Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Entries Written By Mike Blumenthal
Google now Serving Ads on your cell phone
Bill Slawski has recently reported on a Google patent to deliver ads on your cell phone. After reading the patent, I happened to be playing with Google SMS yesterday and received my very own (obviously reduced) ad that read: (Ad)Hotels.com Great Hotel Rates! Hotels.com 800-449-4167 Here is what Adwords has to say (my italics and …
OneBox patent summary from Bill Slawski
I have written a number of times about the OneBox: –Eyetracking Heatmap: How Searchers View the Google One Box –The Google “Onebox†on general search phrases The OneBox, in its many forms is very important as the primary interface that Google provides to local search and thus deserves attention. Bil Slawski has just published a …
Comscore reasearch on cell phone use by age group
Comscore has released the second part of their research about cell phone usage by age group. In the first part of their research they examined general cell phone usage patterns as well as types of cell phone internet access. Their current conclusions: Consumers in the 18-to-24 Age Segment: View Cell Phones as Multi-Functional Accessories; Crave …
Google responds to geolocation issues
There is a more than a little irony in Google’s “official response” to the complaints about problems with the underlying geo-location data (italics are mine for emphasis): == 9 of 10 == Date: Fri, Jan 19 2007 2:29 pm From: “Maps Guide Jen” I just wanted to let you know that your voices and concerns …
What were China’s 450 million mobile users ‘Searching’ for in 2006?
A summary of interesting tidbits provided by a press release from mInfo of China: -WAP is currently actively used by only 30-40 million of the 450 million mobile users in the country, whereas SMS has over 90% adoption -Searches were spread fairly evenly amongst the basic subject areas of Local Search (41%), Informational Search (31%) …
Comscore’s numbers on mobile search
There is a fair bit of optimism that mobile (see Get Ready for a Surge in Mobile Search) is going to dominate local search in the very short term. The numbers are mouth watering to venture capital: 200 million cell phones in the US alone and research that 30% will use local search on their …
Greg Sterling’s Summary of Local Search Dollars
Greg Sterling has provided an excellent summary of local search volume and profitability by analyzing ComScore’s December data: comScore basically defines “local search†as Internet yellow pages, the queries on the local products of search engines (e.g., Yahoo! Local) and searches on general engines with geographic modifiers (e.g., “Denver Attorneysâ€). comScore (7/06) estimated local search …
Local Data Accuracy- a veritable beehive
Bill Slawski and I have discussed whether Google Maps & Yahoo Local data would get more accurate over time. Both companies have taken a somewhat different approach to fix inaccuracies: Google relying on large directories with sales organizations, the small business itself and their algorithms while Yahoo relies more on the general public and the …
Google Maps now displaying business category
Google Maps has recently added a new piece of information with a business: their category. Whether this is a test or a permanent addition is unclear. What is clear is that it is not done with consistency with a given search. The reasons for this are not obvious. For example on the search (inside of …
Eyetracking Heatmap: How Searchers View the Google One Box
From the Marketing Sherpa report excerpt: a heatmap…revealing how actual consumers’ eyes view listings. As you may be aware, the red blob is where most searchers looked directly; as colors change, the level of attention goes down. The “X†indicates where searchers clicked, and the red horizontal bar shows how far down folks scrolled to …
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.