30% of all Restaurant Queries on Google Are Mobile

In a very good online webinar that Google offered called Are You Mobile Ready? they shared some interesting internal data on the percentage of mobile queries. The charts show the % of mobile queries to total search queries from January 2007 through January of this year. Previously Bing had noted that as many as 50% …

Continue reading

Is Group Texting Google’s Next Social Circle?

Texting, invented in 1992, has changed little over the past 19 years. In the absence of innovation on the part of the phone companies, a number of companies have stepped in and created this new class of texting product that adds a significant value layer to the basic texting function. Group texting is like adding a party …

Continue reading

Google Place Page Changes

Last week there were a number of new features that appeared in Places and in the 7 Pack including the inclusion of event information on venue Place pages and pushing the ppc hotel booking feature to the front page. There were several that I did not have time to report on that hit my radar: …

Continue reading

Google Adds End User Offers Signup to Google.com/Portland

Portland has been a keystone city in Google’s Hotspot Hotpot Places marketing efforts. They inundated Portland businesses and individuals with high visibility ads, marketing, schwag and high profile sponsorships. We don’t know the number of additional claimed Places listings but we do know that it lead to a dramatic uptick in their ratings and reviews, …

Continue reading

Google Offers Beta – More Details

Greg Sterling pointed out a new Offers video and merchant sign up page. Here is the content from a newly posted help file explaining the program: Google Offers Help Overview  What is Google Offers? Google Offers BETA will get you great deals in your city on things you like and things you need. Whether it’s …

Continue reading

Google Maps: The Yorks are Yucked Once Again

The geography of the name York has an illustrious history in Maine. The Town of York was settled in 1624 and  the county of the same name was established in 1636. The  Town of York has four villages, York Village, York Harbor, York Beach and Cape Neddick, commonly known as …. The Yorks. So if …

Continue reading