News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Square Buys Weebly, Shift to Mobile Fuels Search Spend

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Square Buying Spree Continues With Weebly Acquisition… Shift to Mobile and Eurozone Growth Fuel Search Spend on Global Scale… Google Sharply Limits DoubleClick ID Use, Citing GDPR…

Street Culture: Sitter.me CEO on Owning Mistakes and Terrible-but-Fun Team Building

“How we view mistakes is you admit it, you learn very quickly, and then turn it around,” says Sitter.me CEO and co-founder Kristen Stiles. After quoting a client a wrong price, Stiles owned up to the error, and the company develop a new procedure to ensure similar stakes would not be made again.

Street Fight Daily: Google & Apple Boost Local AR, Foursquare’s New Location-Based Creative

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Report: Smartphones, Developer Kits Drive Local AR and Visual Search… Foursquare’s New In-House Agency Will Pump Out Location-Based Creative… Marketers Still Shy Away from Venturing Too Deep into Ad Tech…

Commentary

Aligning Creative and Location to Make Better Mobile Ads

The ability to break creative down to where the consumer is interacting with location is already emerging as the next big trend for mobile marketing. Hand selecting where you want your creative to reach your customer makes a lot of sense — and the more you make it common practice, the more successful your mobile marketing efforts will be…

Why Online Marketers Are Rethinking Their Yelp Strategy

Merchants have historically been wary of Yelp reviews — and for good reason. Yelpers have tended to be snarky and more focused on humor than accuracy. But there are changes coming at the end of 2012 that are likely to make many marketing pros reevaluate their relationship to the user-generated reviews site…

The Long Tail of Local Search

Far from invisible tools that merely get you to the store or service you want, local search products actually tell a story about the needs local search companies think they are trying to fulfill, demonstrating in some cases a stark contrast between the actual habits of the local consumer and the assumptions of local apps and websites…

Latest Posts

Consolidation Watch — Where to Look for Deals in Local Tech

The first half of 2013 saw total investment activity, which includes both M&A and private financing, grow from a year earlier, as the number of deals stayed flat but total reported deal value jumped from $5.2 billion to $7.2 billion over the same period. Expect to see more deals — both large and small — in the local space as big firms search for a foothold in the industry and host of maturing startups look for the exit…

Street Fight Daily: FoodPanda Raises $20M, Millennials Drive Mobile Bookings

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Foodpanda Gobbles Up $20M In Fresh Funding To Fatten Its Global Pawprint (TechCrunch)… How User Reviews Are Gutting Brands (MediaPost)… Last-Minute Millennials Drive Mobile Bookings, So Make it Easy (Skift)…

Is Guest Blogging Dead? Focus on These Link Building Strategies Instead

While guest blogging used to be a respected link building practice – and still might be okay in some instances – it is now often considered a violation of Google’s quality guidelines. And in the future, Google could penalize websites that accept guest posts if Google believes the business is attempting to gain links without truly earning them. Instead of placing all of your eggs in the guest blogging basket, it is best to focus on authentic link building. Here’s how…

How Merchants Can Create a Comprehensive Strategy for Mobile

Building a mobile-optimized website is certainly a starting point, but it’s far from the last step a local merchant needs to take when developing a comprehensive mobile strategy. Although small business owners tend to be more interested in mobile than outsiders give them credit for, it’s the process of combining those solutions to create a comprehensive strategy that trips many merchants up. Here are six tips for local merchants who are interested in putting together mobile strategies for their businesses…

Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Posts $183M Loss, Airbnb Considers Cleaning Service

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.LivingSocial Posts $183M Loss in 2013 (Washington Business Journal)… Airbnb Is Testing Out An Affordable Cleaning Service For Hosts In San Francisco (TechCrunch)… In Defamation Lawsuit Over Yelp Reviews, Neither Side Wins (Washington Post)…

Local Marketing in a Post-Mobile World

An explosion in connected devices is forcing marketers to quickly move beyond mobile and address a new set of multi-device marketing challenges. We recently caught up with Sean Muzzy, chief executive North America at Neo@Ogilvy, to take his pulse on brand marketers’ interest in local, and explore how an explosion in connected devices might shape the way businesses communicate with consumers in the real-world…

Openings & New Hires at Moz, YP, Kenshoo, and Telenav

Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new jobs at Trending.info, Internet Marketing Ninjas, VendAsta, AOL, and Daily Press…

LBMA Podcast: Google Glass on the Floor

On the show: soon your food will text you its expiry date; The Wireless Registry launches; Source Metrics connects online ads with offline buys; Nearbytes lets you pay by sound; Banjo 4.0 hits the street; Ricoh plays catch up with Clickable Paper. And our Mobile Minute with Chuck Martin highlights some store traffic research by Euclid…

Foursquare

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Teams With Seamless, Lawsuit Questions Square Story

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Foursquare Can Now Satisfy Your Appetite At Home With Integrated Seamless And GrubHub Ordering (Pando)… Lawsuit Questions Square’s Start-Up Story (New York Times)… PayPal Wants Role in Apple’s Mobile Payments Dreams (Recode)…

New England-based GoLocal Expands With New Site in Portland, Oregon

Portland will be GoLocal’s third entry into a mid-sized market with a struggling legacy newspaper. Josh Fenton co-founded the first GoLocal in Providence, Rhode Island’s capital, four years ago, and expanded to Worcester in Central Massachusetts two years later. The two sites currently generate 7.5 million pageviews per month…