WebProNews

Are Local Businesses Trying Hard Enough with Paid Search?

On Friday, the Interactive Advertising Bureau announced that the US had reached $5.5 billion in online ad revenue for the first quarter. This was down a bit from last year, but that's not too bad considering the state of the economy. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find other ways to advertise your business that are as cost-effective.

Live Search Comes to MSN City Guides

Microsoft has introduced a new version of MSN City Guides in a move the company calls "one step in a long term plan to help users stay in the know wherever they are." The new MSN City Guides makes ample use of Live Search and Live Search Maps as well as video and social media. Users can share information through Windows Live and Facebook. Microsoft says this makes event organization easy.

Tons of Tips for Ranking in 5 Other Google Engines

It's not all about traffic. It's about conversions. But it's hard to get conversions if you don't have the traffic, and while Google is one of the best potential sources for traffic, Google has other search engines besides web search that people use all the time, and it will not hurt to rank in them too. Which engines besides web search do you see big traffic from? Comment.

Google Knows Where You Live

Google’s changing it up, and local search optimization just became very, very important. It used to be a searcher had to be very specific about a query to bring back local results. To borrow from Search Engine Guide's Miriam Ellis, who tips us off to the changes in the usual Google “10 pack,” or the top ten search results, a search for “chiropractor” reveals just how geographically targeted Google’s results are now.

Mobile Local Search Advertising to Reach $1.3 Billion?

The number of people using mobile devices to get content is on the way up.

More Results Visualized on Google Maps

When you search for local businesses on Google Maps, you will now see more than just ten results at a time plotted on the map. While the initial ten will still be plotted by pins and letters as before, you will see dots representing many more search results.

Cutts Confirms Google Toolbar PR Update

A week or so ago, some people noticed some updates to Google Toolbar PageRank scores. It was unconfirmed however if this was an official update. Matt Cutts eventually confirmed on Twitter that it was indeed a Google update.

PubCon: Succeeding At Local And Mobile Search

For the moment, never mind the "world wide" aspect of the Web.  A whole lot of any business's customers are likely to come from its home region, and so a PubCon session called "Local and Mobile" search took a look at ways in which companies can best serve these nearby individuals.(Coverage of PubCon continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for continued coverage from the event this week.)

Local is As Local Does

It looks like search engines have officially trumped the Yellow Pages when it comes to customers looking for local businesses. Data from comScore and TMP Directional Marketing shows that this year more people are turning to search engines after last year's showed that Yellow Pages were on top. What the Data Shows

Yahoo's Openness To Search

Yahoo announced that they have integrated a couple of applications from their SearchMonkey project into everyday search results for users of the Yahoo search engine. The two integrated apps are from Citysearch and Zagat, which Yahoo intends to use for improved local search results along with Yelp and its own Yahoo Local results.