The Price of Free Listings
When the Yellow Pages directory came out once a year, if your business’ phone number was printed incorrectly, you were in trouble. It was the same with local business listings on the internet, except that instead of one or two books, there were thousands of websites carrying your bad data. This added up to a serious headache for multi-location brands and a serious opportunity for solutions providers that could bring order to the free business listings chaos. Here’s a look at how listings management has evolved.
5 Local Data Aggregators for Hyperlocal Startups
For many founders of hyperlocal platforms, the ideas they’ve envisioned require access to local location data—and lots of it. Some of the most important background players in the hyperlocal ecosystem are the local data aggregators, which supply clients with the basic NAP (name, address, and phone number) identities of millions of businesses and points-of-interest worldwide. Here are five local data aggregators that hyperlocal vendors can use to power their local listings…
Data That Thinks ‘Big,’ But Acts Local
Local media is increasingly colliding with the emerging super-sector known as “Big Data.” This will define the “mobile+local” promise we keep hearing about — that location targeted ads will boost relevance, performance and thus monetiztion. But one thing often missing from the discussion is what the heck we mean by “location targeted?”
6 Tools SMBs Can Use to Update Digital Directory Listings
Almost half of all business listings on hyperlocal services and online directories include information that is outdated, incorrect, or incomplete — a major problem given that 92% of people use online directories to research products or services in their areas. Here are six platforms that merchants can use to improve the accuracy of their directory listings and increase their businesses’ exposure online…
Localeze, Locationary Partner to Streamline Enhanced Search
The two companies will join to help “streamline the sharing of Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) data and enhanced business information for local search engines and businesses.” According to Localeze president Jeff Beard, his company will utilize Locationary’s Saturn platform and offer it as a local data solution for their clients…
Study: Tablet Search Becoming Vital to Local Business
The 2012 Local Search Usage Study, a combined effort from from comScore, 15miles, and Localeze, found that “86% of tablet users made a purchase from their most recent tablet-based local search.” That is an impressively high number, especially combined with the fact that 64% of tablet users conduct searches on a weekly basis…
Street Fight Daily: 09.14.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman claims that a 54% traffic growth this year has led the service to 63 million monthly unique visits. 21 million reviews grace the site and the app, and 1 million are being added every 30 days. He also calls Google’s acquisition of Zagat “a funny move. (The Next Web)…
Groupon’s Chinese joint venture Gaopeng is not doing so well. It has apparently closed 10 offices and fired at as many as 400 employees over the past three months. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.17.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Mobile location service Localmind lets you use your phone to ask questions of people who are hanging out at a restaurant, bar, park or other venue. With yesterday’s update to the app, Localmind users can now send photos in response to questions, answer questions older than real time and get forwarded all questions for places they are regulars at. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Foursquare has added photos inline with checkins in an update to its iPhone application Tuesday. The new version adds color to the activity stream and refreshes the look and feel of the app. (Mashable)…
Localeze’s Dague: Solving the Problem of Search for Local Merchants
As online search has become such a pervasive utility in our lives, maintenance of accurate local search results has become increasingly important for brick-and-mortar businesses everywhere — as well as for the ever-growing number of location-based platforms that serve up those search results as part of their geo-located service. Localeze does a lot of the behind-the-scenes work in making sure that listings across hundreds of platforms remain accurate and current. The company monitors and manages local business identities, and authenticates local search results, making sure that business information is accurate and consistent…
The Price of Free Listings Revisited: A Hyperlocal Business Perspective
The proliferation of online directories and directory services has made the local business owner’s life harder. It means more places to manage vital information and more third-party providers that control access to directories. Between the time and effort required to manage aggregators and the volume of citations, few small business owners do it themselves. As a result, the only stakeholders that truly know what information is authentic often are left out of the conversation.