Mike Blumenthal

With Martijn Beijk, we are closing out our Loci2009 series reflecting on important events, trends and developments in Local Search last year. It is a dynamic space and one where as many or more changes look to be on the horizon for 2010. ****************** 2009 was a year of change. For me personally because I …

A common strategy amongst successful corporations is to “externalize” costs. By that I mean that companies will, when able, off load costs to maximize profits. This can be done for example by pushing environmental costs to offshore producers or using subcontractors to avoid labor regulations. Google for example, often has forum participants provide support to …

What’s New in Reviews at Google Maps: With their newly implemented sentiment analysis, Google Maps is apparently now reaching across hyperlocal blogs, local portals and news sites and retrieving blog entries, general editorial reporting and even blog comments for inclusion as reviews on their Places Pages. This change portends a dramatically changed review landscape where …

Google Maps has been active both on-line and off promoting the Local Business Center. I noted last week that Google was increasing their trade show presence as well. This weekend while visiting Sebastien Provencher’s blog I happen to notice this Google Display Ad showing on his site: **** It would be interesting to know the …

According to Comscore, in December 2009, Americans conducted 14.7 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 65.7 percent search market share, virtually unchanged from 65.6 percent in November. Thus Google was searched 9.65 billions times in the US. Google has noted in their official blog that “Proportion of Google result pages that show a …

Update: Here is Google’s LatLong Post on the new feature: Make Google Place Pages your business’ megaphone A nod to the Tenacious Frog for first spotting this one….Google Maps is now integrating events and the opportunity to display time sensitive information into your Places Page. Businesses can now add events, specials & time sensitive activities …

Since early summer, Google Maps has been actively promoting the Local Business Center to SMBs. This is a positive development as the LBC needs relatively high adoption to truly succeed and provide the promised benefits. Until this summer, Google was all too quiet about its existence. There have been a number of relatively high profile …