Over the past few years Foursquare has been rapidly evolving, and their newly announced “lists” feature looks like a very promising new addition. Touted as being “super easy to use,” Foursquare lists can be created from a users profile page with assistance from Foursquare, built from scratch or added while browsing Foursquare. Lists can be […]
Searchers looking for local businesses on Google Maps can now see brief, descriptive characteristics as part of the primary business listing. And they’ll be seeing the same things soon on Google.com, Places search and Google Maps for mobile, too. Google’s announcement explains that the terms come from “sources all across the web, such as reviews, […]
A fascinating study published last year compares the reviews and reviewers at three local business websites: Yelp, Citysearch and Yahoo Local. And, in explaining how Yelp overtook the other two, it also hints — in my opinion — at how Google is trying to beat Yelp by using Yelp’s own playbook. Citysearch and Yahoo Local […]
A very long time ago Google was trying to find alternatives to pre-roll to monetize YouTube videos. Google-sponsored consumer research in 2007 found that users don’t like pre-roll. But that’s ancient history. Today Google is trying to find more ways to generate and capture display and video ad revenue, which it views as a massive […]
Have you tweeted a great photograph that’s gone viral, such as today’s Space Shuttle launch as seen from a commercial airline flight? Getting credit for that, much less getting paid for it, seems to be a mess. It’s been on my to do list to write about this issue for several weeks. It came up […]
For the past several months in this column, I’ve been asking a number of people the same question: Where will search go from here? For the next two columns, I wanted to sum up what came out of those conversations and find the common themes. A Shift In Our Expectations Of Success A number of […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Reveals Secrets Of “Search Direct” Alogrithm I had about 20 minutes with Yahoo’s Shashi Seth after the press conference to discuss a range of things related to the Search Direct […]
Friends or enemies? Partners or competitors? Google’s relationship with review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp is as complicated as ever, and the disputes are likely to increase as the search giant pursues mobile and local ambitions that center around its controversial Place pages. The rancor stems from the way Google aggregates content from various review […]
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 […]
The annual Sundance Film Festival is about to converge here in Utah January 20-30, 2011, with Bing.com and YouTube as Leadership Sponsors. Bing is the official search engine of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival website, and YouTube has two special channels for the event, the main Sundance Film Fest channel, and the YouTube Screening Room, […]
It has been quite some time since Yahoo updated its pioneering and once-dominant local destination, Yahoo Local. Now the company is testing a simplified UI that streamlines the user experience and offers new content (including deals) in a number of cities. Below are screens showing the current and new Local UIs. First the existing site […]
SEO & User Generated Content Presentations from SMX East, October 2010 The "voice of the customer" can be a dual-edged sword. Positive reviews and comments can help reinforce reputation or even persuade others to buy. Negative feedback can be the kiss of death if it gets out of hand. But ultimately, applying good SEO to […]
Late last month, Digg.com released version 4 of the popular social news site and the response was horrific. In a web poll from Mashable.com, users overwhelmingly selected the previous version as the better site with version 3 garnering 78.4% of the total votes. I have been an avid user of Digg since 2007, spending countless […]
I’ll be live blogging Day 2 of the Directional Media Strategies 2010 (#DMS2010) conference here, starting at about 8:30 AM, CST, September 15. (See Day 1 and Day 3 here.) —————————————————————————————- (Sorry – started late due to large traffic jammage on the tollway) DMS ’10 Spotlight: The ‘Deal a Day’ Phenomenon Perry Evans of Closely […]
We’ve all seen “virtual tours” of open houses on real-estate sites. What if every location, every restaurant, store, museum, theme park ride and airport had a virtual tour on Google Maps? In three or four years that may be the case as a result of the acquisition of an Israeli company called MentorWave Technologies (or […]
Yesterday at the “Techonomy” conference in Lake Tahoe, California Google CEO Eric Schmidt made a number of remarks about user-generated content and data-mining that were somewhat controversial: “If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence,” Schmidt said, “we can predict where you are going to go.” “Show us […]
A turd isn’t viral. One of the mistakes that most people make when promoting viral content is that the material isn’t viral, they are putting out lackluster, half-baked turd-like content in order to be “social.” That’s not how social media works. What do I mean? Well, generally you get results that equal the amount of […]
One of the challenges that bloggers face, compared to ‘real’ journalists, is that we’re not conditioned to churn out stories, no matter what. And so with a deadline looming for this post, I wondered what to write about, but nothing really grabbed my attention. But then I got to thinking – maybe I should write […]
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 Goes The iPhone Steve Jobs, still on stage at WWDC 2010, the Apple developer event, just announced that Bing will now be a search choice for the iPhone — as […]
First the news, which has already been widely reported: Yahoo is more deeply integrating Facebook on its homepage and across many of its properties. It has also changed the name of “Yahoo Profiles” to “Yahoo Pulse” (currently not working) and made the property more of a social media dashboard that manages sharing with third party […]
For the second time in the past few months Google has been punished by a court outside the US for content posted by users on one of its owned and operated sites. In February an Italian court imposed a criminal privacy conviction on Google executives for the appearance of a video, showing the bullying of […]
Twitter caused a stir Monday when it lifted its curtain enough to show us how much activity the service is seeing currently, and how it’s grown since 2007. And while many reports talk about visits to Twitter.com flattening, Twitter’s own chart showing the number of tweets its users are publishing is staggering. Twitter says it’s […]
In my last column, I had the chance to chat with Bing Director Stefan Weitz about how Microsoft is approaching search as it sits today. But the question I asked that lead to the interview in the first place was “Where does search go from here?” Microsoft’s Bing team certainly has its own ideas of […]
I preferred search engine results pages (SERPs) before other forms of social media became the rage. I think the commercial web search engines are giving social media items far more attention and validation than they deserve. Do you?
I’ve just had a rather surreal afternoon, having been asked (at very short notice) to appear on Channel 4 News (the main news show on one of the UK’s 5 terrestrial broadcasters.) I was invited on the program to to discuss Rupert Murdoch’s reported plans to link up with Bing at the same time as […]
The courtship of social networking and local search will result in a marriage that diversifies the mix of sales tools and empowers circles of families, friends, co-workers and organizations to share experiences and opinions in the local search space. For a number of years, consumers have had a collective, powerful online voice through ratings and […]
I’m hearing more and more about “Real-Time Local Search” – that phrase is popping up everywhere; but I’m just not buying the hype that positions it as some amazing new essence that businesses and consumers must embrace… sorry. I acknowledge that it’s useful to have a label to refer to this concept, but is it […]
Since its invention towards the end of the 20th century, the Internet has changed a great many things. And one of the things that is has done time after time is dismantle business models that had seemed, until its arrival, absolutely rock solid. From music to publishing to TV, the Internet has swept away seeming […]
Mike Blumenthal offers a provocative post this morning about Google’s apparent decision to end its relationship (at least in the US) with mapping data provider TeleAtlas. Recall that Google previously had a relationship with NAVTEQ, which ended some time after the acquisition of that company by Nokia. TeleAtlas was substituted and there was even an […]
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 Adds Visited Pages, Past Hour & Fewer Shopping Sites Filtering You like it! You really like it! It being the Google Search Options feature that Google added to its search […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Organizing Your PPC Account For Maximum Success Account organization is the first and most important step in the optimization process – it’s the foundation for success. Google News Gets Search Suggestions […]
Michael Wyszomierski announced at the Google Webmaster Central blog that they are looking for the SEO and Webmaster community to create videos that they can share in the Google Webmaster YouTube channel. You have seen many of the videos from Matt Cutts in this channel, and now they want to allow the community to share […]
Google Maps has introduced a useful new feature called “What’s Here,” which allows you to use the map as a kind of discovery tool. Select a point, right click and the menu appears with a new choice “what’s here,” allowing discovery of — you guessed it — what’s at/around the designated site or point. The […]
These days it’s hard to remember that at one time Yahoo was the pioneer in dynamic mapping. It introduced enhanced local search features and capabilities into the map before Google, Microsoft and MapQuest. At a certain point, however, Yahoo opted out of the map feature wars that erupted between Google and Microsoft (StreetView, 3D, aerial, […]
Recently, Greg Finn at 10e20.com covered Will Digg Be a Better Place Without Shouts? In the post, Greg announces the news of Digg dropping their shout system, which allowed Digg users to share content with each other, in lieu of a feature that allows users to share content via email, Facebook, and Twitter. So, the […]
While having great content and an appropriate message are crucial for success on social media news sites, having a quality user help with promotion is essential to build momentum. Contacting and conversing with top users who share similar interests as you can be beneficial in helping to spark your content and get it noticed. This […]
YouTube is clearly evolving before our eyes — from a site that was largely about viral, user-generated content (UGC) to a premium content destination that may one day be a viable replacement for cable TV. First the news. Google/YouTube has signed deals with more studios to expand the range of full-length TV and movies content […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google’s SearchWiki is off to a rough start in the user feedback/public relations department, and has already been knocked offline by some kind of technical issue. SearchWiki usage seems fair to strong, depending on the queries you’re looking at, but is it the type of usage Google wants? Let’s take a look at SearchWiki’s first […]
Google SearchWiki — a new feature that allows you to move and comment on search results — has been out for less than a day, and it’s amazing to see how much confusion (as well as commentary) there is already developing. So below, some clarification on how it works, opportunities search marketers should consider, some […]