No one’s really sure how or why this happened – perhaps Google’s accountants simply decided that there was too much cash floating around.  Or maybe it’s a graduation present of sorts – GOOG-411 was brought out of Google Labs earlier this week.

In an article for Search Engine Land, Greg Sterling presented a more likely idea, however.  “[P]eople will see this when they’re driving in their cars, which is one of the expected use cases,” he wrote.  As for the billboard’s middle-of-(scenic)-nowhere location, Sterling speculated, “[P]erhaps that’s also quite intentional, to test a campaign and see if it drives traffic, so to speak.”

In any case, credit goes to Mike Blumenthal for first spotting the GOOG-411 billboard and documenting its existence.  Assuming this test – if it is a test – goes well, keep an eye out for Google billboards where you live, as well.

Yahoo Local Swamped With Mapspam?

Credit for the main exposé goes to Mike Blumenthal (though he, in turn, gives nods to several other sources), and Blumenthal notes that some florists “will fabricate an address that is close to the city center (gaining ranking cred), provide a very relevant fabricated business title with City + Florist in the title (gaining more ranking cred) and adding a number of reviews (gaining still more ranking cred) to jump to the top of the local rankings . . .”

This makes honest competitors much less likely to get business from Yahoo Local, which would be frustrating enough.  Some misguided spam-fighting measures appear to have made the situation worse, though, and prevented at least one company from updating its listing.

“After editing the hours, and adding categories for wedding invitations (we now have the largest selection in town), and wedding accessories, an updated listing was created and sent for review,” reports The Bloomery Florist Boutique.  “A few days later, we received a response from Yahoo! Local stating that we did not have a local presence . . .”  The Bloomery then supplies a few pictures of its van and its shop that seem appear to conclusively prove its presence in Butler, Pennsylvania.

And while, to be honest, most of us might not get too worked up over flowers, it’s hard to say how widespread these problems might be in Yahoo Local.  It’s also very hard, it seems, to say what Yahoo is doing about them.  Don’t throw away those phonebooks just yet.

“Best Buy’s Bait-and-Switch-Plus Plan Earns Lawsuit”

We covered this story a while back, so let’s give a quick recap:

Customer finds deal on BestBuy.com, runs to the local store to pick it up and finds that the price is significantly higher. Best Buy rep brings up website and shows customer he was mistaken about the sale price, as the online price clearly matches the in-store price.

After some hounding, Best Buy admits it has an intranet from which its sales reps were pulling the prices, and they were, indeed, different than what was quoted online. They say there was no ill-intent, but there’s trouble now nonetheless.

Blumenthal is calling it "a bait-and-switch-plus scheme" to overcharge Best Buy customers. The lawsuit seeks refunds for consumers, civil penalties, court costs, and a ban on the practice altogether.

I can’t speak about Best Buys in other towns, but it’s clear around Lexington that their company name is only a name. As I shopped for a new HDTV recently, Best Buy was by-far the worst buy in town – the TVs were more than every other retailer in town (the usual crews at Circuit City, HH Gregg, Target, Wal-Mart, Radio Shack – you name it).

It would be interesting to know how many other electronics retailers have their own intranet. During my TV-shopping experience, I printed out a CircuitCity.com page quoting a price on a specific TV, only to find it a different price in the store.

The sales guy said something about prices and specials changing often on the site and brought it up on one of the store’s computers. Sure enough, the price was different. It wasn’t until my fiancée was waiting for the site to load on her BlackBerry that the sales manager spoke up and offered that TV and another one at the discounted rate.

So the next time you’re wrangling a deal somewhere, come equipped with your own wireless device, and be sure to mention the trouble Best Buy’s in now. 

The "intelligence" will be provided to the Multi-State Attorney General Committee in order for them to pursue predators that have been trolling the site. MySpace says it has been working closely with Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and North Carolina’s Roy Cooper.

"In addition to immediately removing registered sex offenders from MySpace, our plans have always been to provide the information collected by Sentinel SAFE to law enforcement, including the Attorneys General,” said Mike Angus, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Fox Interactive Media. 

“We’re pleased to have worked with Attorneys General Blumenthal and Cooper to devise a solution that allows us to provide this information in a way that enables law enforcement to use it in criminal investigations and probation or parole proceedings.

MySpace rose to extreme popularity shortly after News Corp. bought the site for $580 million, a noticeable bargain just under two years later, when MySpace controls 80% of the social networking market.

But with that popularity came creeping the trolls looking for underage victims. Parents and Congress rose up quickly and loudly, lambasting MySpace for not doing enough to combat sexual predation on the site.

Because of that, MySpace hired on Hemanshu Nigam, now the site’s Chief Security Officer, to develop a way to curtail the instances of predation. As late as the end of 2006, says MySpace, there was no technology developed to help them do this.

In response, Nigam and MySpace developed Sentinel SAFE, implemented this month, which uses a range of informational factors collected from state sex offender registries and from profiles, which are deleted as soon as they are identified. That information is then forwarded to the authorities.

 “We have zero tolerance for sexual predators on MySpace," said Nigam, "and took the initiative to create this first of its kind tool ourselves because nothing previously existed.

“We will continue to promote legislation requiring sex offenders to register their email addresses so they can be kept off social networking sites in the first place and urge other social networking sites to join our lead and implement technologies designed to keep predators away from younger users.” 

However surprisingly it’s turning out to be much tougher to find a local pizza restaurant than it is to search the globe. There’s a lot of effort going into Local Search and it’s tough to stay on top of it and see the wood for the trees.

I watch with keen interest the writings of two observers of this scene, William Slawski and Mike Blumenthal. For example, Bill had an interesting post recently on a Google patent on an Approach to Improving Location Information Accuracy. Part of this covered the following:

Creating a Location Repository

The focus of this document involves creating a location repository, where it would try to match up location information favorable to computers, such as latitude/longitude or GPS coordinates, with information more likely to be used by human searchers. This system would allow for retrieving location identifiers for a variety of applications, so it can be used for many purposes with minimal effort.

It really is most impressive how Google has created this global computing facility that can attempt to catalogue all the information that exists. My mental picture is of SuperGoogleWoman wandering the universe seeing where she can apply her universal multi-purpose super-tools to solve problems. Nevertheless I’m surprised if the search for a local pizza restaurant needs such incredible computing power. This isn’t rocket science.

So how can we Keep It Simple, Sergey. Well we want something that is very easy to use for both seekers and their targets. It should be a minimal approach and it should give street addresses since our virtual search is just a precursor to a physical search as we often may wish to visit. One approach would be the LURI (Location Uniform Resource Identifier). This minimal HTML file gives the location coordinates for a corresponding website. This includes the physical address and can include a telephone number.

If any service provider we’re interested in has a LURI, then it’s very straightforward. If we as a searcher identify where we are by say a zip code or its equivalent, then the search engine just serves up those service providers whose LURIs indicate that they’re close.

The complete LURI details then can be what are shown on the cell phone. Just dial up the number and you’re in business. What could be simpler?

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Barry Welford, President of SMM Strategic Marketing Montreal works with business owners and senior management on Internet Marketing strategy and action plans to grow their companies. He is a moderator at the Cre8asite Forums and writes on current issues on the Internet and on the Mobile Web in three blogs, BPWrap, StayGoLinks and The Other Bloke’s Blog.