By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the new augmented reality app called Pokémon Go. If you haven’t, then you’re probably living under a rock. Anyhow, if you truly haven’t heard about it, Pokémon Go is a new mobile phone app that’s taking the nation by storm. Once installed, it’s a game that combines the “real world”, and allows players to play a virtual scavenger hunt of sorts, trying to catch animated characters. These animated characters appear in real locations, such as in a park, inside your home, or even inside a local business. If you have a retail location, you can take advantage of the Pokémon Go phenomenon, and entice customers to visit your location. This will increase foot traffic and sales. [Read more…]

When it comes to marketing your business online, building trust is a big deal. It’s something that not only will help you get more customers, trust is extremely important because if you don’t have it–it could be devastating. You could lose traffic to your website and you could lose sales. It’s possible that you don’t even know that you’re losing out on potential sales. More importantly, the search engines use trust factors as a part of their algorithms to determine your website’s positioning in their search results. [Read more…]

Update: I got a call from a someone who claimed they were a representative of Katapult SEO, based in San Diego. Apparently one of their employees had alerted them to this post, and they wanted to talk to me about it. During the call, I indicated to them that they needed to contact the original poster or recorder of the conversation, and that I was only reporting on this situation, as a blogger. [Read more…]

A court has ruled that Yelp must reveal the true identities of people who have left reviews on Yelp. Specifically, Yelp has been ordered to reveal the identities of 7 people who have left (bad) reviews of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning in Alexandria, Virginia. This court ruling sets a precedent for online reviews, and, more specifically, the reviews by anonymous reviewers on Yelp. [Read more…]

When you take a photo using your iPhone or Android mobile phone, the location data (latitude, longitude) of where that image was taken is usually saved in the photo file. Other information, such as the device that took the photo, and the image size, is also saved. The data that is saved in the image file itself is typically called “EXIF Data“. By editing image files before you upload them, you can add additional information to those files, which ultimately could help your local search engine optimization efforts. [Read more…]

I knew this was coming at some point, and perhaps we all knew that Google has been starting to crack down on local businesses who have their Google Maps listing using a UPS Store as their location. Now I have what I would call official notification from Google that this is not just a policy but something they’re starting to enforce: Google has rejected a new local business listing that has their address set up at a UPS Store. [Read more…]

According to a report, Google is going to start charging for usage of their Google Maps service. Google will charge businesses that are “heavy users” of their service. If a business gets more than 25,000 map requests per day, then the business will have to start paying to allow their users to use Google Maps. [Read more…]

When you perform a search at Google with a query that includes a city name, there is a good chance that Google will automatically pull some of the Google Places Listings into the search results. [Read more…]

Looking for a free way to manage your business profile data? Better yet, Would you want to distribute that data for free to online and mobile directory publishers? What if you change your address or phone number or add additional locations? Would you like to add your business profile data for free? Well, here is a great new option. [Read more…]

I have noticed a change in how Google is displaying the search results for certain cityname+keyword searches. For those of you who often search for something that includes a location (or a city name) along with a keyword, you might be interested in how Google is changing the search results. [Read more…]

With the ever-expanding adoption of mobile smartphones, coupled with advances in search and maps like Google Maps, Google Local, and Yahoo! Local, making sure that your local business and all of your local business locations are found is becoming more crucial. Not only do you have to make sure your local business is listed, you need the extra marketing provided by local marketing experts like myself to make sure that your local business is at the top of the search results. [Read more…]

Zvents, the site where you can discover things to do, has secured $24 million in funding from Nokia Growth Partners, AT&T and NAVTEQ. Nokia Growth Partners, is the growth capital arm of Nokia (NYSE: NOK), the world’s leading mobile phone supplier; NAVTEQ, is the world leader in premium-quality digital map data. AT&T (NYSE: T) is the largest U.S. wireless company which, through its YELLOWPAGES.COM subsidiary, is also the leading U.S. internet yellow pages search directory. Zvent’s existing investors, Vantage Point Venture Partners and Red Rock Ventures, also participated in the financing. [Read more…]

Photo courtesy TechCrunch.

Paul Levine, former GM of Yahoo! Local, has joined Zvents board of directors as Zvents continues to grow both its network and innovative local search platform. His experience with local listings will prove invaluable as the platform continues to support local business as is done offline; by way of event promotion.

This news comes amid the release of a top 20 Yellowpages.com iPhone app, powered by Zvents. The app enables users to comprehensively search local on the new iPhone G3 and local businesses to reach iPhone mobile customers through Zvents. A formal announcement has not yet been made but the app is available for download and is being promoted by YellowPages.com.

Zvents is a local search and advertising network of hundreds of web and mobile partners featuring event listings to promote local business. Using unique technology that enables location- and time-based search for businesses and events, Zvents helps millions of people find local businesses and discover things to do. Thousands of local merchants use Zvents’ free and paid listings products to submit local events and activities, thus promoting their businesses and providing unique and hard-to-find local content to users throughout Zvents.

“Zvents has all the elements necessary to build a substantial business in local: an impressive technology platform, a top-tier distribution network, and an active merchant community generating unique local content,” said Paul Levine. “I’m excited to work with Zvents’ outstanding board and management team to help fuel the company’s future growth.”

Paul Levine was the Vice President of Marketing at AdBrite, The Internet’s Ad Marketplace, where he is responsible for the company’s marketing, public relations, and customer operations. Prior to joining AdBrite, Levine was Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo! Local, where he ran Yahoo!’s yellow pages, local search, maps, events, classified, and real estate properties. At Yahoo!, Paul oversaw the launch of Yahoo! Local, grew it to become the internet’s leading local content property with over 20 million monthly users, and led the company’s local advertising partnerships and strategy.

Zvents is a local search and advertising network of hundreds of web and mobile partners, featuring event listings to promote local business. Using unique search technology, which enables location- and time-based search for businesses and events, Zvents provides users with a compelling search and discovery experience, while enabling local merchants and advertisers to effectively promote their businesses. Zvents connects local businesses with millions of monthly users in diverse categories including music, movies, restaurants, sports, retail shopping, and community. The company aggregates rich business and event information from web sites, user-contributed content, and 3rd party sources, and integrates high-quality partner editorial content with its search index. The company is a leader in local search relevance and is the main sponsor of the open-source Hypertable project. For more information, visit www.Zvents.com.

 

Google is partnering with Nokia to offer Google search to Nokia mobile phone users worldwide. If you have a Nokia cell phone, you will be able to use Google to find relevant information. [Read more…]

2008 is already off to a great start in the online media world, and local media appears to be getting more ad dollars. Lately, we are seeing a shift in some of the ad dollars going to new media platforms, especially with the increased importance of user-generated content and the verticalization of local media. [Read more…]

Yahoo! Local and R.H. Donnelley are expanding their relationship. This new agreement gives local businesses more exposure on the Yahoo! Local and Yahoo! Maps websites. The agreement is a part of R.H. Donnelley’s efforts to distribute their local advertiser content across their own network of websites as well as the local versions of other sites. [Read more…]

Kudzu.com, a search engine that’s primary emphasis is on local business search, has won two Telly awards for two different tv commercials during the 28th Annual Telly Awards. [Read more…]

Kudzu.com, a local business search engine that helps you find local service pros in Atlanta, Arizona, Las Vegas, and San Diego, has added 100,000 user-generated reviews. [Read more…]

Jeffrey Pruitt, Executive Vice Ppresident of iCrossing and President of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) has been named to the Yellow Pages Association’s (YPA) Local Search Guide Advisory Board. [Read more…]

Ezilon.com has just launched a new localized human edited directory for China at http://cn.ezilon.com/ in an effort to expand its services to China’s rapidly growing population of Internet users. The quality directory service Ezilon.com is known for especially in Europe and USA is now being extended to China. [Read more…]

Citysearch, owned by IAC, has agreed to acquire Insider Pages. Insider pages is a reviews-based local search company. [Read more…]