Merchant Circle has trouble getting it right

I have in the past criticized Merchant Circle’s marketing tactics. However, my recent interview with Chuck Bruce of Central Valley Vacuum and Sewing Center, allowed me to see them from the merchant’s point of view and, for a moment anyways, allowed me to see them in a different light. I figured that if they could make Chuck …

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Google’s StreetView hits Cow Country

When Google announced the “doubling” of Streetview coverage in the LatLong Blog a week ago, I didn’t think much about it. I presumed that it meant that they were now covering the top 100 metro markets instead of the top 50. When I saw the StreetView of Devil’s Tower, I expanded my expectation to include …

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The Cat that almost stole Christmas

In my never ending quest to ferret out interesting tidbits about Local Search, I receive a number of Google alerts. Their news algo is pretty good and turns up a number of things that I would otherwise miss and my life would be the poorer for. Occasionally it will turn up news stories that are …

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Google Business Group Survey – Not from Google

Update 12/11/08: Cathy has pointed out, and I believe correctly, that this survey is NOT from Google.  If you were the “Lord Ruler of Google” what would you do to improve the local search results? In the Google Maps for Business Owners, Someone Google (NOT…this is my error …) has invited users for feedback on their Local …

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SMB PPC Ad Spend Drop

Noa Gertin of Palore has recently completed some interesting research on SMB PPC ad spends. They looked at over 3000 SMBs who advertise online, on different websites, out of which they focused on 300 businesses who also advertised on search engines in the past 5 months. They filtered out nationwide chains and all SMBs with more than …

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Google Maps GeoCoding Conundrum

Forget for a moment that Google has managed to list this business three times. For me the question is: How did Google Maps manage to place these three listings of the same business, with ostensibly the same address at three different map locations?

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Local Links of Interest

Google Maps Doubles Streetview Coverage – Google Lat Long Blog we’re doubling the amount of coverage in the United States. This will bring Street View to some new cities, like Memphis, Birmingham, and Charleston (SC), and also to a few states for the first time, like Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota.  Google …

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Local Search: How not to succeed in business without really trying

Update 12/10/08 10:00 am: Google has apparently removed 7098 of these bogus listings. But for reasons beyond my comprehension there are still a few left in the index. Update 12/10/08 7:00 pm: Google has apparently removed all of these listings. PromoterLocal.com appears to be a local search firm like many others. They offer a Google Maps …

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