Will Mobile Search Dethrone Google?

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Why would Google’s market leadership be vulnerable to mobile search incursion? Innovation in search can occur at the user experience level, the core indexing and ranking algorithms, and the business model and ecosystem that supports search. Each of these faces potential mobile disruption.

6 Ways Local Merchants Can Compete in Organic Search Results

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Type in a generic search term for nearly any local service and you’re likely to see listings for national brands and retail chains. Local businesses have largely been pushed out of the first page. So local merchants have to make a change in their SEO strategies.

Where Do My Friends Fit Into My Local Search?

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The social graph alone won’t be a silver bullet for local. It’s just not big enough. And its value to local is overstated. My friends are great for party pics and snappy news feed dialogue — they don’t yet excel at plumber reviews.

Why Online Marketplaces Will Continue to Beat Word-of-Mouth Platforms in the Battle for Local Business

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People seek the opinions of their friends. They care what they think, and they trust them to make recommendations on everything from a good meal to a good mechanic. It’s word of mouth marketing — the most prized of its kind since the Stone Age. And its staying power undeniably supports the rationale for a […]

What Local Marketers Can Learn From the Trials of Google Plus

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With Google’s recent announcement that Google Plus will be decoupled from YouTube and other services, industry watchers are predicting that this may be the beginning of the end for the social network. Here are a few lessons a local marketer might learn from the social network’s challenges.

Study Finds Consumer Search Preferences Depend Heavily on Type of Business

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A few categories like restaurants, physicians, and beauty salons consistently capture the greatest volume of searches, stretching out into a long tail of lower-volume searches for occasional needs like roofing, chiropractors, and house cleaning.

YP’s Split and Local.com’s Bankruptcy: Ain’t No Big Deal

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YP’s split and Local Corp’s bankruptcy filing might strike you as huge events. But for the greater local search industry, I don’t see these as particularly big milestones…

Is Yelp’s Slowing Growth a Function of Mobile’s Adolescence?

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The apparent slowdown in Yelp’s growth does not necessarily reflect the value of the company to consumers or advertisers. Instead, it exposes the growing pains of the mobile ecosystem.

#SFSW15 VIDEO: Here’s What Google Looks for in a Small Business Channel Partner

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At Street Fight Summit West earlier this month, Google business development executive Jon Sofield broke down the search giant’s strategy for identifying small business technology partners and maximizing the impact of co-op market development funds…

#SFSW15 VIDEO: Yelp VP Talks Food Delivery and the Impact of Mobile

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Street Fight CEO Laura Rich sat down with Mike Ghaffary, vice president of business development at Yelp, last week at Street Fight Summit West to discuss the local reviews firm’s latest strategic moves and mobile’s impact on the local tech industry.

Why We Still Search for ‘Starbucks’ on Google Maps

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With calendar integration, a generalized understanding of me generated from analyzing my geographic movements over time, and (perhaps) biosensor feedback from wearables, a mobile app may be able to predict my actual need, and suggest places that may be closer, higher rated, or otherwise more convenient than the Starbucks I now search for.

Delivery.com CEO: Google’s Entry Into Food Ordering Was a Matter of When — Not If

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Street Fight recently caught up with Jed Kleckner, chief executive at Delivery.com, to talk about Google’s recent moves and handicap which of the other big tech companies may be interested in food delivery (hint: Amazon.)

Why Google’s Competition May Be Gaining in Mobile Search

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For years, venture capitalists steered clear of the most successful Internet product ever: search. But now, investors are betting that a handful of new mobile search startups can question Google’s dominance. One of those startups, Vurb, might have the answer.

Yelp Reportedly Explores a Sale — Could Priceline Be a Fit?

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Yelp may be on the auction block. In addition to the usual suspects, one less likely company stands out as a potential candidate: Priceline Group, the new owner of OpenTable.

The Mobile Search Tipping Point: A Global Perspective

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The smartphone by its nature is portable, location-based, and focused on immediacy. Whether local search is a major segment of consumer activity or not today in a given country, there’s little question that it will be, and soon…

Local Corp CEO: More and More of What Local Directories Do Will Be Absorbed Into Apps

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Last week, the fifteen year-old directory site announced that it was hiring a firm to pursue ‘strategic alternatives. Fred Thiel, the relatively new chief executive at Local Corporation, says the company would make an attractive take-over target.

Yelp Learns the Hard Way: Small Talk Matters When Selling to SMBs

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Yelp is off to a rocky start in 2015. Sluggish user growth and a botched sales reorganizations led to a massive sell-off Wednesday evening.

GrubHub CEO Thinks Data — Not Content — Is the Future of Restaurant Discovery

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Investors sold off shares of GrubHub Thursday on slimmer profits, but the rest of the metrics look solid. Meanwhile, CEO Matt Maloney says the company wants to put its data about hundreds of millions of orders to work to help pick your next meal.

5 Ways Starbucks Turns a Global Business Into a Local Brand

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When most people think of a local business, they imagine the neighborhood store or the mom-and-pop restaurant. But more and more today, global brands are positioned to use to digital tools to capture the relevancy and responsiveness that is at the heart of local businesses…

Google’s Cities Initiative and the Ownership of Local Data

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Google’s recent announcement of a new initiative called “Let’s Put Our Cities on the Map” belongs to the larger story of the company’s attempt to gain a critical mass of participation from small businesses…