As I have pointed out before, it is my belief that the IYP’s have already lost in this race. From my point of view they bring little of technical or marketing value to the space. Their core product, business listings have been commoditized to the point of being available for free and without significant innovation there is no reason for their survival going forward. Above them they are being cannibalized by Google, Mapquest and Yahoo and from the bottom they are loosing out to the more nimble iBegin’s of the world. As you can see in the graph, the market share of the IYP leader, YellowPges.com, demonstrates that weakness.

So it would appear from this graph that the battle is between Google and Mapquest. Yahoo, with their innovative local and map products might be considered the dark horse. September’s introduction of a new local product by Mapquest and the rough Google transition to TeleAltas (among other problems) seems to have led to an uptick by MapQuest.

Will that trend continue? Can Mapquest maintain its market share? Or like the IYP space does Google just have too much presence in search to not win this race also? Let me know what you think. I will share my thoughts tomorrow.

There is a lot of background information and notes that accompany this presentation. The patent is a trove of incredible information and very interesting background. I hope to be able to write a more thorough review of the patent but in the mean time, please, please ask away and I respond as best as I am able.

Since late August, Maps has been undergoing the “blue line” upgrade. It showed up first in the Maps view. And about two weeks ago showed up in the Text view, which is seen when you enter via the Local OneBoxes. It may have been mentioned elsewhere but I also just noticed a significant upgrade to the printed driving instructions as part of the blue line improvements.

Here are part of the driving instructions from Newark Airport to the hotel where I am staying for SMXEast:

The new changes allow the user to select a global view for directions (Text, Map or Street View) as well as those same options for each step of the driving instructions, allowing the user to pick the optimal view for each turn.

While September has been a tough month for Maps with the upgrade, the switch to TeleAtlas and the hijackings, it is these kinds of continual improvements that will ultimately allow them to catch and surpass Mapquest.

Compared to January 2008, Mapquest’s market share has declined 6% to 44.3% while Google Maps market share has increased from 22% to 32%. Yahoo has continued to see moderate share losses over the same period. If the long term trends continue Google could surpass Mapquest market share within the next 6 months. Mapsquest’s upgrade has come none too soon. It will be interesting to see if the new product will provide a defense against Google’s persistent market share gains.

This past 5 weeks Google Maps has had it share of problems that could also be affecting their market share. The blueline upgrade led to a number of problems with their Map routing capability. The move the TeleAtlas has created a fair bit of end user angst and the recent reports of hijackings have discouraged others. These can be overcome and in the past whenever Google sees their market share gains slow down they have pull another traffic builder out of their hats.

This chart views the players as a percentage of overall internet traffic. For reference Google.com receives 6% of all internet traffic whereas Maps recieves .26%. Thus Maps provides 4.3% of the visits of Google.com. A not insignificant and growing number.

Here are sampling of the headlines from major news organizations in the U.S. and UK:

•Google’s Android could smash iPhone’s locked gateway - guardian.co.uk
•Google vs. iPhone: Is Steve Jobs Reliving Past Mistakes? - time.com
•Google Introduces an iPhone Rival Open to Whims - NYTimes.com
•Google takes swipe at Apple’s iPhone - London timesonline.co.uk

Google isn’t competing with the iPhone in this endeavor. They are competing with every manufacture that doesn’t yet offer a full mobile internet experience and for customers that don’t have an iPhone and want that browsing experience on their cell. That means that companies that are not providing that like Microsoft and Nokia are the ones that Google is up against not Apple. As Greg Sterling points out, the smart phones are risk here are those running Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian phones. Here is a great summary of smart phone market.

The G1 will have a positive affect on mobile browsing in general and on Local in particular. If not now with T-Mobile than going forward. It is a phone that makes search the center of the user experience and that can only bode well for Local and location based. Like the iPhone, websites will not need to be completely rebuilt and users can have a full internet experience with great local search.

From where I sit, phones like the G1 AND the iPhone will drive us towards the fully functional mobile future, not as competitors but as inflexion points in a dynamic market.

In addition to offering voting information and polling places (coming October 15) via Maps they are making the maplet available as a widget for your website via a their Gadget creator:

As I mentioned in my earlier post, this type of mash up of deep local data with Maps offers an inkling of type of local data that will be presented on a national scale that we will be seeing over the next 12 to 18 months. It will be exciting times indeed for local.

The new Google Blogsearch has the potential to reach tens of millions of people and drive insane amounts of traffic.

Whether that is true for local blogs is yet to be seen. There is however a feature that highlights blog by major search terms. This could have an a positive traffic impact for hyperlocal blogs as it emphasizes blogs related to primary geo search phrases:

Not so fast pardner! It seems two weeks isn’t quite long enough to purge these fellows. A number of listings are still in the index from the hijacking entity. They still show as well on the Local 10 Pack on the search Flowers Brooklyn NY. Amazing the difficulty that Google has in purging the database of listings engaged in apparently criminal activity. If this activity doesn’t warrant a full and complete ban from Maps, I don’t know what does.

9/24/08 10:00 pm Google has yet to remove this hijacked listing and restore the original florist to their position in the Local 10-Pack.

9/21/08- Remnants of last week’s floral hijackings are still showing in the Local 10-Pack:

Here is a Groups correspondence from one of the affected merchants:

======================================
TOPIC: Flowers San Francisco
======================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Sep 20 2008 10:31 am
From: Marc

Our LBC listing for our flower shop Kalman Belli/Podesta Baldocchi
which is under letter D still has the hijacked listing ” Amazing
Flowers Sale 10% off… When you click through to the map we are
there however it just does not show up in the main listing and we are
losing business. Can anyone at Google help get rid of this last bit of
hijacked listing and replace it with our proper info etc..?

Amazing Flowers Sale-10% off
- www.convenientflowers.com - (814) 677-7979 - 23 reviews

This should read Podesta Baldocchi or Kalman Belli as does our true
listing shows when you click through to the map site. As well our
reviews are correct.

Thank you

Marc
======================================

The Kalman Belli/Podesta Baldocchi flower shop has claimed their record in the LBC and reverted the hijacked content. He has done his job. Google needs to do theirs. Will Marc need to wait 6 to 8 weeks for a Universal Search index update? Let’s hope not.

It is a message that makes sense given how Google has designed the system. It is a message from Google that is clear and which Google keeps repeating. Yet I fear that we and Google are preaching to the converted.

Even businesses that want to take control of their listing and are motivated to do so are often stymied. Prior to last week’s hijacking debacle I was corresponding with a locksmith who contended that his listing had been hijacked.

I was trying to document the locksmith’s situation so I made repeated efforts attempting to get him to confirm to me that he had claimed his record in the LBC. I was unable to do so. He just didn’t get what I was asking him, no matter how many ways and times I asked. In his mind he had claimed the record but he could not tell me exactly how or where. I came away convinced that he simply edited is record using Google’s end user edit capability and returned to it regularly to correct any nefarious edits.

This posting in Google Groups confirmed my suspicions that many, motivated business owners are completely incapable of making their way into the Local Business Center (even when they think they have):

==============================
TOPIC: Incorrect information on business listing

==============================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Sep 16 2008 3:44 pm
From: Maps Guide Jen

Hi Laura,

It looks like you’ve created a new listing through the community edits feature on Google Maps. It looks like you’d created a number of listings for the same business in your account. I would recommend resuming their display on Maps, and then removing all the “extra” ones from your account by deleting them. If you want to have true ownership of the listing and lock it from other edits, you’ll want to go through the Local Business Center. Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Jen

On Aug 29, 4:32 pm, rsp <i…@readysetplaytx.com> wrote:
My information is correct in the Local Business Center. I have logged in and verified all information several times. However, when I do a search, the search result for Google Maps has an incorrect phone number. Where is this number coming from if it’s not in my Local Business Center account? How can I get this correct? How long will it take to correct? I’ve got some very frustrated customers who keep calling the wrong number.

Laura

[Bold added by me]
==============================

What do I take away from this?

• Minimally, it will be many a long year for the 12 million or so businesses in this country to take control of their listings.
• It is still way too hard to do so. Google needs to commit programming and marketing resources to make it happen.
• If the only security guarantee against having your record hijacked is taking control of it in the LBC, we are just seeing the beginning of a plague of hijackings.
• Any security system that relies on 12 million users to take action to secure the system is a flawed system. I hope that Google can up with something better than that or they are going need 20,000 Map Guide Jen’s on staff (which if it weren’t for the payroll implications, would not be such a bad thing ).