Generations Embrace Mobile As Local Shopping Companion
Conventional wisdom tells us that younger generations trump older generations in their use of mobile devices during the local purchasing process. While teenagers use their smartphones at every opportunity to find local businesses, read reviews and scan…
WSJ: Local Businesses Losing Reviews After Yelp-Yahoo Deal
The recent Yelp/Yahoo partnership has angered some local business owners who say years of positive reviews are now gone from their Yahoo Local business listings. Some of their stories were told this week in the Wall Street Journal, including Colonial H…
MapQuest Aims For Reboot With New Content, Partners, UI
A few years ago, while others were investing in their mapping platforms, AOL was coasting with MapQuest. AOL’s sustained neglect of the online mapping pioneer cost the site its leadership in digital maps. Now the company hopes to claw its way back with new content and functionality in what…
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Study: 78 Percent Of Local-Mobile Searches Result In Offline Purchases
Today comScore, Neustar Localeze and agency 15 Miles released the findings from their latest Local Search Study. Now in its seventh year, the survey of nearly 5,000 US adults was conducted in December 2013. Respondents “were individuals who [had] conducted a local business search in the last…
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Google Places Adds New Features To Its Bulk Location Management Tool
Googler Jade Wang announced yesterday Google Places is rolling out new features to its bulk location management tool. According to the announcement, the new features will include a “Status” column that lets users know if a Map location is live, unverified, has errors, data conflicts, is…
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Survey: 85% Of SEOs Shoot For 1-5 New Local Reviews Per Month
Managing reviews and reputation isn’t a new discipline for search consultants and agencies to focus on, but it is gaining prominence as reviews take on more significance in the world of local search. Consumers consult online reviews more regularly in their research process and put an…
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No Joke: Google Maps Brings Back “Search Nearby” Feature
You’re going to hear a lot of rejoicing when this news spreads: Google has returned the “search nearby” feature to Google Maps. #celebrate!!! Amidst all of today’s Google April Fools’ joke announcements, the company tweeted the feature’s resurrection earlier…
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A (Pretend) Open Letter From Google To Local Directory Sites
To: Local Directories From: Google Re: Local Search Rankings Hey guys… You may have noticed that over the past year, a lot of the organic traffic to your sites has been… well, we guess the right word is “tanking.” As you know, it is our […]
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Why “Barnacle SEO” Is Making A Big Comeback In Local
Although I’d heard of “barnacle SEO” as a tactic at some of the early SEO conference networking events, the first real proponent of it in local search was Will Scott. I want to say that Will originally published this post on the now-defunct Local Search News in early 2008; but…
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The Local Search Event Horizon: Adopt Events Markup For Your Business
This month, Google Maps just announced a new events feature appearing on Android phones which has already been appearing in desktop local search results — for some types of business, events information is now being displayed in addition to the other local profile elements. The focus on events…
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Yelp and YP Enter Into “Strategic” Content, Distribution Partership
YP and Yelp have announced a strategic partnership that will in the near future provide YP advertisers with an enhanced presence on Yelp and effectively bring Yelp into the YP Local Ad Network. There is probably a revenue sharing deal in the background…
Bing Adds Directions Driving Directly In Search Results
Bing announced they now offer driving directions in the form of a quick answer directly in the Bing search results. For example, last week, I drove from New York to Toronto and I wanted to tell how long the drive was. So all you need to do is search for [nyc to toronto] and Bing […]
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Which Is The Most “Generous” Search Engine To Local Businesses?
Earlier this month, one of our customers asked an interesting question in a training workshop. They wanted to know which search engine displayed the most local results for different types of search terms. Google gets the lion’s share of focus in the SEO world, particularly in Local. They also…
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Yandex Buys Israeli Geo-Location Platform KitLocate
Yandex announced this morning that it has acquired Israeli startup KitLocate. According to third party sources the deal was worth “several million euros.” Yandex will gain and maintain a presence in Tel Aviv though the acquisition. The chief virtue of KitLocate is that it can provide location…
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Yahoo Goes Live With Yelp Local Reviews
Last month the Wall Street Journal reported that Yelp reviews were being integrated into Yahoo search results. This morning Yahoo formally announced the partnership: Now when you use Yahoo Search to look up a local business in the U.S. on your smartphone, tablet, or PC, you’ll see user reviews,…
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Survey: Consumers Blame Brands For Bad Location Data
Today at SMX West local data and marketing platform provider Placeable released findings from two related surveys it recently conducted online. The company polled consumers (n=1,000 US adults) and marketers (n=228) to gather data on local search attitu…
Better Data, Public Transit Coming To Apple Maps In iOS 8
According to unnamed sources cited by 9to5mac, Apple’s forthcoming iOS 8 will see a number of improvements to its mapping product across platforms. The site says the next Apple mobile OS will offer: Better and more complete points of interest and business data Public transit information and…
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Yahoo Rolling Out Indoor Maps (via Nokia)
Yahoo has started to integrate indoor maps into its newly upgraded mapping product. Even though Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer didn’t want to go head to head with Google in “local” (read: maps), Yahoo has been improving its mapping and local search user experiences of late. The inclusion…
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Time For SMBs To Tackle – Or Be Tackled By – Online Reviews
So much of search focuses on being found. But being found doesn’t do much good unless you’re also chosen. The only thing worse than not being found is being found and rejected from consideration. There’s no doubt that online reviews play an increasingly central role in the consumer path to…
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Google Yanks Fake FBI Listing From Google Maps, Puts New Blocks In Place To Stop Further Abuse
In response to a string of cases where fake business/organization listings have been added to Google Maps, Google says it has removed those listings and put in place new hurdles to make it more difficult for this kind of abuse to get through its system…