ReachLocal Becomes Authorized Google Adwords Reseller
ReachLocal announced today that they’ve formed a strategic alliance with Google to become an authorized Adwords reseller. Kevin Heisler at SEW reports that this will give them a leg up on competitors in local search who won’t benefit from the same status in the Google ecosystem.
ReachLocal also sells local ads into Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, AOL, and my old company, Superpages.com.
I was privileged to be given a tour of the ReachLocal offices here in Dallas back in September, (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/08/2008
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Monetization of Search, News, Yellow Pages Adwords, Google, Google Adwords, Local Search, online-advertising, reachlocal
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 (more…)
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 11/14/2007
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Filed under: Design, Local Search, Market Data, News, Online Directories, Social Media Optimization, Yellow Pages idearc, Internet-Yellow-Pages, iyp, Local Search, superpages, Yellow Pages
ThinkLocal.com – Network Solutions’ Entry in Local Search
I noticed that Network Solutions has quietly added a play in the local search / IYP space – ThinkLocal.com. The site includes maps, weather, a yellow pages like search for businesses, and user review features.
I’ve thought for years that a site which allows people to search specifically for business websites would be a killer app, and Network Solutions has always had enough data to provide that very sort of thing through their status as a major domain name registrar. Unfortunately, I think no one site ever created a sufficiently broad directory of business websites, and Google, Yahoo! and MS Live have all evolved to fill that gap to some degree (it’d still be great to have the ability to only search for biz websites and not get unrelated content).
ThinkLocal doesn’t appear to be purely built from Network Solutions’ database, though. I found (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/27/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Online Directories, Yellow Pages Internet-Yellow-Pages, iyp, Local Search, Network-Solutions, ThinkLocal, Yellow Pages
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.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/25/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Market Data, Online Directories, Yellow Pages Donna-Bogatin, iyp, Local Search Optimization, local-SEO, Online-Yellow-Pages, Search-Engine-Land, SEO, Yellow Pages
Search Engine Optimization through Yellow Pages
There’s an interesting thread that appeared on Greg Sterling’s blog on Using IYPs as an SEO Strategy.
Some of the commentators pointed out that yellow pages ads are pretty costly, compared with those of the search engines. So, is using yellow pages as part of a search marketing campaign worthwhile for traffic and good for ROI? My answer is: Yes, yellow pages can and should be used as a major component of local search optimization. Yellow pages can be used for SEO, and here’s some details on how to approach it.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/24/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Online Directories, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Yellow Pages iyp, Local Search Optimization, local-SEO, Online-Yellow-Pages, SEO, Yellow Pages
Yelp opens API for developers
Michael Arrington reported today how Yelp has released their API, allowing developers to dynamically query and display their yellow pages listings, reviews and content for display on any websites. The terms are fairly generous, allowing developers to have up to 10k of queries per day, and relatively few restrictions on display.
This is a really cool thing for an IYP site to do…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 08/02/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Online Directories, SEO, Yellow Pages APIs, iyp, Online-Yellow-Pages, Yellow Pages, Yelp
News: Pat Marshall new Chief New Media Officer for Yellow Book
The Wall Street Journal reports that Patrick Marshall, Superpages.com veteran, has just been named as Chief New Media Officer for Yellow Book.
I used to work with Pat back when he was President of New Media Services at GTE, overseeing Superpages.com back when it was brand new, and I know him to be a fantastic businessman. Pat is well-known in the yellow pages industry and was the recipient of The Kelsey Group’s New Technologies Leadership Award in 2002.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/24/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, News, Yellow Pages Patrick-Marshall, superpages, Yellow Pages, Yellow-Book
Stephen Colbert puts Internet Yellow Pages on notice?
I just saw this hilarious photoshopped illustration of Stephen Colbert, apparently making some commentary about online yellow pages and local search sites:
This was used to illustrate a blog article commenting on how Google Maps could now be poised to totally kill off other IYPs, now that they’ve added user reviews. (“Google Maps Puts Local Search Industry On Notice”)
The placard Colbert is holding up lists a number of the top online yellow pages and local search companies: Yellowpages, Superpages, Yelp, Yahoo! Local, Idearc, MSN Live, and Citysearch.
While I disagree — I don’t think the addition of user reviews is the tipping point for Google Maps — hat tip to Evan Roberts for a very clever and funny article illustration!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/22/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Yellow Pages iyp, Local Search, Online-Yellow-Pages, Stephen-Colbert, Yellow Pages
Cool Yellow Pages Billboard Ads from Israel
Ad agency Young & Rubicam’s Israeli office came up with this great billboard and tv campaign to promote the Golden Pages — Isreal’s primary yellow pages company. This is one of the more effective yellow pages billboard campaigns I’ve seen — they’re funny, engaging, and simple enough to read when driving:
Acupuncture – billboard for Israeli Yellow Pages, the Golden Pages
Here’s their funny pinnocchio-inspired video ad.
The Y&R Israel blog shows some of these in Hebrew – I’m assuming they mocked up the ads in English primarily for promotional release distribution in America — I bet these English versions of the ads are not actually being used on billboards anywhere, but I couldn’t get confirmation from Y&R before posting this.
Click through to see some more cool billboards from the sequence…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/13/2007
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Filed under: Advertising, Local Search, Yellow Pages Ads, Advertising, Billboards, Golden-Pages, iyp, Online-Yellow-Pages, Yellow Pages, Young-&-Rubicam, YP
Plea for a New Open Format: Open Local Profile Format
My most-recent Locals Only column just pubbed at SearchEngineLand.com, titled “A Call To Standardize Local Search Listings“.
Open Local Profile Format
In it, I’m calling for the companies operating in the local search space to come together and agree upon a common data format protocol that would allow businesses and organizations to more easily submit their directory profile information to the great plethora of local info sites where users go to get information. The local search engines, online yellow pages, and various vertical directories should come together to reduce costs/complexity for businesses, and to facilitate improved information for consumers, similar to how the major search engines last year came together to agree on one common submission protocol – Sitemaps – for submitting sites’ page links to them. Read on for more details.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/04/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Yellow Pages Business-Listings-Data, Google-Maps, hCard, microformats, Open-Formats, Open-Local-Profile, Open-Local-Profile-Format, Sitemaps, Yahoo-Local, Yellow Pages
