Topic: BMW

Report: Nokia Sells HERE Maps For $2.7B To BMW, Mercedes, Audi Group

According to Bloomberg and CNBC, Nokia has found a buyer for its HERE mapping unit. The company had sought as much as $4 billion for the platform. However, the reported purchase price is roughly $2.7 billion (€2.5 billion). The winning (and perhaps only) bid was made by a German consortium of car manufacturers, which had always […]

Google Maps Hides Search Bar, HERE Struggles To Sell

Google Maps has made some minor changes that improve usability, while Nokia appears to be struggling to sell its mapping service HERE. Google Maps now will hide the search bar on the top and explore bar on the bottom of the map screen to create a larger visual field. One tap causes those bars to […]

Apple “Embarks” On Another Mapping Acquisition

Last month Apple bought Locationary and Hop Stop. The point of the first was to improve the overall quality of local data for Apple Maps and the second was for mass transit information. Apparently, according to former WSJ reporter Jessica Lessin, Apple has made another buy for transit purposes. The company has acquired app developer Embark. […]

Google “Search Plus” Impact on Local: Limited So Far

Amid all the controversy that has erupted over Google’s new search personalization (Search Plus Your World), I’ve been doing local searches to see what if any impact it’s having on that arena. So far, in my unscientific query survey, the impact seems to be minor. Below are some examples where I toggle between personalized and […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 22, 2011

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Blekko Expands: Bigger Index, More Slashtags & New Design Blekko is closing out 2011 with a round of updates that affect the search engine’s front- and back-end — both how it […]

SEO

Yelping In The Beemer: Review Site Inks Deal With BMW

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 […]

2011 Yahoo! In Review: Top US Searches In 30 Categories

Now celebrating a decade of recapping annual search trends, earlier today, Yahoo! released the 2011 list of most popular searches in the US in 30 different categories, topping last year’s extensive list. This year marks the first full year Yahoo! used has used the Bing search engine to primarily power Yahoo! search results, with Americans […]

PPC

Cars, Restaurants, Financial Services Top Study Of “Complaint Searches”

Among major brands, those in the automobile, finance, and food service industries attracted the most complaint-related searches in 2010. That’s according to a new study from the marketing agency Web Liquid Group. The 2011 Customer Complaint Index measures search activity in the Google Keyword Research Tool involving complaints (i.e., broad match results for “(brand name) […]

Google Maps “Send To Car” Running Out Of Gas?

There have been a number of comments in forums and tweets that people aren’t seeing the Google Maps’ “send to car” option any longer. The following comment is representative: The send to car option is gone from the Google Maps Beta: there is only a send to email and send to phone option.  Is it […]

Google’s Legal Woes Not Impacting Brand: Survey

Google has had its share of negative press coverage over the past year. And one of the questions that reporters always ask is: how will this scandal or that investigation impact the perception or usage of Google in the market? In other words, does something like the WiFi privacy scandal in Europe or the antitrust […]

Google’s Automated Cars: The Perfect Venue For Ads

Imagine this: You’re driving across town to catch a concert by a new artist that friends have been talking about for weeks. Only you’re not really driving. The car is driving itself. And you’re actually paying as much attention to the video screen on your car’s dashboard as anything. You’ve already bought the singer’s latest […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 20, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Social Search Now Recommends People To Follow On Twitter Who’s an expert in a particular topic that you might want to follow on Twitter? Bing Social Search has a new […]

Why Google Should Ban Its Own Help Pages — But Also Shouldn’t

Google takes pride in showing how it will enforce its anti-spam rules even against itself, but apparently there’s a limit to how far it will go. Google is declining to ban many of its own help pages that were published in violation of its webmaster guidelines. That’s wrong for the reasons has Google’s stated. But […]

SEO

“See No Evil” Is No Way For Big Companies To Deal With Search Spam

It started innocently enough. A client, whom I’ll refer to as BigCo, asked a question about the success that one of their divisions was having with a different search consulting company. I wasn’t familiar with the company, so I asked a few questions and then started to investigate them. What I found disturbed me. It […]

Land Grab: Google Expands Real Estate Listings

MLS, Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Craigslist, fellow real estate listings sites, newspapers and other classified ad providers … please meet your new neighbor: Google.com. Google has expanded its real estate listings and added extra search functionality for users to find property listings in Google Maps. A Google Maps search for “seattle real estate” looks mostly like […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 2, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Internet Explorer 6 Forces Bing As Default Search Provider It appears that Bing is overriding the default search provider set by users of Internet Explorer 6. Several IE6 users have complained […]

Website Guilty Over Google’s Automated Snippet

The Register reports a Dutch court has ruled against a Dutch web site, where the web site was sued over the automated snippet used in Google for a keyword phrase. When someone searched for [Zwartepoorte] and [bankrupt], Google showed Miljoenhuizen.nl and the snippet in the Google search results for Miljoenhuizen.nl was: Complete name: Zwartepoorte Specialiteit: […]

SEO

Location in the Browser: What Does It Mean?

Not long ago, Google rolled out its “Geolocation API” (via Google Gears). Initially it was intended to enable third party publishers and developers to get location for their apps on mobile devices using a combination of the phone’s inherent location-awareness technologies (i.e., GPS) and Google’s cell-tower database (which has been expanded now to include WiFi […]

Google Now The UK’s Top “Superbrand”

Google has moved to the top of another brand survey. This one, in the UK, is based on a consumer survey that involved 1,000 UK brands. Google topped other high-profile consumer brands such as Microsoft, Mercedes Benz, Nike, and BMW. Earlier this year, research firm Millward Brown (a unit of ad agency WPP) named Google […]