4 Reasons Location-Based Services Will Become a Thing Again in 2015
With improved location accuracy, improved POI data, and efficient background location processing, developers will be equipped to build apps that can truly extract relevant real-world user experience. Location will mean more than a wandering blue dot; it will mean the places we’ve traveled, the relationships we’ve developed, and the resolutions we’ve kept…
Solving the Dirty Data Problem in Location-Based Advertising
Our work with leading ad tech companies has shown that 80% of the location data appended to ad inventories is inaccurate. The inaccuracies come from antiquated IP positioning providers who trace ad requests through the Internet to find the hub access point and assign the hub’s latitude and longitude to the IP addresses…
Significantly Insignificant: The ‘Absurd Precision’ of Location Marketing
The industry has evolved from targeting zip codes, to neighborhoods, to 100-meter tiles, and now we see claims of targeting within four feet of a mobile user. Ever-increasing degrees of precision are appealing to marketers — but mobile campaign managers should further explore the realities (and complexities) of location data…
The Year in Local Search: A Timeline of the Top Stories of 2014
The holiday season is a time to contemplate the year gone by, so we’ve rounded up some of the top news stories in local search over the past 12 months. It was a year marked by Foursquare’s rebranding, Google’s new SMB interface, and upgrades from the likes of Apple, Yelp, Yahoo, YP, MapQuest, and Bing…
Getting Down to the Basics of Local Search Marketing
Small businesses can sometimes find out at their peril just how important it is to take control of how they are represented online. As professionals, we want to make sure businesses understand that our expertise has value, but not at the expense of scaring or confusing them. Instead we would do well to promote the idea that local search is accessible to all…
A ‘Radical Transformation’ Is Brewing in SMB Phones
For local businesses that rely on the phone for inbound leads (which is nearly all of them), the functionality of copper lines pales in comparison to what call-tracking-enabled lines have done for years. Unfortunately for business owners, the VoIP packages being sold to them also fall far short of the level of functionality that call tracking provides…
The Importance of Responsive Web Design for SMB Sites
It’s critical for local businesses to have a beautiful site that doesn’t just scale down to low resolutions, but also looks great on all devices — from a 27” desktop display to a “smart” refrigerator, and every tablet, phablet, and phone in between. That’s why for the majority of local businesses, responsive design is the best mobile strategy…