About three years ago, Yelp launched its revenue estimation tool to enable local businesses to compare their Yelp-driven business to the national average. It would multiply customer leads sent from Yelp each month by the business’s average revenue per customer…
Pinterest Updates Billions Of Place Pins With Location Data And Info
Two years ago, Pinterest launched Place Pins adding a travel magazine-like experience to the popular social/search site. These enabled users to see information like the address of a place, phone numbers, etc. in a format designed to look natural to…
Did Google’s Attempt To Fix Racist Results Screw Over Businesses?
It looks like Google Maps vandalism and Google’s way of addressing it may have led to a massive rankings shift in local search results, which can obviously have a major impact on businesses. Have you noticed any drastic changes in…
Is This Facebook’s Most Small Business-Friendly Offering Yet?
Facebook announced the launch of its local awareness ads last fall. These enable local business advertisers to target Facebook users based on their location. If a person is near the business, Facebook can advertise to them. Now, the adds have…
Google Rolls Local Update Out To More Countries
Back in July, Google launched an algorithm update that shook up local search results in the U.S. While Google never gave it an official name like Panda or Penguin that we’re aware of, Search Engine Land started calling it the…
Yelp Reviews Say More Than You Realized
Yelp reviews can have a tremendous impact – for better or for worse – on a business. They can dictate whether or not a customer decides to visit. This is one of the reasons the site/app is so controversial with…
Yelp: 8 In 10 Americans To Shop Local For Holidays
Yelp commissioned Nielsen to field a consumer survey on where Americans intend to do their holiday shopping this season and what gets them shopping at local businesses. According to this, eight out of ten are likely to shop at local…
Facebook Announces Local Awareness Ads
Facebook announced a new ad product for local businesses called Local Awareness ads. These let businesses find new customers by showing ads to groups of people who are near that business’s neighborhood. “Local awareness ads are built to be more…
Google Launches ‘Bring Your Local Business Online’ Video Series
Google released a new series of videos under the banner “Bring Your Local Business Online”. They total thirty minutes, and give businesses advice for doing just that even without a website. Image via YouTube
Report: SMB Local Media Spending To Surpass $50B Next Year
BIA/Kelsey is estimating that spending on local media by SMBs will reach $50.4 billion in 2015 at 35.8% of total local media spending. SMBs, it says, will allocate $37.7 billion of their local media spend to traditional media and $12.4…
Groupon Launches New Appointment Option
Groupon announced that it is giving local businesses a new time-based deals option that enables them to accept reservations or take appointments so they have more control over when customers actually show up. The complaint about a lack of control…
Yelp Reviews Are About To Appear In A Lot More Places
Yelp announced some big news late on Tuesday. They’ve increased the call limit on their API to 25,000 per day, and made it easier for developers to use, in addition to opening it up to all developers for free. In…
Here’s A Look At Groupon’s Square Competitor Gnome
Groupon announced the launch of a point-of-sale hardware solution for local businesses called Gnome. It would compete with Square Stand/Register. According to the company, the tablet stand will enable merchants to instantly recognize Groupon customers as they enter the store,…
Yelp Equates Asking For Reviews To Spam
Yelp announced on Wednesday that it has issued a new round of Consumer Alerts, the warnings that appear on businesses’ Yelp pages informing users that they’re not to be trusted. The company didn’t say how many it issued this time…
Google Removes Some Zagat Reviews, Says Overall Ratings For Businesses May Be Affected
Some businesses may soon find that their ratings on Google have changed for better or for worse. They’re doing away with old anonymous Zagat reviews – the ones where the person’s name is “A Zagat User.” Google’s Jade Wang wrote…
Yahoo Launches Yelp Integration For Local Search
We heard last month that Yahoo and Yelp were teaming up to add local business reviews to Yahoo’s local search results. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer reportedly revealed the partnership in an employee meeting. These things never stay inside the company.…
Yelp Gets Blasted By Business Owners And Celebrity
Yelp is taking some harsh criticism in the media once again. Its handling of fake reviews is coming under fire, as is its worth to consumers. Business owners are speaking out (as usual), and celebrity chef/TV personality/food writer Andrew Zimmern,…
Google Changes Result In Duplicate Listings For Businesses
Google has run into some “complications” upgrading local businesses to the new Places dashboard. In some cases, businesses’ accounts and another accounts that they don’t control were both verified for the same business using the old Places dashboard. In other…
Google Updates Quality Guidelines For Businesses
Google announced that it has made some tweaks to the Google Places Quality Guidelines, specifically for business names. The changes illustrate how you can add descriptors. Jade Wang announced the update ion a post on the Google Product Forums. Under…
Google Adds Regional Dialects To Business Categories
Late last month, Google announced that it was adding 1,000 new categories in the new Places dashboard for businesses. This is an effort to significantly expand the breadth of available categories internationally. The announcement was made in the Google product…