Feb 9, 2012 at 10:16am ET by Greg Sterling

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 [...]

Foursquare Launches “Personalized Search For The Real World”

Jan 12, 2012 at 12:42pm ET by Greg Sterling

Foursquare is introducing what it calls "personalized search for the real world" on its recently redesigned website. What that means as a practical matter is the introduction of the "Explore" feature, better keyword search and several new filters that enable users to drill down in search results. We can now, without hesitation, now call Foursquare a "local search engine." You'll now see an Explore button or tab in the upper right on the website. It's obviously been on the mobile app for some time but not on the site until today. Because I was so used to seeing Explore on the mobile client I [...]

Yelping In The Beemer: Review Site Inks Deal With BMW

Dec 21, 2011 at 5:48pm ET by Greg Sterling

Yelp is now established and mainstream enough to be included in BMW's Online/in-car content. Yelp reviews and related content will shortly be available to BMW owners "who subscribe to the optional BMW Assist Convenience Plan and have a navigation-equipped vehicle capable of receiving the BMW Online service." This means select BMW vehicles (see below for list) and is available in the US only for now. However Yelp's international coverage makes it probable that the partnership will roll out more broadly if it proves successful in the US. Yelp offered some screens of the BMW in-car search o [...]

Search Trumps Social For Local Business Information

Dec 14, 2011 at 10:59am ET by Greg Sterling

The internet and search engines in particular are the top sources for information about local businesses, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Foundation. That's not really a surprise. But what's interesting perhaps is how many people rely on print newspapers and how few seem to rely on social media for local information, according to the survey data. Pew surveyed just over 1,000 US adults by telephone in January, 2011. What it found was that 55 percent of people "say they get news and information about local restaurants, bars, and clubs" and 60 percent "say t [...]

Foursquare Hires Sr. Google Engineer For Search-Related Efforts

Dec 9, 2011 at 8:47pm ET by Greg Sterling

Foursquare has hired Andrew Hogue to beef up the company's search and search-related initiatives and capabilities. Hogue was a senior engineer with Google from 2004 through November of this year. The company recently announced it had passed 15 million users globally, 50 percent of which are outside the US. We spoke to Hogue about a range of topics last week from New York, where Foursquare is headquartered and he will be based. Hogue brings some serious engineering chops to Foursquare and it's a coup for the company to get him. Hogue told us that he was eager to work on improving Fours [...]

The Big Roundup: Finding Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals & Specials

Nov 25, 2011 at 10:13am ET by Greg Sterling

We're already well into Black Friday. In many US stores the frenzy began last night at 10 pm or midnight (as opposed to the normal 4 am door-busting start time). People barely had time to overcome the sleep-inducing effects of L-tryptophan before getting out into the melee. And the word "melee" aptly describes the scene in a Southern California Wal-Mart store as one woman unleashed pepper spray on her fellow shoppers to prevent them from getting in her way. Today and for the next few days people will be using a wide range of tools and resources -- hopefully not pepper spray -- to help them [...]

The Dealmix Promotes Search As A Differentiator

Nov 21, 2011 at 11:05am ET by Greg Sterling

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 [...]

Foursquare Redesign Creates Expanded Opportunities For Users, Advertisers

Nov 16, 2011 at 8:56am ET by Greg Sterling

Once upon a time Foursquare was a mobile app that allowed you to "check in" places and tell your friends you were there. That seems like a long time ago now. Foursquare has evolved into a local discovery tool and loyalty platform for businesses. It has effectively won in its "check-in" segment and has moved on to bigger and better things. It's no longer simply a mobile app either. The Foursquare website was effectively an afterthought for a long time. But now a redesign makes Foursquare.com a full-blown destination and generally a much more interesting and useful place to explore. Th [...]

Report: 32 Percent Of Users Do 5+ LoMo Searches Per Month

Nov 15, 2011 at 8:51am ET by Greg Sterling

Local mobile ad network xAd has released its first quarterly report detailing traffic trends and user behavior on its network. While all mobile ad networks offer geotargeting, xAd is one of a small number of mobile networks that specializes in local (search and display). CPM rates are considerably higher than on more conventional mobile ad networks. The company says it serves 10 billion monthly ad impressions. The data in the report were collected between July and September. Here are a few key points: 37 percent of general mobile consumers use their devices for local search, while 75 [...]

Apple Maps Inevitable As Company Acquires 3D Mapper C3

Oct 30, 2011 at 9:45am ET by Greg Sterling

Apple has apparently bought its third mapping company, the Sweden-based C3 Technologies. The company's site has been taken down. C3 provides 3D mapping (a la Bing Maps or Google Earth) for a number of other publishers such as Nokia (Ovi Maps) and UK directory publisher Yell. (In the wake of this transaction Nokia will probably need to shift to Bing's 3D mapping.) I was given a demo of the product in Europe early this year and from what I could tell it was every bit as good as anything that Microsoft or Google are doing with 3D imagery on maps. Here's Nokia's description of C3 and its techno [...]

Search Dominates Other Sources For Local Information — Study

Oct 27, 2011 at 10:09am ET by Greg Sterling

A new survey from Harris Interactive, sponsored by CityGrid Media, confirms what many already know: Search is the dominant way people look for local business information -- online. On mobile devices, review sites have equal influence. The telephone survey was conducted in August among just over 1,000 US adults. Slightly less than 60 percent (59 percent) of survey respondents said that search engines were the first place they go when researching local businesses. That number increased to 83 percent for those under 35 years old. Less than 10 percent (8 percent) said they visit the merchant's [...]

Waze Craze Brings $30 Million For Growth, China Expansion

Oct 18, 2011 at 11:19am ET by Greg Sterling

Waze is a somewhat unlikely success story. The social navigation and traffic app has just passed 7 million users globally and also announced another $30 million in funding, bringing its total to nearly $60 million. It also said that one of its new investors is Hong Kong magnate Li Ka Shing, who will help the company as it navigates (pardon the pun) the challenging and difficult Chinese market. The other investor in this round is Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Mary Meeker joins the Waze board as a result. Waze has successfully created a community of engaged drivers with its crowdso [...]

Telmetrics Introduces Call Tracking Without Tracking Numbers

Sep 20, 2011 at 7:15am ET by Greg Sterling

Call tracking has long been criticized by Local SEOs and others as violating the sanctity of what Localeze's Gib Olander has called the "NAP" (name, address and phone number) -- the central currency of all local business listings. The concern was and is that the rented tracking numbers (metered phone numbers) would be crawled or otherwise distributed out across the internet and pollute the key listings data. Now call measurement firm Telmetrics has introduced a solution that may satisfy call-tracking critics: "m.Call." Intended initially for mobile publishers and developers, the approach [...]

Pew: 58 Percent Use Geosocial And Location-Based Services

Sep 6, 2011 at 12:54pm ET by Greg Sterling

Pew has released some new survey findings showing that roughly 58 percent of smartphone owners use what Pew is calling "geosocial and location-based services." There's a mix of activities and applications grouped under these headings, including maps & directions and sites like Yelp and Foursquare among other things. Pew data reflect that 35 percent of mobile subscribers have smartphones. This is in general agreement with comScore, although Nielsen now says that smartphone owners represent 40 percent of all mobile phone owners. While only 12 percent of smartphone owners use Foursq [...]

Yelp CEO: 50 Percent Deal Margins Unsustainable

Aug 30, 2011 at 9:05pm ET by Greg Sterling

Following the elimination of daily deals (though not check-in deals) from Facebook's lineup of products, Yelp followed suit this week by scaling back its daily deals program. Many people incorrectly interpreted the news, presented in a Bloomberg article, as Yelp's total exit from the space. Some have also seen it as an indication that the segment as a whole is beginning to collapse. One person remarked to me today, "The bottom is starting to fall out isn't it?" Neither interpretation is correct. Deals are alive and (mostly) well and Yelp is still in the game. Here's what Yelp CEO Jeremy [...]

Clever Sense: A Mobile Search Engine That’s Like “Pandora For The Real World”

Jul 21, 2011 at 7:01pm ET by Greg Sterling

I suspect someone is going to successfully build Google's "contextual discovery engine" before Google does. The newest company to make a run at what Marissa Mayer was talking about is Clever Sense with its new app "Alfred" (formerly called Seymour). Intended to be a demonstration of Clever Sense's underlying data extraction and machine learning technologies, Alfred creates a personalized "interest graph" that then serves up local recommendations for places you'll like. But you can also search in a more conventional way. Of course Clever Sense isn't the first company to create a "recommen [...]

Local Search A Multi-Site, Cross-Platform Affair — Report

Jul 20, 2011 at 5:54pm ET by Greg Sterling

Google may currently "own" search, but local search is a different story. Mapping sites, specialized local sites, general search engines and deals, as well as mobile browsers and apps constitute the distributed landscape of local, according to a new report, "The State of Local Search," released yesterday by the Local Search Association (LSA), with data compiled by comScore. Entitled "The State of Local Search," the report looks at search trends and traffic over 2010 and into 2011. Billions of Local Queries In January there were roughly 2.3 billion local queries on search engines according [...]

WhitePages Gets “Localicious” With Android Search App

Jul 13, 2011 at 9:55am ET by Greg Sterling

WhitePages.com has launched a couple of new local search products this morning. Both are focused on neighborhoods and "hyper-local" information (hate the term). One is effectively a neighborhood-based social network called WhtePages Neighbors. The other, the subject of this post, is a new Android search app called "Localicious" I won't go into WhtePages Neighbors except to say it's prepopulated with WhitePages "people search" data, which covers most of the US. So when you search or look around your neighborhood you'll already see extensive contact information for the people who live near yo [...]

MapQuest Launches Local Business Listings Center

Jun 23, 2011 at 1:59pm ET by Matt McGee

Local SEOs have another tool to add to the "citation belt," as it were: MapQuest has announced its own Local Business Center, a place where local businesses can add and/or manage their listing(s) on MapQuest. As the video below shows, the MapQuest LBC functions very much like Google's and Bing's and offers many of the same basic features such as photo uploads, videos, categories and so forth. MapQuest is also offering two premium listing levels at $99 and $399 per year -- the latter of which includes distribution of business information to other sites like Yelp, Yahoo Local, SuperPages and [...]

Survey: Print Yellow Pages More Trusted Than Search Engines & Social Networks

Jun 13, 2011 at 10:19am ET by Greg Sterling

Who still uses yellow pages? San Francisco has even banned delivery without permission, assuming no one wants them. But a yellow pages industry group has a new survey saying that yellow pages are more trusted, more widely used and perceived by consumers to be more accurate when it comes to local information than search engines and social networks. The San Francisco Ban San Francisco has effectively banned print yellow pages delivery. The city recently passed an ordinance that requires residents to "opt-in" to receive print yellow pages. In other words, if they don't ask for the books, they [...]

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