New Report Suggests Brands Remain Ambivalent About Local Search
A new Forrester report suggests that a large swath of national marketers still struggle to understand the role of local search in a national marketing strategy. The complexity of the local search industry, the report argues, has created unnecessary barriers for large marketers to invest in both paid and organic search initiatives…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp’s New Business App, Foursquare on the iPad
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Yelp Introduces New App For Business Owners With Push Notifications (Marketing Land)… Foursquare’s iPad App Is Finally Here (Mashable)… Uber Responds to Senator Franken’s Privacy Concerns (New York Times)…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Expands Search, Amazon Tests Same-Day Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Hands-On With Facebook Post Search: Strong Recommendations, Yelp Should Worry (TechCrunch)… Amazon Tests Bike Messengers For One-hour Delivery In New York City (MarketWatch)… Decline In Organic Reach Changes Facebook’s Value Proposition For SMBs (AdExchanger)…
Street Fight Daily: Square Adds Loans, Foursquare Declares Search Broken (Again)
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Square Expands into Small Business Loans (Financial Times)… Foursquare Declares Local Search (Yelp And Google) Broken, Vows Fix With Personalization (TechCrunch)… The FTC Condemns the Data Brokerage Industry’s Collection Practices (Pando)…
What Roadside Assistance Can Tell Us About the Future of Local Search
Urgently, a Washington D.C. startup, has built an application that allows drivers to request, and pay for, a nearby tow truck or automotive technician, and then track the provider as they come to their destination. The service is one of handful new companies, which are working to apply the on-demand model developed by the taxi hailing company Uber to a range of traditionally offline, and often backwater industries, like repair.
Street Fight Daily: Square Secures Credit, GrubHub Shares Soar
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Square Secures Credit in ‘Low Hundreds of Millions’ (CNBC)… GrubHub Shares Surge in Debut (Wall Street Journal)… TPG Said Close to Airbnb Investment After Snags Resolved (Bloomberg)…
Street Fight Daily: Digital First’s Thunderdome Implodes, Mobile Payments Heats Up (Again)
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The Newsonomics of Digital First Media’s Thunderdome Implosion (And Coming Sale) (Nieman Journalism Lab)… Tech Titans Are Vying to Be Your Pocketbook (New York Times)… TaskRabbit For Business Service Portal Quietly Disappears (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: Clinkle Revealed, Ride-Sharing War Intensifies
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Clinkle Revealed: Here’s What the Embattled Startup Is (And Isn’t) Building (Recode)… Ride-Sharing Price War Intensifies With Lyft’s ‘Happy Hour’ Discount (Wall Street Journal)… LivingSocial to Prioritize Growth Over Profitability, New Chief Revenue Officer Says (Washington Post)…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s Next Big Thing, Yelp Ad Growth Lifts Stock
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Groupon’s Next Big Thing? Helping Mom-and-Pop Shops Unload Extra Inventory. (Recode)… Yelp Reaches High as JPMorgan Says Ad Growth Will Lift Stock (Bloomberg)… Will (Local) Q&A App Jelly Succeed Where Others Have Failed? (Screenwerk)…
Street Fight’s 10 Most Popular Stories From 2013
On this last day of 2013, here’s a look back at some of the Street Fight stories that really piqued your interest this year (at least as far as page views go). We’re grateful for all of your support this past year, and we look forward to bringing you more great content, research, and events about sustainable hyperlocal business models in 2014…
Street Fight Daily: Apple Buys Hyperlocal Startups, Booze Brands Align With Taxi Apps
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Apple Acquired Mapping Firm BroadMap, Location-infused Evernote Competitor Catch (9to5 Mac)… Free Rides: Booze Brands Align With Transportation Apps (AdAge)… Foursquare’s New Money Means Facebook Isn’t Everything (Wired)…
Street Fight Daily: Patch Not Dead Yet, Amazon Buys Square Competitor
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Amid Postmortems, AOL Says Patch Is Still Alive (Businessweek)… Amazon Reportedly Buys Mobile Payments Startup Gopago, Working On An ‘Ambitious’ New Project (TechCrunch)… Customers Out in the Cold Balk at Uber Surge Pricing (New York Times)…
Case Study: Lenovo Uses Local Search Tactics to Drive In-Store Sales
How does a brand without its own brick-and-mortar stores drive offline sales? That’s the question that Donna Bedford and Rick Medeiros have struggled with as they continue to develop Lenovo’s local search strategy. “We’re starting to think, how do we start becoming more hyperlocal? We’re a global company, so how do we develop that hyperlocal presence and really try to make sure that people clearly know who we are,” Medeiros says…
Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Regulator Fight Continues, Google’s New Take On Self-Service
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Why Is Uber Fighting a Regulatory Battle That It Already Won? (AllThingsD)… Google Updates Its Self-Service Offers Tool (TheNextWeb)… Square’s Credit Card Payments Are Great, But Here’s What The Company Actually Does Best (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: Fake Yelp Reviews Rise, Yahoo Gives Maps A Facelift
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… A Whopping 20% Of Yelp Reviews Are Fake (MarketWatch)… Surprise: Yahoo Maps Gets A Facelift, New Features (SearchEngineLand)… Hyperlocal Power: Urban Compass Raises $20M At A $150M Valuation; Adds Advance Publications And Marc Benioff As Investors (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: Google Wallet Comes To iOS, Groupon’s Monster Rally
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Google Wallet Finally Comes to the iPhone (With a Big Asterisk) (AllThingsD)… Three Reasons Groupon’s Monster Rally Will Continue (Wall Street Journal)… Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman Ignored Advice From Elon Musk and Peter Thiel And Succeeded Anyway (CNNMoney)…
Calculating the ROI of Local Search Campaigns
How can we calculate just how much return a given business can expect on the investment of time, money, or both into a local search campaign? For many business owners, it’s that type of dollars and cents calculation that will drive them to decide whether or not to move forward with a campaign. Other metrics are important but ultimately secondary to the bottom line…
5 Leading Indicators of the Future of Local Search
The local search market is changing. On the buy-side, enterprise advertisers are starting to assert their control, demonstrating that they can leverage large footprints to compete in local with clean distributed data, and accurate claimed citations. Consumers, meanwhile, increasingly want to use their mobile devices for more activities than navigational search, expecting to be able to buy and not only find goods and services nearby. The advancements of local search are evolving so rapidly that a race to control consumer behavior may be brewing between the Davids and Goliaths…