Google Further Personal...

It’s a full time job just keeping up with and understanding the reason behind all the changes that Google makes regularly. The latest is and addition to maps that allows you to see the places you have reviewed on a map along with some Google suggestions. The more I read about these changes the more I realize just how little I go out (don’t feel sorry for me because I actually like it that way). But as with any marketing update in the online space, how I use it doesn’t matter a bit. In a post from the Google Lat Long blog comes an explanation of this newest maps feature. Since the My Places tab was released earlier this summer, you’ve been able to view all the places you’ve rated in one manageable list. This list is now being used to personalize your view of Google Maps, enabling you to visualize all the various places you’ve visited, loved, loathed, and might want to check out right on the map. Starting today, business labels for locations you’ve rated with Google Places will be highlighted on the map with your corresponding rating beneath it. Additional places that our system thinks you might enjoy visiting — either to eat, shop, or more — will be highlighted as well. These personalized recommendations are based on the places and ratings you’ve already shared. his could be good for the “out and about” set. My question is, how many places does the average person go out to eat at and do they actually forget whether they rated it as being good bad or indifferent? And do they just wander about and look for recommendations to something else in the vicinity? Anyway, it doesn’t matter how I see this. It’s how the target market does that counts. Are you one of the targets for this kind of map functionality?

Classy: Google Is Runni...

If you search for “Yelp” on Google from your mobile phone the top paid result, even above the organic result to Yelp.com , takes you to Zagat.  I am only seeing this on mobile searches. While it is a common practice for companies to advertise against their competitors’ names in search advertising, in this case it is Google itself which is bidding for that search term and taking the top spot.  A classy move. Google bought Zagat last September to shore up its local reviews for Google Places, which is its answer to Yelp.  Google Places and Yelp have a contentious history, with Google borrowing liberally from yelp to help build up its local directory.  Now with Zagat, Google finally has a large corpus if its own review, in addition to the ones people are slowly adding to Google Places.  By redirecting some of the people who are looking for Yelp to Zagat, Google is keeping up its pattern of punching Yelp in the face every chance it gets. Remember, at one point Google almost bought Yelp back in 2009.  But that didn’t work out, and the gloves have been off ever since.  (Sound familiar , Groupon?) Google is really hitting Yelp where it hurts.  During an antitrust hearing last September, Yelp revealed that 75 percent of its traffic comes from Google in one way or another. A big chunk of that is from organic search.  If Yelp is not the top spot when someone searches for “Yelp” that could have some impact on Yelp’s traffic.  Yelp might have to respond by bidding on its own name on AdWords.  One way or another, Google’s aggressiveness in pushing Zagat is going to cost Yelp. Crunchbase YELP ZAGAT GOOGLE Company: Yelp Website: yelp.com Launch Date: January 7, 2004 Funding: $56M Another company founded in 2004 by two former PayPal employees. Yelp is a local reviews website covering the United States, Canada, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands; Yelp drew an audience of more than 50 million unique visitors in March 2011. Yelpers have written more than 18 million local reviews, making Yelp the leading local guide for real word-of-mouth on everything from boutiques and mechanics to restaurants and dentists. Learn more Company: Zagat Website: zagat.com ZAGAT.com features over 30,000 of the best places to eat, drink, and stay worldwide. The site is published by and based on the renowned 30 years, Zagat Survey (a survey-based restaurant guide). ZAGAT.com provides access to ratings and reviews for restaurants, nightspots, hotels and attractions in hundreds of cities worldwide. It features menus, photos, virtual tours, updates on the latest openings and closings with ZAGAT BUZZ and connect with other ZAGAT.com members in our bustling Discussion Boards. Learn more Company: Google Website: google.com Launch Date: July 9, 1998 IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information.... Learn more

Are Google’s Local Effo...

Google is often given the edge in taking control of the whole local discovery thing. Considering recent developments that may not be the case at all. The short term conventional wisdom regarding the new iPhone 4S is going some way to changing that. Its impact on the mobile world is that the voice recognition “engine” for the smartphone, Siri, is going to be a local search “killer app”. Google is responding in a way that seems to point to their need to make sure that their version of “local” is better. Google has announced that they are now using another way to update Google Place pages. As put by Jon Mitchell of ReadWriteWeb Google just launched a more streamlined process for updating small business listings on Google Places, but it asks forgiveness instead of permission. Instead of requiring owners to manually update the listing, Google Places will now automatically update with user-submitted info or updates to another source on the Web that Google identifies. When a listing is updated, the system will notify the business owner of the change by email. What we don’t know for certain is where these updates are coming from (Attention experts: feel free to tell us more in the comments) and one wonders if there is room for any local information foul play which has become an local SEO pastime of sorts. So where does Yelp fit? Well, one of the sources for Siri’s data is Yelp. Here is some more insight from local search expert Mike Blumenthal Interestingly the current Siri app pulls data from a wide range of data sources to answer your questions. That is true with business listing data as well. Depending on the local search it might show results from Yelp, Yahoo, CityGrid, Localeze or BooRah. I presume that it uses even more sources than I have so far discovered and it appears to be agnostic as to where it gets its data. Siri also seems to mix and match sources when necessary. Blumenthal also checked in regarding the changes in how Google Places is updated . Yesterday Google Places announced on the LatLong Blog that they would automatically update claimed listings more quickly with information from trusted third parties [and end users] if Google thought the information was more accurate than information that was in the Places Dashboard. The program’s goal is to improve index quality. If implemented carefully it can work. It is not clear how abuse proof program is and how much trust Google will put in end user edits. Obviously many of those, if not properly vetted, could create a whole new spate malicious activity. If you would like to read even more of Mike’s thoughts on Siri check out his Siri love letter . In the end it appears as if Google is working to wean itself off of certain local data sources with Yelp being one that they would like to create some distance between for obvious reasons. With this strategy, however, there are risks for sure. I don’t have any evidence of this but one can pretty quickly surmise that Yelp is one of the companies that carries a pretty large target on it around the Googleplex. Right now though Google’s voice recognition doesn’t seem to be as smooth as Siri but the average Android user is used to clunky. iPhone users use the iPhone for a variety of reasons and one of those is that it is usually a smoother interface on all fronts. Android is usually playing catch up but that’s to be expected. The idea of Siri making Yelp a bigger player in the local space must be maddening to Googlers like Marissa Mayer. The trouble with this local battle is that Google has been expected to be the local business leader but it never seems to make a push to get far ahead of the field. It has all the components to do it. It has Places, it has Android but one thing it never seems to truly have is a plan. At least not one that that is easy to see and moving them forward all the time. Now they are starting to look like they are reactive in their local approach rather than proactive which often indicates that they are not in a position to lead the local push. In the end, this move by Apple to use Siri could spell serious trouble for Google in a space that is critical for the future of the search giant. Whether it happens today or in the next few years, mobile will be a very large component of any online effort. The spread of smartphone ownership is making that more of a reality than just a prediction. If Google fumbles the local search market that could be a turnover that could be a game changer for sure. Do I think it is going to happen that way? I’m not saying yet because it is still early. What I will say though is that it looks like Google may be more on their heels than I imagined when it comes to the mobile space. Just that possibility is enough to put everyone on alert that the local game has never been more up for grabs than it is now. Your thoughts?

Google Offers Hits Miam...

Google’s deals service  Google Offers  launches in Miami, Florida today, with two kickoff specials now available. Offers, Google’s take on the Groupon model, initially launched in June, and expanded last month into five additional cities: Austin, Boston, D.C., Denver and Seattle. Including its original test market of Portland, plus the Bay Area and New York City , Google Offers now serves 13 areas. (New York and Bay Area markets are split up into smaller units, e.g. NYC Uptown, Midtown and Downtown). The first two offers in Miami include a restaurant deal at Joe’s Stone Crab, a Miami eatery since 1913, and a deal for Fandango movie tickets, at $5 each. Like Groupon, Google Offers have limited windows in which you can purchase the coupon. But unlike Groupon, Google doesn’t have a tipping point for the deal. If only one person buys the deal, it’s active. Groupon’s return policy (indefinite)  is better than Google Offers (60 days), as is its customer support (a toll-free number vs. having to enter your phone number via a website and wait for a call back). But while Groupon is more of a standalone deals entity, Google ties Offers into its other services, including its business listing and reviews provider  Google Places , Android (via the Google Shopper mobile app) and even Google Wallet , which enables Google to track the entire cycle surrounding customer behavior, from discovery to redemption to checkout. Google Offers are available online , or via Google Shopper app for Android or iPhone .

Google Places: Lots of ...

Reading through the responses that Google compiled to some of the claims being made against the company by the likes of Yelp, NexTag, FairSearch and more there was one piece of information that jumped out at me with a question and response. CLAIM: “Is a consumer (or a small business, for that matter) well served when Google artificially promotes its own properties regardless of merit? This has nothing to do with helping consumers get to the best information; it has everything to do with generating more revenue.” RESPONSE: In fact, most of the click traffic (roughly two-thirds of clicks) from our local search result pages goes directly to small business websites, and review sites make up the next largest percentage (about a quarter of clicks). Less than 10% of clicks from our local results page go to Google Place Pages. It’s the last sentence that sticks out because for all of the hype surrounding Google Places in cities like Portland, Austin, Charlotte and more, Google Place pages, by Google’s own admission, accounts for only 10% of the local clicks. I can see that happening since Google often seems to bury the links to get to the Place Page in favor of pointing the searcher to the website (which I never understood but it may be just to keep them out of trouble). The question then becomes where should the SMB or any business for that matter put Google Places on their pecking order when deciding how to allocate precious marketing resources. Well, it looks like the answer on the surface is a very distant third at best. Here’s a quick look at what Google’s order of click importance could mean. SMB’s need to spend most of their time on their website and doing SEO – We always try to do an end run around this truth but when given the information about where the clicks go in local search it’s obvious what should get the most attention from a resource stand point. Maintaining a strong website and doing the SEO dirty work is not sexy by any stretch but who cares about cool when money is on the line. Local businesses have to pay close attention to all review sites – With about 25% of local clicks going to these review sites (according to Google) it’s obvious that a real strategy around these important purveyors of opinion needs to be in place and worked all the time. Google Places not about clicks – It looks like either Google is making this appear a certain way to sound good before the Senate committee or Google Places may not be as important (right now) as we often talk about. For the most part, it’s a set it and forget it proposition (with some important steps as part of that process including cleaning up name, address and phone information across the Internet). Of course, if an SMB wants to do the work to get more citations to push the listing up in the results then they can (and probably should). But here is where it gets most interesting. Google downplays the clicks the actual Place Page receives but that’s not the real story. Take a look at this local search result from this morning. This is why the Place Page is so important to businesses. The clicks to the Place Page may be a distant third but their importance in being ranked on the first page of results appears to be paramount (click the image to enlarge). The map and the resulting placement for the business is pinned (pun intended),in good part, to the Place Page. It could simply be that the majority of clicks going to a local business’s website are just because people habitually click on blue links and Google has laid out results to highlight that option more than the others. You can also see how review sites get plenty of the rest of the clicks because they are prominently displayed in the results as well. So all in all it’s an interesting game being played regarding local search. Yelp in particular has been very vocal that Google promotes its Place Pages above other local search options. If you look at the SERP’s like those above you can say there might be an argument there but is there really one? In reality, if most people are clicking on websites or and review sites what has Google done to prevent competition? In conclusion, Google is trying very hard to downplay the importance of their Place Pages to try to negate any arguments that their own “products” are receiving favor in the SERP’s. If Google were really smart about this I would suggest that they put together an all out assault on the business community around Google+ and any integration of Place Pages that would occur there. This creates two wins for the search giant in that businesses will flock to the service and, as a likely, result promote the heck out of Google+ thus doing the advertising to the masses that Google needs to do in order to get a wider adoption rate for the Facebook competitor. So what’s your take on Google Places? Is it the clicks that matter? If so is it worth the effort to go after only 10% of those clicks? Or is the Google Places game about a larger strategy that isn’t as much about clicks on a Place Page but taking full advantage of ALL that Google offers? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community