Street Fight Daily: Google Upgrades Places, PlaceIQ Tracks In-Store Visits

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.

google-map-enterprise-coordinateGoogle Upgrades Its Google Places Dashboard With Google+ Local Integration (SearchEngineLand)
Google has begun a staged upgrade of its Google Places Dashboard — the backend tool that allows local businesses to manage their business information that appears in Google’s search results. It’s the latest step in Google’s (very) slow process of updating its business listings management from Google Places to Google+ Local.

Managing Local Presence on Mobile Devices: A Developing Challenge (Street Fight)
Damian Rollison: The continued strong growth of mobile local search combined with the high value of mobile customers indicates a shift in attention is required on the part of local search publishers, in order to make it easier for businesses to manage their listing content on the devices consumers are turning to in ever increasing numbers.

SMG to Track How Mobile Ads Lead to In-store Visits (AdAge)
Starcom MediaVest Group has partnered with New York City-based startup PlaceIQ to unlock mobile marketing’s great mystery: when someone shown a mobile banner ad is enticed to walk into a store. The metric, which PlaceIQ calls Place Visit Rate, uses location data to illustrate what percentage of customers served a mobile banner ad for a retailer subsequently visited one of that retailer’s stores.

Sponsored Content: How Solocal Transformed the French Yellow Pages Into a Local Search Powerhouse (Street Fight)
Neg Norton: In an industry once dominated by yellow pages, traditional media publishers and even established companies like Yahoo needed to evolve in order to stay relevant in the constantly progressing local search space. Jean-Pierre Remy, president and CEO of Solocal Group (formerly PagesJaunes Groupe), led his organization’s remarkable transformation from traditional print publisher to one of the world’s most progressive local search companies.

Local.com Launches Premium National-Local Ad Network (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: Despite its apparent state of flux (or evolution if you prefer), Local.com is still chugging along and anticipates a strong 2013, based in part on cost cutting. The company has launched what it’s calling “Fusion by Local,” a “premium publisher” ad network consisting of its regional and local newspaper sites and other sites.

Groupon Falls After UBS Starts with ‘Sell’ Rating (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Shares of Groupon dropped Thursday after a UBS analyst labeled the online deals company’s stock a “Sell.” The analyst, Eric Sheridan, said that Groupon has a “largely unproven business model” and noted that its management is in transition. He expects shares to fall further.

Bo Fishback: ‘John Doerr Doesn’t Give a Shit if We’re Going to Get Liquidity Next Year’ (PandoDaily)
In the newest edition of the CEO Supper Club, founders of TaskRabbit, Airbnb, NextDoor and Zaarly candidly talk about the biggest problems and challenges they’ve had building local marketplaces. Unlike the Groupon era, this group believes they should be tuned out and allowed to flame out on their own — not chased and competed with madly around the planet. There’s no doubt about it: local is expensive and hard and you don’t merely need big money. You need patient money.

13 ways for Retailers to Deal with the Threat of Showrooming (eConsultancy)
Showrooming, whether retailers like it or not, is here to stay. In fact, as smartphone usage grows, it’s only going to increase. Naturally, as retailers see the threat of people using their mobiles to compare prices and buy elsewhere, they are concerned about this trend. But what can they do about it?

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