It was unclear what to call FindTheBest when it first launched roughly two years ago: "anti-search engine," “decision engine” or “comparison engine." Today, it may not matter. The company just raised $11 million and has 22 million monthly users. (The site has raised $17 million to date.) CEO (and former DoubleClick founder) Kevin O’Connor sees the site as a way to help people make better decisions with reliable, structured data. Those data come from a range of public and private sources. Indeed, O'Connor says what he and his team have created is a "data platform" that can manage [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search Engines: Classifieds Search Engines | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Engines: Other Search Engines | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

Calling it "personalized search for the real world," Foursquare brought its mobile Explore functionality into its recently redesigned PC website roughly three weeks ago, and added some new search capabilities in the process. Those capabilities included the ability to filter places results by four categories: 1) "I haven’t been to yet" 2) "I have been to before" 3) "My friends have been to" 4) "Have Foursquare specials." The mobile-PC cross-pollination continued yesterday as Foursquare brought some of those enhanced search capabilities back to its iPhone and Android mobile apps. Now you ca [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Foursquare | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Location / Checkin Services | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines

Thinking about being found the old-fashioned yet high-tech way, a coupon through a daily deals service? Stats say these may bring in new business but not necessarily repeat customers. Consumers do like them, nearly half online use the sites and of those, 60% get emailed offers from two or more per day. The people at BuySellAds have assembled these and other stats from a variety of resources into the infographic below: Want this infographic for yourself? You'll find it here: The Daily Deal Divide. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Offers | Groupon | Infographics | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines

One of the complaints often leveled against email-delivered daily deals is that they're not "relevant." A refrain I've heard repeatedly is, "How many 'main-pedi' deals do I need?" To combat this "deal fatigue," a range of sites, including Yipit, Groupon and Google, among others, have introduced personalization. But some would argue search is a better cure. Now a couple of Google engineers have launched The Dealmix to bring Google-like search and mapping functionality to daily deal shopping. The site offers a map view, as well as a list view. There are also numerous ways to filter dea [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Top News

When Bing launched deals several months ago its partner was deal aggregator The Dealmap, which was subsequently acquired by Google. That forced Microsoft to turn elsewhere for deals and today, as a result, we're seeing the launch of a new deals experience on mobile and the PC that pulls in content from a wide range of sources. The mobile deals experience hasn't really changed; you can see daily deals in  your selected area, as well as deals "nearby" and also browse deals by category. It's available via the m.bing.com HTML5 site and Bing apps. There's a new more comprehensive online [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Shopping & Cashback | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Top News

Google took its first daily deal baby steps yesterday with the launch of its first Google Offer in Portland. It was reportedly a hit for the business owner and a success for Google. According to CNET and ClickZ the first customer hit Floyd's Coffee Shop within about 10 minutes of the offer going live. Overall, ClickZ reported that 1,708 vouchers out of a possible 2,000 were sold. Today's Google Offer (a billiards club) has sold 432 out of 500 possible. So far, so good for Google. Meanwhile just about 2,000 miles away Groupon, the bellwether for the daily deals segment, just filed its S-1 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines

Shopping.com parent eBay has reportedly acquired local product inventory site Milo.com for $75 million in cash. Milo was aspiring to become the "Google of local product data." The acquisition is a bit of a surprise to me but problably came out of discussions about a strategic investment. I believe Milo and Shopping.com were in discussions to incorporate Milo data into results there. eBay may have decided, since Google unveiled local product inventory just a couple weeks ago, that it needed a response and that it wanted to own one of the principals in the segment. Milo had started to syndica [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | eBay | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

Yelp continues to play catch-up with some of its competition in the local search landscape. The company's latest move is the announcement of "Check-in Offers." If you're familiar with the premise behind Foursquare's business users rewarding "mayors" and others who check-in to local businesses, you'll be familiar with Yelp's product. The idea is the same: Local businesses using Yelp's business tools can reward customers when they check-in via Yelp's mobile apps. Check-in offers is available now in the countries where Yelp offers a business dashboard, namely the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland. W [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Foursquare | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Location / Checkin Services | Top News | Yelp

The Pew Internet Project published findings from a recent survey about usage of "location-based services" (LBS). According to the Pew data, 7 percent of mobile Internet users are on location-based services and 4 percent of all internet-using adults "use a service such as Foursquare or Gowalla that allows them to share their location with friends and to find others who are nearby." These findings appear to track and validate an earlier Forrester Research survey that found 4 percent of online adults had used location-based mobile apps such as Foursquare or Gowalla. Other surveys have found [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Foursquare | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Location / Checkin Services | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Top News

At the Where 2.0 event in San Jose yesterday afternoon, Danny Sullivan moderated a panel entitled "The Big Picture from the Big Players." In addition to Danny it featured Blaise Agüera y Arcas (Microsoft), Tom Wailes (Yahoo!), John Hanke (Google, Inc.), Dylan Swift (Yelp). The session sought to cover a lot of ground in a very tight 35 minutes. Danny initiated the compressed session by asking the time-honored question about local online marketing and small business: "Why aren't local businesses getting it?" Interestingly most of the panelists disagreed with that chara [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Foursquare | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Top News | Yahoo: Maps & Local

In light of the current economy, Vertive, Inc., is banking on now being the right time to launch a new search engine for coupons and deals. It's called Offers.com, and it enters an already crowded space of coupons/deals sites. Offers.com provides coupons and deals from more than 1,000 merchants, and classifies them by product or service into more than 150 categories. Offers are further organized into deals, coupon codes, free trials, and the like. The company hopes that its "My Offers Locker" tool will set it apart from competitors like DealNews, Slickdeals, and the numerous other sites tha [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines