Local Links of Interest

Local SEO 2008 Predicitons – Andrew Shortland, LOC@LSEOGuide. Andrew is doing the fumes of Delphi Oracle thing. Google Maps Gaining On Market Leader Mapquest – Greg Sterling, SearchEngineLand provides some great analysis about Google neutrality and technology in the maps market share mayhem. iPhone specific web sites — do they make sense? – Martin Kleppmann, …

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Local Links of Interest

Yahooo Makes a New Play for Ads on Mobile Phones – Miguel Helft, NY times Magellan Device Adds Google Local Listings – Greg Sterling, LocalMobileSearch Google’s Lunchtime Betting Game – Noam Cohen NY Times This has little to do with local but is an interesting research report on the use of prediction markets within Google. …

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SEL Survey Data & Comparison

Mobile User Survey Redux: the Late Adopter After Greg Sterling surveyed SEL readers on their mobile internet usage patterns, I thought it would be interesting to survey a totally distinct user group. Greg agreed and we surveyed the 1123 registered readers of OleanInfo.com, a local portal site catering to folks interested in Olean NY. Roughly …

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Local Links of Interest

As noted in WRAL.com there is a new local search engine, WhatsOpen.com that is now open. WhatsOpen is an intriguing service with an even more intriguing about us page. Their approach to local search is not the standard who, what or where but rather what and when. They ask a question that even folks familiar …

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Understanding Google Maps nominated for Search Blog Award 2007

SearchEngineJournal.com once again has their annual Vote for the Search Blogs Awards posted and Understanding Google Maps and Yahoo Local has been nominated in the Best Local Search Blog category. Thanks to Miriam of SolasWebDesign and Frank of LocallyType.com for nominating this blog. I really appreciate the recognition. It has been a fun year for …

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Local Links of Interest

8 White-Hot Trends Lift Local Search in ’08  – Michael Boland, Search Engine Watch Eight local search trends will rock the search engine world in ’08. Here are the ones with the most momentum as we roll into the New Year  Amazon Kindle does Maps – Joshua Topolsky, Engadget Users of the device have been …

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Local Authoritative OneBox = I’m Feeling Lucky; or Not!

The recent posting at SEORefugee about the Denver Florist going broke due to their business being displaced by appearance of a competitor in the OneBox, has brought Google’s Authoritative OneBox into the consciousness of the search community. The Authoritative OneBox has been the gold standard to measure success in local search marketing. For those of …

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Local Links of Interest

Ads on Google Maps for Mobile (& Goog-411?) Coming Next Year (Greg Sterling – LocalMobile Search from the recent Google Local Symposium) * Performance of mobile ads “is excellent” * Google has discussed ads on Goog411 and will likely add them but not before the company feels comfortable with the user experience * The response …

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My (ancient) cell phone as a reading device.

I have an old Nokia 3650 cell phone with a pre-columbian Java and an even older Symbian OS rev. Although it might just as well be called the Simian OS for all the good that my opposable thumbs do me. While it basically sucks I have learned how to take advantage of its many Web …

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MerchantCircle:FUD marketing (and these guys get $10 mil?)

MerchantCircle has been criticized in the past for its agressive and fear driven marketing to get small businesses to sign up to its services (see John Batelle, Matt McGee & Greg Sterling). They claim that 250,000 small businesses signed up for their service. According to Peter Krasilovsky at Kelsey Group: the claim of 250,000 registered …

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