This day in search marketing history: March 17
Google AdWords further dilutes exact match, plus: DMOZ officially closes, Matt Cutts hints at HTTPS ranking signal and more.
Topic: Urbanspoon
This day in search marketing history: January 12
Google Panda becomes a core ranking signal, plus: R.I.P. link command, Google Japan’s PageRank penalty expires and more.
SearchCap: Google Car Insurance, DMCA Takedowns, Urbanspoon & Super Bowl Answers
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Zomato Buys Urbanspoon For $50 – $60 Million To Enter US Local Search Market International restaurant search provider Zomato has acquired Urbanspoon from IAC for between $50 and $60 million in […]
Zomato Buys Urbanspoon For $50 – $60 Million To Enter US Local Search Market
International restaurant search provider Zomato has acquired Urbanspoon from IAC for between $50 and $60 million in cash. Zomato was founded in India in 2008 but now operates in more than 20 countries and 130 cities globally. Urbanspoon content will be incorporated into Zomato and the Urbanspoon brand will go away after a short transition period. […]
Foursquare: 55 Million Users, 54 Percent Lift Since Relaunch
Whether it’s all part of the master plan or more opportunistic, Foursquare is undertaking a “multimillion-dollar effort” to brand and differentiate itself from Yelp and other local search apps. The campaign will appear in out-of-home locations in New York and Chicago as well as online in other cities. I believe branding is important for Foursquare, so this […]
Google’s Pigeon Update Solves Yelp Problem, Boosts Local Directories
As the analysis continues on yesterday’s Google local search algorithm changes — that we’re calling the Pigeon update — one thing appears to be clear: Local directory sites are getting better visibility in Google’s search results. More specifically, it looks like Google has fixed its “Yelp problem” and is now showing Yelp pages at the […]
Google App Indexing Adds 24 Android Apps & Expands To All English Content Worldwide
On October 31st, Google announced they are now supporting a new feature named app indexing, which allows publishers to create links from Google’s search results directly into the deep content within their Android apps. So if you search for something on your Android device and happen to see a result from a publisher where you […]
The Local Marketer’s Guide To Apple Maps for iOS7
While the launch of iOS7 has received a ton of press and blogger nitpicking about every last detail, little has been said about how the new version of Apple Maps affects local marketers. I feel like most marketers are still ignoring Apple Maps because it got a lot of Apple Maps Sucks-type press a year […]
New CityMaps Hopes To Compete With Social And Editorial Content
Mobile mapping provider CityMaps recently redesigned its iOS app. It impressively includes home-grown vector maps, built from the ground up. Beyond this CityMaps is trying to offer deeper editorial and social content to differentiate from other mapping and local-search apps. CityMaps also invokes the language of “personal assistant” in its promotional video (below). These concepts […]
Are Google’s Results Getting Too Ad-Heavy & Self-Promotional?
Are Google’s search results getting too ad-heavy and leading back to Google’s own content too much? A new blog post suggesting that Google’s non-paid listings make up only a tiny fraction of the entire search results page has sparked some discussion, though the exact percentage actually varies on how you count what’s on the page […]
SMX Advanced 2012: Hardcore Analytics
Hardcore Analytics Presentations from SMX Advanced, June 2012 In this session, we get outside the box and look at unique, different and useful ways to drill-down into and get more out of your analytics and tools. [flv:https://searchengineland.com/video_assets/advanced12/ppt/694.flv 364 264] Moderator: Chris Sherman, Search Engine Land Speakers: Rob Bucci, STAT Search AnalyticsRachael Gerson, SEER InteractiveConrad Saam, […]
Analyst: Mobile To Overtake PC For Local Search By 2015
Analyst firm BIA/Kelsey has projected that by 2015 there will be more local searches coming from smartphones than PCs in the US. It’s a bold prediction and one that has logical merit: smartphone search volumes are growing faster than search on the PC. While local search is at least 20 percent of total queries on […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 4, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Looking Back At Larry Page’s First Year At Google’s Helm Two articles appeared today that reflect on the first year of Larry Page’s return to the CEO role at Google. Bloomberg’s […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 17, 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: Will Google See $6.25 Billion In Mobile Ad Revenue Next Year? During the earnings call last week after Google announced massive quarterly revenues ($9.72 billion), CEO Larry Page casually dropped the […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 24, 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: America’s Fastest Growing Search Marketing Companies Each year, Inc. Magazine releases its Inc. 500/5000 list of the fastest growing companies in America. We’re proud to announce that Search Engine Land’s parent […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 5, 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: Google’s 12 Sitelink Experiment Returns Google is once again testing — or continuing to test — a jumbo-sized search result that displays a whopping 12 sitelinks below the main/top search result. […]
Google’s Mobile Moves Tighten Its Grip On Local
It’s all starting to come together. Yesterday Google announced that it was adding check-ins (and loyalty categories) to Latitude. It also announced the global expansion of HotPot, its recommendations tool. Google Places apps for both iPhone and Android allow people to rate and review businesses (HotPot’s objective). And on Places Pages, in Android, you can […]
Google Places Now Takes User Photo Uploads
Following in the footsteps of several other locally-oriented sites, Google Places is now accepting user photos of local businesses. When viewing a Place Page (like the Wild Ginger restaurant in Seattle), you’ll see a new “Upload a photo” link to the right of the Photos & Video content section. Google’s announcement says the user-uploaded images […]
Google Places Gets Its Own iPhone App
There’s a Maps app on your iPhone, a Google Mobile app that includes access to Google Maps, and now there’s a third option for Google-based local search and discovery: a dedicated Google Places app. It’s just announced today and is already available in the iPhone’s app store. The app seems to focus more on the […]
Google Hotpot: Local Recommendations From Your Friends
Google has just launched Hotpot, a personalized recommendations engine based on what you like and what your friends like. When Facebook launched Places to compete with Foursquare, we here at Search Engine Land explained how even though it had the same name as Google Places, it was actually entirely different. After all, you don’t check […]
New Place Search Shows Google’s Commitment To Local
Today Google formally rolls out its new presentation of local results, called “Place Search.” It offers a dramatic change to the look and feel of SERPs on Google.com. The first and most obvious change is that the “7 Pack” is gone. And there appear to be some fairly major SEO implications, which should provide many […]
Google Segmenting, Categorizing Reviews On Places Pages
Google is now “segmenting” and separating local reviews from third parties such as Yelp from those of its own user-reviews. It has also added favicons next to the third party reviews to offer some “branding” on Places Pages. David Mihm noticed this yesterday. Here’s what it looks like on a Places Page for popular San […]
SEO Is Here To Stay, It Will Never Die
Google’s press conference about Google Instant hadn’t even ended yesterday when the question of “is SEO dead” started coming up on Twitter, in blog posts and was even asked about formally during the event’s Q&A (the answer was no, twice over, by the way). No, Google Instant isn’t killing SEO. In fact, nothing’s going to […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 28, 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: Google To Phase Out Old Keyword Tool In Exchange For New Version If you try to access Google’s external keyword tool, you may notice that you are sent to the new […]
Facebook’s Alternative Internet Vision And Its Search Implications
I attended the F8 Facebook developer event this morning and might have live blogged it but the public WiFi connection was extremely slow. Maybe that’s a good thing; aspects of what were announced had me confused, especially the privacy issues raised by the announcements. I’m not a developer and this event was geared toward them; […]
Does CityGrid From Citysearch “Answer” The Local SEO Problem?
At one time local startups could reliably count on Google organic traffic to help build their own traffic and brands. Indeed, this is how Yelp gained visibility in its early days. And larger publishers, such as yellow pages sites, have relied heavily on SEO, as well, to drive traffic to their advertisers. However, recently that’s […]
Google’s Near Me Now: A Yelp Killer?
Just a couple weeks after failing to consummate a rumored deal to buy Yelp, Google has launched a mobile search tool that could take away the mobile market share of Yelp and similar sites/apps like Urbanspoon, MapQuest, and some of the yellow pages apps. It’s called “Near Me Now,” and Google previewed it last month […]
Thoughts On Web Developers, SEO & Reputation Problems
After last week’s “Does SEO = Spam” debate erupted, I had a number of follow-up emails where I explained privately more about why SEO has such a bad reputation in some quarters, as well as what SEO is and isn’t, from my perspective. I wanted to share some of that below. Bad Advice Sucks: From […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 15, 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: Google’s Q3: $5.94 billion, 7 Percent YoY Revenue Growth, 14 Percent Paid Click Growth Expectations were high for Google’s Q3 given some of the positive reports coming out about clicks and […]
Battle Of The Augmented Reality Apps: Urbanspoon, Layar, Wikitude, WhereMark & More
There seems to be an explosion of “real-time” search engines on the PC. The space is very new, still fairly open and in my opinion the tools and sites are not yet all that useful. Almost exactly the same can be said of “augmented reality” (AR) in mobile. From almost nothing about six months ago, […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 24, 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: How Twitter Might Send Far More Traffic Than You Think Over the past year, I’ve seen many people report that Twitter can send tons of traffic to a web site. Certainly […]
Google AdSense for Mobile Applications Goes Into Public Beta
Google had been testing AdSense on mobile apps for the iPhone and Android in a kind of private beta with roughly 10 partners, including Pandora, Shazam and Urbanspoon. Now the program is opening up to apps developers and publishers who meet some criteria (among them, a 3 month commitment, 100K+ page views). Google said that […]
Search Biz: AOL Spin Off, Yahoo Layoffs, Google Losses, IAC Spoons And Pines For AOL
The biggest Search Biz news of the week is about AOL’s forthcoming spin off and related personnel moves. Time Warner yesterday announced quarterly revenues and a whopping $16 billion loss (not the largest in the company’s history). For its part, AOL’s ad revenues fell roughly 20 percent to $867 million from $1.13 billion the previous […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 29, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
IAC Buys UrbanSpoon
IAC has acquired UrbanSpoon, the restaurant review site that has an incredible popular iPhone application, amongst Facebook widgets and other widgets. The news is now over Techmeme that the company has been acquired for somewhere in the millions of dollar range. IAC has not disclosed the acquisition price. The company was set up by Ethan […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 17, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google AdSense Ads Making Their Way To iPhone Apps?
Venture Beat noticed that the Urbanspoon iPhone app has what looks like Google AdSense ads on them. I immediately downloaded the Urbanspoon app and went to a restaurant review and saw a similar ad. Here is a screen capture: I am pointing to the small lowercase G, which looks much like Google’s second favicon, which […]
How Search-Like Are Social Media Sites?
Like search? Who doesn’t — great traffic, huge brand value and an audience ready to convert. Like social media? What’s not to like — huge growth, tons of buzz and an entire new marketing frontier that is opening up. For the search marketer looking at social media, how does it measure up? Which social media […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 25, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.