The Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance has been making huge strides over the past week. Last week, Yahoo! announced a begin to testing Bing data. Today however, we are seeing real evidence for the first time. According to Yahoo!, this is the beginning stages of Yahoo! and Bing combining forces and using the same search results. It seems to only effect organic search. Anything else from the universal search world seems to be unaffected including local map results, real time results, new results, etc. [More]

When you work for a local business search engine, you grow accustomed to a certain amount of spam. Offenders will choose a city and create 5 to 10 business profiles that center around a certain industry. The business names will all be different, but the profiles often have the same phone number, link the same website and display the same stock photo. Once in a while you will run across a craftier spammer who uses a different phone number for each profile too, but if you take the time to call each number you will be greeted by the same person.

I don't relish deleting these profiles. On the other side of those phone numbers there is a guy who performs that service in that area. He may even perform it very well. Does he deserve to be found in local searches? Yes. Does he deserve to be the only one found in local searches? Absolutely not, which is why his profiles are always 86ed. [More]

Last week our very own Dave Cosper, VP of EZlocal, put together one of the most comprehensive slideshows on the topic of local search optimization to date. His entire presentation is superb and deserves a complete viewing, but today I’d like to focus on just one of his points (from slide 35): Online local consumers are fragmented across multiple search engines and internet yellow pages sites – robust, broad content distribution is key to maximize reach. So what does fragmentation mean? At the most basic level, fragmentation means that consumers seek out different resources when shopping locally. Some people go by word of mouth, others use printed yellow pages and yet others may follow printed reviews or ads in their local paper. However, the only “fragment” we are concerned about in this article is the online fragment, or the group of local consumers who turn to the internet in some manner when shopping for local products and services. Fortunately for us, it turns out we aren&rs... [More]

Two weeks ago The Consumerist put out an excellent article on how to spot fake online reviews.  A week later, after enlisting the help of their shrewd reader base, they compiled a list of 30 additional symptoms of online review fakery.  Both pieces are superb and deserve a full reading, but here are a few highlights that stood out to us: The reviews are all left within a short period of time of each other. Reviewers names are all variations of one another, i.e. happykat1234, happykat7593, happykat6687. Reviewers have no other reviews on the site. Multiple reviews that are exactly the same. The reviewers say the entire name and model of the product over and over.  This is often a sign of a cheap attempt to game search engine results. To help illustrate these points, we set out to find a few offenders.  As it turned out, we stumbled upon a single profile that flaunted all of these conventions.  Can you guess which one? If you guessed Chicago Limo aka ... [More]

SMB's have just two meaningful representations in the local search space: a website and a business listing. If there was a Layman's equation for Google's local search algorithm, it would perhaps look something like this: Ranking = Location + Information + Corroboration + Input + X. [More]

Small businesses are in a unique position to truly benefit from customer reviews.  Chains are pretty well locked into their branding and there tends to be very little differentiation city-to-city and state-to-state.  They will build reputations for being consistent and predictable, but rarely break through to extraordinary.  However, small businesses are unencumbered by these expectations; small businesses have the opportunity to make a name for themselves as something really special.  Soliciting customer feedback can play a crucial role in building this reputation.  Here are 4 things to keep in mind as you encourage your own customers to review your business:     1)  Incentivize.  Give your customers a reason to review your business or service.  Offer them a coupon or discount off their next purchase if they go to Yelp, Citysearch or EZlocal and leave a review.  Here is an example of a flyer we encourage our members to distribute:     2... [More]

Nine do's and don'ts of local search marketing. [More]

Everyday local search becomes more integrated into the old fashioned search results.  Google expanded its local search universe again recently and shows no signs of slowing.      The Google Local Business Center is so great because you can dissect a listing and really understand why it is ranked.  Not only does the business owner have the opportunity to provide details, but Google finds other sites that reference a business and includes it in the listing details.  For example, searching custom closets Broadview, IL  brings up the listing for Crooked Oak.  When viewing the listing details, not only can I see business details such as payment options and hours of operations, I can also see where Google is pulling this information from.       Here we can see information is provided by the business owner, servicemagic.com, insiderpages.com and superpages.com.  If I am a business owner selling custom closets near Broadview, IL I now know the... [More]