MerchantCircle has been criticized in the past for its agressive and fear driven marketing to get small businesses to sign up to its services (see John Batelle, Matt McGee & Greg Sterling). They claim that 250,000 small businesses signed up for their service. According to Peter Krasilovsky at Kelsey Group:

the claim of 250,000 registered businesses, while impressive, should be sliced and diced for exactly what it is. The vast majority may have been duped into registering by an aggressive telemarketing campaign that strongly implied these businesses had a negative review, so they should go online and check it out. To see their “review,” they first had to register.

The obvious question is, how many of these violated businesses become loyal customers of MerchantCircle and are ready to be upsold into the SEM and promotion packages, etc.? No one will tell me. I imagine it is a very low number. Maybe it isn’t.

Well it appears that they are now attempting to motivate those that did signup previously to engage more with their service with similarly deceptive (although subtler) tactics.

I had signed up with MerchantCircle last year to see if they could help me manage my listing at multiple Local Search Engines including Yahoo and Google with a single central listing. I did everything they asked but they were unable to locate any of my records with Google (they have since stopped claiming to update Google), Yahoo or the Yellowpages so I stopped trying.

Today I received this email piece from them:

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When I was in college, I had a job clipping articles from newspapers for a professor who was planning a book. It was back in the days when the Federal Government actually provided support for higher education and it afforded me the privelege of reading newspapers and being paid for it.

These days the job of clipping service flunky has been obsoleted and replaced with Google Alerts. It has been one of the indispensible tools in writing this blog. I receive a number of alerts each day with both broad and narrow search terms to keep abreast of writings far and wide in the field of Local Search.

Today I recieved this alert:

More Local Women Hitting Woods In Search Of Deer
WPXI.com – Pittsburgh,PA,USA

PITTSBURGH — While there are fewer hunters nationwide, one group of hunters is growing: women.

I took up golf this summer as my 12 year son wanted to learn the game and needed the ocassional partner. My woods game was nowhere near this accurate.

Mozilla moving to mobile – a great post from Schrep at Mozilla on their plans in the mobile space (prioritizing mobile platforn, adding mobile developement staff & a version of “Mobile firefox”). Also of interest was this tidbit about why now & available hardware:

Getting a no-compromise web experience on devices requires significant memory (>=64MB) as well as significant CPU horsepower. High end devices today are just approaching these requirements and will be commonplace soon For example, the iPhone has 128MB of DRAM and somewhere between a 400 to 600 MHz processor. It is somewhere between 10x-100x slower on scripting benchmarks than a new MacBook Pro and somewhere between 3-5x slower than an old T40 laptop on the same wifi network. But rapid improvements in mobile processors will close this gap within a few years. There are chips out there today that are faster than the one in the iPhone and integrate graphics, cpu, and i/o (wifi/3g/wimax) on one die. Intel has recently re-entered this market which will keep things interesting. Most exciting of all ARM has announced that by 2010 devices will be shipping with a processor 8x faster than what’s in the iPhone!

CNet has an interesting piece about a partnership between Multivers and Google that:

“will allow anyone to create a new online interactive 3D environment with just about any model from Google’s online repository of 3D models, its 3D Warehouse, as well as terrain from Google Earth.”

The project, referred to as Architectural Wonders project, “will allow virtual-world designers to incorporate not just models and terrain from Google Earth, but also much of the metadata that makes it so powerful: the personal notations and photographs that millions of users have added to it.

While the article is mostly about multiplayer role playing the implications for local are interesting.

Marty Weitraub has an amazing personal story about his battle with cancer and has started a meme to promote the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Fund Raiser during SMX Mobile. Go for it Marty!

I am tagging Bill Slawski, Greg Sterling and Matt McGee.

Greg Sterling has a good piece on the The Debate Over User Reviews

Matt has a winner on Dear Small Business Owners: Put Down Your Ranking Reports and it applies equally well to local search

And Bill Slowski has an interesting patent review: Would You Rent Your Rooftop to Google To Show Ads Upon? (Too bizarre)

And an older (but important) post from Ahmed at TechSoapbox on Local data – categories, tags, structure, and taxonomy. I meant to reference earlier, but still well worth a read

Google is expanding Local info gathering in East Africa as well!

Blogging From SMX Local And Mobile – Mike the Internet guy is reporting on sessions as they happen

Michael Jones (Google) Keynote at SMX Local-Mobile Earth and Maps have 250 million users daily around the world.

Yahoo in 15-Nation Deal for Search on Cellphones (NY Times) Under the deal, Yahoo will feature its search engine on mobile portals run by Telefónica of Spain in 15 countries in Europe and Latin America.

Nokia buys Navteq (NY times) “This is not just about ‘the Internet goes mobile,’” Richard A. Simonson, Nokia’s chief financial officer, said in an interview yesterday. “We’re not just trying to replicate the Google or Microsoft experience online. The consumer won’t come unless we give them something that is rich.” That includes using the Global Positioning System to help users find restaurants, theaters and shops. “That’s where we are headed,” Mr. Simonson said.

Information on traffic, updated in real time, would also help consumers reach their destinations more easily.

Unlike phones that access maps online — like the Apple iPhone, which accesses Google Maps via the Internet — Nokia cellphones could be integrated with Navteq’s navigational software and technology. That could give Nokia an edge over competitors like Motorola and Samsung, analysts said.