Internet Retailers Finding Growth During The Recession
I earlier wrote about how businesses could take advantage of a recession by swooping in to grab up some marketshare from more fearful businesses who might choose to cut back advertising and expansion during an uncertain period. Now Forrester Research and Shop.org have released some survey results indicating that many online merchants are seeing growth while brick-and-mortar businesses are experiencing reduced sales.
The one cautionary note a Forrester analyst added to the release was that many retailers are apparently planning to advertise more in social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, even though it’s “still unproven how such sites might build direct revenue for retailers” (paraphrased).
I’d note that many of us in internet marketing have identified fairly significant promotional potential in social media sites, and that some degrees of integration with them are possible in many cases without incurring advertising costs — so, it may be that judicious campaigns should still be attempted, even if there is not a lot of research evidence indicating good ROI. Just as with any promotional campaigns, it’s important to try to measure results as you go, and adjust as indicated.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 04/08/2008 | Permalink | 
Email
| 
Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (0) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: General, Market Data, Social Media Optimizationeconomy, internet retail, online retail, Recession
Google Sending More Traffic To Google Maps
The New York Times today reported on a recent Hitwise post by Heather Hopkins highlighting that Google was now sending about three times as many of their users over to Google Maps comparing a week ending January 6th with a year ago.
This is apparently due in part to Google recommending Google Maps instead of recommending other mapping providers in addition as it had been doing early last year. (more…)
Popularity: 49% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 01/14/2008 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (1) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Google, Local Search, Maps, Market DataGoogle-Maps, Local Search, Mapquest
The Kelsey Group Puts Print Yellow Pages On Notice
Over at Media Post, The Kelsey Group is quoted today saying that the erosion in usage of print yellow pages is likely to fall off at a higher rate this year — by 10% this year, compared with only 2% to 3% erosion in recent years.
They state that a combination of factors such as more users going to internet yellow pages and local search engines combined with a recession are propelling the rapid erosion. Concerningly, one can extrapolate that if print YP usage is dropping, advertiser dollars might also follow the herd.
As Greg Sterling points out, The Kelsey Group has historically been a very staunch defender of the print YP industry, so this article is a bit of a gut-punch to people in the legacy print business, even though anyone watching the trends over the last few years won’t find it all that surprising.
One thing the Media Post article doesn’t mention is how (more…)
Popularity: 41% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 01/11/2008 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (6) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Local Search, Market Data, News, Yellow Pagesiyp, Kelsey Group, Local Search, Online-Yellow-Pages, print-yellow-pages, Yellow Pages
Superpages.com Adds More User-Generated Content to the Local Mix
About a week ago, Idearc announced that Superpages.com had introduced more user-content features.
Previously, the primary component of user content on the site was limited to user ratings and reviews associated with business listings.
Some of the new features this recent upgrade added include allowing all users to enhance basic biz profile information, uploading pictures of organizations, wiki-like biz listing “blog” features which could allow simplistic blogging by businesses and/or could be used as a consumer comment or Q/A zone for each business since any user could submit info to them.
Of all the top online yellow pages and local search sites, I believe that Superpages may now have the distinction of having the greatest
Popularity: 31% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 11/14/2007 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (6) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Design, Local Search, Market Data, News, Online Directories, Social Media Optimization, Yellow Pagesidearc, Internet-Yellow-Pages, iyp, Local Search, superpages, Yellow Pages
Is InfoSpace Cashing Out?
First it was announced that InfoSpace was selling Switchboard and other directory properties of theirs to Idearc for $225 million. Today InfoSpace announces that they’re selling off their mobile services business for $135 million.
InfoSpace’s release says that they’re selling off the mobile services “…to focus on online search”. They’re apparently going to also give a chunk of this change back to their shareholders in a dividend.
This just makes me wonder, is Infospace cashing out?
Local search has been one of Infospace’s strengths over time — they even changed their core website a few years ago to focus on local search & yellow pages more — prior to that they’d been a more general search engine (they still own general meta search engines like Dogpile.com).
Also, this mobile service sale seems odd since the rest of the internet marketing industry is starting to hyper-focus on mobile search and services.
Even though “yellow pages” directories are not exactly the same thing as local search, you’d expect for InfoSpace to hold onto the assets (and hold onto the mobile services), or to sell the assets to use the money to capitalize on the search areas where they want to focus. So, why are they doing this?
Popularity: 6% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 10/15/2007 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (0) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Local Search, Market Data, NewsInfoSpace, Local Search, Mobile Search
Am I an SEO Dog? More On Toasting of Internet Yellow Pages
Donna Bogatin apparently disagreed with my article at SEL entitled “Google Trends: Yellow Pages Will Be Toast in Four Years“, posting a bit of a lurid headline herself: “Yellow Pages Trash Talking: The SEO Dog in the Google Local Fight“.
I didn’t really think that my article was quite “trash talk“, and I’m assuming from the article content that the “SEO Dog” referred to was perhaps myself, or perhaps the “dog” is my article conclusions, fighting for the ostensibly narrow viewpoint of all SEOs. Aside from the somewhat scathing disembowelment attempted, I thought it’d be informative for me to address some of the logic-faulty conclusions that were drawn.
Popularity: 19% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 09/25/2007 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (1) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Local Search, Market Data, Online Directories, Yellow PagesDonna-Bogatin, iyp, Local Search Optimization, local-SEO, Online-Yellow-Pages, Search-Engine-Land, SEO, Yellow Pages
comScore Report Likely Misses Large Internet Segments
comScore released a list of Rankings of Top Worldwide Properties last week, but there’s likely a large segment of internet usage completely missed by their methodologies. I recently blogged about how Domainers Can’t Get No Respect (a followup piece to my 2nd installment of “Domaining & Subdomaining In The Local Space“), because they haven’t had good independent validation of some of their traffic and conversion rate figures. When I wrote that, I didn’t realize that some of them had apparently attempted to get independent validation, but were thwarted by the methodologies of audience measurment services. Frank Schilling let me know that he’d tried to get audited by comScore a few years ago, and they’d failed miserably, registering only about one-thirtieth of the US traffic they’re really getting.
Being somewhat familiar with comScore’s data gathering and audience share estimation methods, I can easily see how Domainers’ sites could get drastically under-represented in comScore’s figures. Read on for details…
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/25/2007 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (0) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Analytics, Market DatacomScore, Domainers, Domaining, internet-analytics
Is SEO Awareness Dropping? Google Trends Shows it May Be
Using Google Trends, I was noticing how searches in Google for “Search Engine Optimization” seems to be dropping over the last two years:
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/24/2007 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (7) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Market Data, Marketing, SEO, Search Engine OptimizationGoogle-Trends, Search Engine Optimization, search-marketing, SEO
How much traffic does the top keyword position garner on Google?
Have you ever wondered how much traffic the top keyword position on Google can bring a site, for a hotly-contested term? Or, how much traffic does the top slot get you, compared with the second slot?
Most of the major SEOs and top companies keep such figures as closely-guarded secrets. Even the search engines keep the numbers of searches by various keywords secret, using various techniques to hide actual values.
The much-touted Eye Tracking Study conducted by Enquiro and Did-It show that the first listings on Google SERPs are looked at and clicked upon the most by users. Most pros already concluded this through common sense, but it’s difficult to get actual traffic amounts associated with the rankings of listings on SERPs.
I’m going to change this situation right here, right now, thanks to new data that Google has graciously begun providing to the public, and thanks to a brief reshuffling of rankings on a top keyword for one of the sites that I manage. Read on, and I’ll elaborate.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/31/2006 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (9) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Google, Keyword Research, Market Data, Tools, Tracking and ReportingGoogle, Google-Trends, Keyword-Analysis, Keyword-Positions, Keyword-Rankings, Top-Position
Searching for brick-and-mortar retailers?
Data now out from Nielsen//NetRatings shows that the top five most popular shopping search terms for April were all brick-and-mortar retailers:
- “home depot”
- “walmart”
- “target”
- “sears”
- “best buy”
SearchEngineWatch Blog then arrived at the conclusion that:
These are people who likely have done their research and are now looking for physical/local stores to buy what it is they want.
I disagree. I think most Americans already know where their local Home Depot is. Instead, these searchers are looking to buy online. Some will opt for in-store pickup (which both Sears and Best Buy offer). Some may be on the hunt for product information, buyer’s guides, or the current circular with the week’s in-store specials.
I believe brick-and-mortar brands dominate shopping-related searches because those are the brands that are the most pervasive/popular/trusted in the marketplace. Their online shops offer a safe and familiar place to buy online.
A huge number of Internet users are searching for “home depot” when they could be typing in homedepot.com directly into their browser’s Location bar. Why is this? I imagine that for many people, typing in “home depot” into the Google Toolbar or into the search box on their Start Page is just easier or most comfortable. Perhaps some, like myself, even configured their Google Toolbar to display the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, to go straight to the first search result. 
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted by Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts on 05/28/2006 | Permalink | Email
| Print