Category: Local Search

Mon ami Sebastien blogged about Amdocs’ Eitan Ackerman’s talk on Categorizing Consumer Activities on Merchant Listings or in other words – What do people actually do on Yellow Pages sites? Here’s what Eitan found: Search to call: I am looking for the merchant’s phone number, often a core element of a business directory site. Search to book: I want to schedule an appointment or make a reservation. Search to purchase: I want to buy the product online (e-commerce) Search to navigate:…

I am not at SMX East today, but I thought it might be helpful to grab some interesting local tweets bubbling up from #SMX and record them here. I’ll be updating this from time to time over the next couple of days: Hot from #SMX: The Search Crossover: Local, Mobile Social http://outspokenmedia.com/4wbfless than a minute ago via webOutspoken Mediaoutspokenmedia 74% increased conversion rate from mobile if you have a mobile optimized site #smxless than a minute ago via webNina Haleninahale

As you can see by the above graphic, I’ll be speaking on the “Local Search” panel at Blueglass FL on Nov. 2nd along with David Mihm, Alan Bleiweiss & Jordan Kasteler. I am thinking about what twisted things I can talk about, so if you’re going to be there let me know what you’d like to hear. And for you Vic Chestnutt fans out there I know you’ll appreciate this

If you have been following the saga of the newly opened Main Street Meat and Fish Market in Pleasanton, Greg Sterling and I were having a discussion last week about the fact that since they are a new business, they are not yet showing up in the local search databases like InfoUSA, Acxiom & Localeze, and yet they have thriving Facebook and Yelp pages. One thing I hadn’t noticed last time I checked is that they also had a GoWalla…

Google announced a number of upgrades to its voice search application today.  One of them looks like it could be particularly troublesome to local search directory players.  From TechCrunch: Another feature is the ability to call any business in Google Search. This does not have to be a company in your local contacts app — it can be any business. I haven’t seen this in action yet, but if it acts the way I think it does then there will…

Executive Summary: Who knows? But here’s a data point of one: The Main Street Meat N Fish Market recently opened in Pleasanton.  My wife asked me to find their hours so I went to Google and queried “pleasanton meat n fish market“.  At the top of the SERP was this result from Patch.com (congrats to them!) but no Google Place Page for the business.  The Patch article pointed to their website, but it’s serving GoDaddy ads right now.  I clicked…

Today the Yellow Pages Association released a new study based on Comscore data that shows an increase in local mobile usage, particularly as it affects the use of local directories.  Here are some of the highlights: The number of mobile subscribers accessing business directories on a mobile phone increased 14 percent year-over-year to 17.3 million users in March 2010 the number of people accessing business directories on a mobile device at least once per week increased more than 16 percent year-over-year…

David Vogelpohl has posted a great list of local seo meetups from all over the U.S on Marketing Pilgrim.  If you are interested in getting together with other search engine geeks in your area, check it out.

With all of the brouhaha going on about Google’s test of a new local SERP for category searches that will make it much harder for local directories to get traffic, I became almost willfully blind to the more subtle change that had occurred to the SERP for business name queries.  Thanks to Patrick Altoft for pointing out that GOOG is now linking to a business’ Place Page for these queries instead of to the business’ website.  For example: According to…

Chris Silver Smith brings up a great point in today’s Local’s Only column about Google’s new local SERP design they are testing: …you might think that the newer, larger listing treatment might be beneficial for the visibility of these businesses. But, think again—for any of them which have been doing significant search marketing activities, this sea change could easily result in far lower numbers of organic referrals. Companies which aggressively have been marketing themselves have often enjoyed placement within the…