SearchNews
MerchantCircle Goes From Panda Victim to Blekko Curator

Interesting news from Blekko today. The alternative search engine, focused on weeding out spam from search, has partnered with one of the top sites impacted by Google’s Panda update – MerchantCircle. MerchantCircle is a small business community site with 1.6…

SocialMediaNews
Report: Facebook Marketing Adopted by 70% of Local Businesses

MerchantCircle, an online network of US local business owners, revealed in its quarterly reports that more local businesses are turning to Facebook and other social networking sites like Twitter, as a low-cost option for their marketing efforts.

SocialMediaNews
MerchantCircle Study: Small Businesses Favor Facebook

Facebook, with its 500 million active users and (unofficial) movie and books, is also quite the hit with small businesses, according to a new report.  MerchantCircle found that Facebook is the favorite online marketing service of small businesses, and Facebook Places is doing quite well, too.

To sort of set the stage: the Merchant Confidence Index survey involved 8,456 U.S. local business owners, and was conducted between January 22nd and February 3rd.  So the results aren’t especially subjective or dated.

SocialMediaNews
Local Merchants Utilizing Social Media More as Confidence Remains Flat

This week, MerchantCircle shared the results of its "Merchant Confidence Index," in which about 10,000 local merchants shared their confidence levels in the current economy. While confidence has remained generally flat, the index also found that many of these merchants are more prominently using social media as a free online marketing tool to increase their customer base and revenue.

Business
MerchantCircle Gives Merchants Their Own Version of Foursquare

Local business social network MerchantCircle has launched a "Mayors" program to its 1.4 million members, no doubt an attempt to capitalize one the growing popularity of Fourquare.

SocialMediaNews
MerchantCircle Aims to Duplicate U.S. Success Internationally

MerchantCircle is going international. The local business social network, which gets nearly six million unique monthly visitors (according to Compete data), should be increasing that number greatly as it expands into Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Business
MerchantCircle, Demand Media Provide New Local Search Opportunities

MerchantCircle, a social network for local businesses, which boasts over a million businesses, announced an expanded partnership with Demand Media. I spoke with Darren Waddell, VP of marketing for MerchantCircle and Sean Pate, the company’s Director of PR about this and some other news.