{"id":8805,"date":"2011-01-13T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=8805"},"modified":"2011-12-15T16:57:52","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T20:57:52","slug":"loci-2010-ted-paff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/13\/loci-2010-ted-paff\/","title":{"rendered":"Loci 2010 – Ted Paff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Paff is the President of Customer Lobby<\/a>, a solution to help local businesses to get, manage and publish customer reviews. Prior to founding Customer Lobby, Ted was an entraprenuer, venture capitalist and investment banker.<\/p>\n

He has been a guest blogger here before writing the popular Responding to Negative Reviews \u2013 Your Prospects are the Real Audience<\/a>.\u00a0Ted probably knows more about the ecosystem of the local review space than anyone that I know, for good or bad his life depends on it.<\/p>\n

*******<\/p>\n

Here are a few articles that marked notable events and\/or influenced my thinking in 2010 with respect to reviews and Google Maps:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I found this article<\/a> and this article<\/a> to be thoughtful commentaries on review policy.<\/li>\n
  2. Although the implementation has a long way to go, Google’s support of microformats<\/a> changed my view of how we and others will provide data to all of the search engines.<\/li>\n
  3. The many versions of Google’s integration of local\/SERP results<\/a> had me rereading and recommending these articles (here<\/a> and here<\/a>) on local SEO.<\/li>\n
  4. When we started building our company, I knew (and was repeatedly told) that creating a direct, outbound sales force was expensive and time consuming<\/a>. In reading this article<\/a>, it struck me that almost every company with scale that markets online services to small businesses, including Google, finds it worth the cost.<\/li>\n
  5. The rise<\/a>, fall<\/a> and reincarnation<\/a> of sock puppet accounts marked the early days of reviews spam. Testimonials treated as reviews<\/a> are likely to be spammy as local businesses figure out that they can inflate their reviews count. I think Sam Decker got the title of this post<\/a> right but there is a lot more to come on this topic.<\/li>\n
  6. Data from “people like me” gleaned through the integration of my and others opinions, and mobile and search data<\/a> could create the first real recommendation engine for local businesses. If Google (or Yelp) can figure this out, the impact on local businesses will be huge.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Ted Paff is the President of Customer Lobby, a solution to help local businesses to get, manage and publish customer reviews. Prior to founding Customer Lobby, Ted was an entraprenuer, venture capitalist and investment banker. He has been a guest blogger here before writing the popular Responding to Negative Reviews \u2013 Your Prospects are the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local","category-loci-significant-articles-local-search"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t