In Confusion there is Opportunity

We are in the embryonic days of local search and it is confusing. Confusing to the small business person as Anita Campbell pointed out in her blog and confounding to experts as Bill Slawski pointed out in his piece on the idosyncracies of Google Map’s Local Search data. There are many who wonder if Google’s …

Continue reading

Best Practices for Local Success

Local Search optimization should be an integral part of every web site marketing plan. The goal is to encourage customers to visit or contact your business and Local Search plays an ever increasing role in this. The ultimate goal in Local Search optimization is a showing your business on the Google Main Search results page …

Continue reading

A summary of Bill Slawski’s Google Local Search Patent summary

In early September, Bill Slawski wrote a great review/summary/analysis of Google’s Local Search Patent Application. I reread it over the weekend* and felt the surge of epiphany flow over me as I recognized the theoretical underpinnings of Google Local search results. As Bill noted, Google Local is a “structure generation engine” that collects information from …

Continue reading

Windows Live Does Virtual Dallas

Google Earth Meets Windows Live “Virtual Earth” Search Engine Roundtable – Extremely impressive release by Microsoft with Virtual Earth. It is basically a Google Earth product with “dramatic 3-D mapping” in … Windows Live Local Gets “Virtual Earth” 3-D Cities Search Engine Watch (Greg Sterling)- Tomorrow Microsoft will bring dramatic 3-D mapping to the browser …

Continue reading

When will GeoCoding impact Local Search?

In yesterday’s issue (11/2/06) of the NY Times they published an interesting article called: Basics: Pictures, With Map and Pushpin Included on the nascient field of photo geocoding. I had been oblivious to this technology before but after reading this article I realized that it will have a huge impact on Local Search going forward. …

Continue reading

What is the click to call feature on Google Maps?

From Google Maps Help: We’re testing a new feature, click to call, on Google Maps. Click to call gives you a fast and easy way to speak directly with businesses found on our maps. The following are a few frequently asked questions about this feature:  How does it work? When you click the “call” link …

Continue reading

Google has acquired JotSpot the collaborative Wiki

From the jotpsot.com press release: We’re writing to let you know that Google has acquired JotSpot. We believe this is great news for our users. More importantly, we want to reassure you that you’ll continue to have uninterrupted access to your account. Both Google and JotSpot are committed to supporting our customers, and we understand …

Continue reading

877-520-FIND (Goog 411)

Greg Sterling found an ad today for 877-520-FIND that took him to http://www.520find.com/. He looked for but couldn’t find any ownership information. Other than a reference to LanLogic on the terms of use page. While the facts of ownership may be cloudy, there are several things that are clear: 1)The service works very well. I …

Continue reading