Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Local Links of Interest
When Will ‘Mobile Search’ Overtake the Internet? – Greg Sterling, LocalMobileSearch.net
While it might take some time for mobile to pass Internet search in the US or Western Europe, in context of the entire world it’s not hard to imagine mobile search volumes exceeding the desktop Internet, in the aggregate, within 5-7 years.
Google Goes Back to ‘Opt-in’ in Mobile – Greg Sterling, LocalMobileSearch.net
When Google first launched mobile AdWords it was an opt-in program: advertisers specifically had to choose to be in mobile sponsored search results. Then, in a fairly well publicized move, Google decided to make mobile an opt-out for AdWords advertisers:
The company informed me last week that it has gone back to an opt-in policy for mobile at the present time.
I also discussed with Google the degree to which the desktop and mobile might ultimate become more similar than different, in the context of “full HTML†browsers (Safari, Opera, Skyfire, Mozilla, Android). We’ll see. As I’ve tried to argue in the past, while there are some advantages in that scenario for users there are considerable disadvantages for advertisers — chiefly because online ads get lost and become very difficult to see.
The iPhone is probably the model of how smartphone browsing will evolve: native applications + full HTML browsing. But that still doesn’t solve the problem for advertisers seeking to effectively reach mobile audiences.
Move Over Universal Search, Illustrated Search Is Smarter? – Bill Slawski,SEObyTheSea
The authors of these patent filings refer to this approach as a “smart aggregation of search results by concepts.†In addition to helping searchers quickly understand different concepts related to their queries,and view different relevant content types from different sources, is also that focused advertisement can be presented.
What Google’s ZIP Code Targeting Means for Local Businesses – David Mihm, davidmihm.com
I take a look at some of the implications of this development, and expand on an earlier hypothesis about why Google introduced the 10-pack to Universal search in the first place. Yes, ZIP code targeting means more relevant results for searchers, but it’s an innovation that might not be entirely altruistic.
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Comments
2 Comments
It will be interesting to see what year is the “year of the mobile”.. people are waiting around for the moment to capitalize on it when it occurs but it still hasn’t taken off yet.. strange!
Hi Brick
The reality is always more complex than “The year of….” can ever capture.
I sold and marketed my first digital camera in 1985 or so…and for me every year there after was the year of the digital camera as my sales increased several hundred % every year…it just wasn’t noticeable even as blip in the camera world until much, much later…15 or so years for digital cameras to be a substantial market and 20 before the film industry totally collapsed.
Every market is a compilation of niches. If a technology makes sense it will conquer them one niche at a time as they each collectively realize and understand the benefit. That is a slow and laborious process. In the case of cell phones it’s hardware, it’s software, it’s bandwidth, ingrained behaviors and a bunch of other issues…
Greg’s model predicts a timeframe (5-7 years) when mobile search (not necessarily mobile marketing or advertising) will surpass desktop search. That is certainly one benchmark that will clearly indicate “The Year of Mobile” probably occurred a few years earlier.
For Local Search, I see the Apple iPhone 3rd party software created with their SDK as a seminal event that will lead to much broader local search adoption. Whether that leads to an attendant increase in mobile marketing, one can only guess…my guess is that it will… But the software dev will contribute definitely contribute.
In February 2007, I predicted that success in mobile advertising would occur after 50% of the US population had iphone/android like capabilities and I (who doesn’t normally engage in future stuff) modeled that to be 4-5 years…ie 2011-2012.
I know that it takes a long time, I know that it happens in fits and starts, niche by niche, I know that profit can be made along the way and services provided.
Does anybody know when the “Year of Mobile Advertising” is? No, not until it has passed but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep our eyes open along the way. And hey it makes for good blog posts. 🙂
Mike
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