Are You Ready For Google Local Social Search?

Nov 2, 2009 at 7:00am ET by Andrew Shotland

Google's new social search experiment is kind of a big deal for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is it will open up lots of opportunity for smart local search marketers. Over the past couple of years we've seen social-local search plays like Yelp gather steam while at the same time Google Maps results have slowly started encroaching on more and more Web results. Recently Google added place pages and Google local listing ads which should both start to grab more and more local search attention. In short, as Google improves its local search experience, it will get harder for sites to [...]

Filed in: Google: Maps & Local, Google: Social Search, Locals Only

Local Search: A Solved Consumer Problem

Oct 26, 2009 at 8:00am ET by Matthew Berk

It pains me to say it, but local search is a solved consumer problem. I’m in pain admitting this, because I’ve been trying to create better local search mousetraps since 2003. Put simply, major search engines do a good enough job of surfacing local listings and phone numbers to consumers who need a specific product or service at a moment in time. The rest of the local search “opportunity,” beyond the one or two review aggregator sites lucky enough to also pop up—is all a matter of either SEO (indefensible) or arbitrage (sinking margins). In other words, consumers have accepted the [...]

Filed in: Locals Only

There’s No Debate That Local Search Has A Role to Play in Healthcare

Oct 19, 2009 at 6:00am ET by Larry Small

Congress’ debate on healthcare has sparked many different opinions about the right path for the future of healthcare insurance. Regardless of where that debate is headed, all Americans share the same challenge at one point or another: finding good healthcare. And that’s where local search comes in—to help connect medical professionals with patients. Recently, Dennis Fromholzer at CRM Associates analyzed some data points from Knowledge Networks that show healthcare accounts for 14 percent of all Yellow Pages usage—or roughly one out of every seven uses. In 2008, there were [...]

Filed in: Locals Only

Google Custom Maps: A Goldmine For Local Businesses

Oct 12, 2009 at 8:00am ET by Chris Silver Smith

This past week at SMX East, I presented a longer-tail marketing tactic for Google Maps — creation and uploading of place marks data into the customizable “My Maps” section. For companies and individuals who have some rich local data to share, or local place expertise, My Maps may be for you!

Filed in: Locals Only

Where Is The Competitor To AdSense In Local Search?

Oct 5, 2009 at 6:00am ET by Andrew Shotland

Co-opitition is a fairly common occurrence in the local search biz.  A lot of the big yellow pages publishers have access to a lot of advertisers but they don't always have the right mix of traffic.  While it's no small feat to sign up a dentist in Pleasanton, CA, it's just as hard to get traffic to your site from the relatively few people each month in Pleasanton who are searching for a dentist, even if you have 20 million monthly visitors to your site.  So if you're sitting on a few million in ad spend you have to go out and buy the traffic, usually from your competitors. And your comp [...]

Filed in: Locals Only

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