SEO software provider SEOmoz has announced its acquisition of GetListed.org, a software company offering a popular tool for small business owners looking to improve their local search engine visibility. The purchase price is reported to be about $3 million in cash and stock. As part of the purchase, GetListed CEO David Mihm will be joining the SEOmoz staff. GetListed launched in 2009, offering local business owners a snapshot of their local search visibility, along with resources and recommendations for improving that visibility. In its announcement today, SEOmoz says the local search to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Acquisitions

One of the more popular Webmaster and SEO forums, WebmasterWorld, has been sold today to Jim Boykin's Internet Marketing Ninjas. Jim Boykin has been acquiring several forums this year, including all of the Developer Shed network including SEO Chat forums and Cre8asite Forums from Kim Krause Berg. Cre8asite Forums has been around since 1998 as a modest sized forum but WebmasterWorld has been around since 1999 as one of the larger webmaster focused forums on the internet. Many forums have come and gone over the years but those two remained live and vibrant. I spoke with Brett Tabke, the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Acquisitions | SEM Industry: Blogs & Forums | Top News

SEOmoz, the SEO toolset company, has announced they have successfully raised another $18 million in venture capital from Foundry Group and Ignition Partners. Foundry Group put in $15 million and Ignition Partners put in $3 million. Co-founder and CEO of SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin detailed the financials, growth, future plans and management changes of SEOmoz. One big change for the SEO industry is that Rand's mother and co-founder Gillian Muessig is stepping down from the board of directors and resigning her title of President. Here is the slide deck they shared: For more details see [...]

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Acquisio, provider of automated tools for search, display and social advertising, has acquired the ClickEquations search marketing platform from Channel Intelligence, and announced a partnership with that firm. Acquisio plans to integrate some of the search-focused functionality currently available on the ClickEquations platform. Acquisio’s existing clients will gain access to the Channel Intelligence Shopping Engines and Channel Intelligence Product Search solutions. ClickEquations clients will now be managed and supported by Acquisio and will have access to all Acquisio services. Mo [...]

Related Topics: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments | Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Acquisitions

Walmart is at it again with what seems an unusual purchase for the retailer. The company has just purchased social advertising company OneRiot, it's been announced. It will become part of WalmartLabs. From the OneRiot blog post: We’re delighted to announce that OneRiot has been acquired by Walmart. The OneRiot team will now be joining @Walmartlabs - Walmart’s hub for the creation of new technologies and business models integrating social, mobile and retail for the next-generation of e-commerce. And from the WalmartLabs post: A few weeks ago, a small team from @WalmartLabs visited [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: Acquisitions | Social Media Marketing

Two well-known online marketing agencies are joining forces. RKG (Rimm-Kaufman Group), based in Charlottesville, Virginia, has announced its acquisition of Bend, Oregon-based AudetteMedia. The acquisition allows RKG to continue expanding its service lineup. Long established as a leader in paid search marketing, RKG has recently added services such as shopping engine management, social media advertising and display advertising. Today's acquisition adds a highly-regarded SEO team to RKG's offerings. You may recognize both company names because their principals are both regular columnists h [...]

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Marchex announced this morning that it was buying Jingle Networks, operator of free directory assistance service 800-Free-411, for $62 million in cash and stock. Founded in 2004, Jingle Networks also has a pay-per-call mobile ad network. Jingle's 800-Free-411 competed with GOOG-411, which was closed down last year, and Microsoft's Bing-411, which is still operating. However Jingle was the leader in the "free directory assistance" segment. At one point I called free-DA "local-mobile search for the rest of us." That was before the dramatic growth of smartphones, which have continued to ero [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Bing 411 | Search Ads: Pay Per Call | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEM Industry: Acquisitions

The popular questions and answers site, Answers.com has announced they have been acquired by AFCV Holdings, LLC. for $127 million. AFCV Holdings is paying $10.50 per share for the outstanding shares. "This is a great outcome for our shareholders," said Bob Rosenschein, Founder, Chairman and CEO. "After an exciting six years as a public company, we are very pleased to achieve considerable value for our investors. The acquisition price of $10.50 per share represents a significant cash premium of approximately 33% over our 90-day volume-weighted average closing stock price." Mr. Rosenschei [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Search Engines: Answer Search Engines | Search Engines: Help Engines | SEM Industry: Acquisitions

Canada's Yellow Pages Group has acquired the well-known search marketing agency Enquiro and folded it into a new entity known as Mediative. As explained in today's announcement, Mediative will provide digital marketing services for national agencies and advertisers in Canada. YPG has also acquired two other Canadian advertising/marketing companies, Ad Splash Media and UPTREND Media. Enquiro is perhaps most well-known for its eye tracking studies that, for years, have educated the search marketing industry about how searchers interact with a search results page. The company was founded i [...]

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Demand Media has filed for an IPO. The company, known as a content farm to some, produces much of its content on sites like eHow and others in direct response to what it determines people are searching for on the web. Its filing shed new light on how much it depends on SEO and Google, in particular. That's interesting, because I've never known a company -- a publisher -- so dependent on SEO (outside of actual SEO companies) to go public before. Below, highlights on these aspects. The SEO and Google aspects really get going around page 14 of the filing: Page 14: Google Funds Big Chunk [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Content Farms | Features: Analysis | SEM Industry: Acquisitions | Top News

If you felt a rumble yesterday amongst the search marketing ranks, it was probably caused by the news that four well-known marketing companies announced a merger into one new agency known as BlueGlass Interactive. The companies coming together are 10e20, Search & Social, Brent Csutoras Inc., and SecondStep Search. In a blog post announcing the merger, BlueGlass CMO Chris Winfield says that the companies had already been referring work amongst themselves for years. A news release about the merger says that, in addition to offering client services, BlueGlass also plans to offer free and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Acquisitions | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General

Playing out according to the rumor that surfaced a couple of months ago, media company Hearst has acquired marquee SEM firm iCrossing. The Wall Street Journal is reporting the acquisition price is about $325 million with performance and financial goals that, if achieved, "could push the purchase price above $400 million, according to other people familiar with the matter." The acquisition is partly about bolstering the digital marketing assets and sophistication of Hearst's various traditional media businesses, which include magazines, TV stations and newspapers. According to the press rel [...]

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Venerable search marketing firm iCrossing is about to be acquired by publisher Hearst, according to the Wall Street Journal: Under the deal, which is in the final stages of negotiations, iCrossing, one of the nation's biggest independent digital-marketing shops, is likely to fetch about $375 million, plus bonus payments if it reaches certain targets, these people said. The article goes on to discuss how publishers may be trying to take digital marketing in-house rather than relying as much on traditional agencies. And it says the deal could still fall apart. A few years ago a number of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: Acquisitions

Netconcepts, a Wisconsin-based SEO company, has been acquired by San Diego's Covario, Inc. Many of you know the name Stephan Spencer, he is the Founder and President of Netconcepts. Wanted to wish Stephan and the whole Netconcepts team a huge congrats from us. Here are some quotes from the press release: "With the acquisition of Netconcepts and the GravityStream technology, Covario is bringing a unique solution to advertisers to help them accelerate their ability to present their brands on all the major search engines globally," said Russ Mann, Chief Executive Officer of Covario. "By coup [...]

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Does anyone want to dance with Yahoo? Well, Bloomberg is reporting that Yahoo is continuing to talk with Time Warner about buying AOL. The report says the two companies have met "in the past few weeks," and are discussing a plan where AOL's advertising business would be given to Yahoo in exchange for Time Warner receiving a stake in the combined company. Spokespersons for both Yahoo and Time Warner declined to comment on the report. Do you see the cup as half-full or half-empty? Despite the troubled economy, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced today that Internet ad revenues [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Search Biz | SEM Industry: Acquisitions

Search Marketing company consolidation continues with iProspect acquiring Range Online Media today. This acquisition increases iProspect's US staff base by more than 60 employees, bringing the them to a U.S. employee base to over 230. How will this impact the respective client's accounts? The current Range customers will continue to be serviced by the same people. New customers will be able to pick which geographic area they would like to be serviced from. Range is run by some familiar names including Cheryle Pingel and Misty Locke - huge congrats to you guys! Misty Locke will continue [...]

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Our friends over at the Search Marketing Standard, one of the first successful search marketing focused print magazines, has been acquired by iNET Interactive. Search Marketing Standard launched in the first month of 2006, with many supporters. Boris Mordkovich & Eugene Mordkovich of MordComm founded and finance the magazine. iNET Interactive's Director of Marketing, Kevin Gold, has been writing for the publication since their debut issue, and now he can call the magazine his own Not much will be changing with the magazine; the staff will remain on board. Boris will remain involved on an [...]

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Global ad agency WPP, which paid almost $650 million for 24/7 Real Media last year, will be bringing together all its search agencies under the Outrider brand and under the GroupM media division. That includes the search group at 24/7, Catalyst, Quisma, and Outrider, which won Yahoo's Searchlight Award in New York last night for its Smirnoff campaign. This consolidation creates a global search agency with offices on multiple continents. [...]

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Washington Post buys search engine firm from the Washington Business Journal reports that The Washington Post bought a search engine marketing firm, CourseAdvisor. CourseAdvisor is an online education site that helps pair up students' skills with college and university programs nationwide. Washington Post is hopeful that CourseAdvisor can boost their traffic and ad revenue through search engine marketing strategies and other means. [...]

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Internet marketer iCrossing acquires Va. firm from the Arizona Republic reports iCrossing has purchased Proxicom, a web development firm based in Virginia after getting $62 million last week. Janet at Marketing Pilgrim looks at the other firms they have recently acquired and speculates that iCrossing is on a value building exercise. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Acquisitions