There’s been a lot of commotion recently about the integration of social signals into the search results of both Bing and Google. Bing has the upper hand with those signals coming from Facebook while Google is still Google, and is …
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I have had several discussions over the past few weeks with Stefan Weitz, director of search for Bing, and Andy Chu, director of product management, Bing for mobile, about some pretty cool things on the horizon for Bing. We can’t … Continue reading
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I feel like every Friday I am spending time griping about Google in some way as it relates to the local search market. Well, it seems that way because I am actually doing that. The only reason I rant is … Continue reading
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Everyone wants to believe that something spectacular and mysterious is true. Among the many ‘legends’ are Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster (Nessie) and more.
Well, for the Internet marketing set one of these legends is the mysterious monster that isn’t so much a being but an action. It’s called the Legend of Humanoid Google Customer Service Support Entity. Believe it or not, there has been a siting but we are not ready to say that this mythical creature truly exists.
Mike Blumenthal talks about his strange encounter with this mysterious creature that is like John Carpenter’s Fog. It rolls in and does its work then slinks off. Very few see this in action and we suspect that even fewer have lived to tell about it. It looks like Mike has though as he reports from his local Internet marketing blog in a post today.
I have been working to un-merge two listings on Google since November 5th.
This last Thursday I received the following voice mail on my answering machine after hours. To prove to the world that it really happened I am posting a copy of the message.
Hi. This message is for Mike. My name is Joe and I am calling from Google.
I received an elevated concern from one of our sales representatives named James who apparently you spoke with around January 3rd. We were able to take a look at the two you listings you described to James, the Westcott House and the Bayfront Marin House, the two bed and breakfast that are located in St Augustine Fl.
And I just wanted to let you know that I was able to split those listings and during our next update of all the data on Google you should see that those listings have been split apart and if you have any further questions or problems please don’t hesitate to contact us on-line on our Google.com/help.
Thank you very much for your business.
What? A phone message AND a thank you for your business?!?!?!? Surely this is an anomaly. Surely, the legend of the Humanoid Google Customer Support Entity is just a myth……or is it?
Anyone else seen this creature in the wild?
Originally published on FrankThinking.com
No wonder local Internet marketing is a mystery to many SMB’s and even much larger businesses and organizations. Setting aside the fact that there are so many different channels, sites, directories etc that need to be considered, there is a new (and somewhat unfortunate) aspect that is creeping into the picture: complexity.
Take Google, for instance. I was speaking in front of a group of non-profit organizations in Norfolk, VA last week. There were 70 organizations in attendance. When I asked how many of these organizations had verified their Google Place Page, only five raised their hands and the other 65 tilted their heads in a "What is he talking about?" fashion. This falls just below Google’s actual verified Place Page run rate of 10% of listings but it was the realization that most didn’t even know what I was talking about which was most shocking.
Now that they know, they are in for a real treat, right? They can now open the door to real local online marketing success, right? Let’s hope so, but now they are about to enter the world of "I thought this was just about verifying a place page?!" This world has a great lead-in with the promise of at least doing something in the local space online. Once you enter the doors, though, it starts to get pretty hairy pretty fast.
Imagine you go from "What is a place page?" to the following:
The list can go on for quite a while, and that’s just about Google’s Place Pages! What about Yelp, Citysearch, foursquare etc.?
Now, imagine you are an SMB trying to research just how to navigate this landscape and you are pointed to one of the experts in the space, Mike Blumenthal. His blog is about understanding these Place Pages and his post from February 8th contains the following response to a question regarding testimonials as reviews on an SMB website. The response is from Carter Maslan who is the front facing voice of Google for the Place Page crowd. His answer to Mike’s question reads:
Hi Mike,
An authentic testimonial is really nothing more than a glowingly positive user review that the business owner has hand-chosen to feature because it speaks so highly of the business. There’s nothing wrong with that—especially if there are avenues to corroborate the authenticity of the author and review (e.g. "reviewer" attribute referencing the hcard of a real person that might have originally posted comments on a blog or review site). The FAQ below was intended to convey that we try to classify reviews wherever they’re found on the Web but that we also aim to protect users from spam.
The use of hReview or other structured HTML formats on any site is just an aid in understanding the page more precisely. Ranking tries to steer clear of suspicious testimonials regardless of whether they’re marked-up or not on an SMB’s own site. Bottom line – it’s not that we always score testimonials on business home pages as spammy but rather that white-hat SEOs might not invest special effort to markup testimonials at this point.
Industry types would understand at least portions of that response but the average SMB? Might as well provide your answers in Mandarin Chinese.
All of this is to say that while the concept of local Internet marketing is great for conversation and it sounds like the easy path to success in an increasingly digital world, it simply is not. It is very complex and, as a result, more and more SMBs will be made aware of the opportunity but left in the dust because of the complexity.
It’s our job as an industry to make this less about mystery and more about potential. The SMB market is extremely large yet still relatively untapped online. I suspect that this is due to the Internet industry’s inability to make it easy enough for the do-it-yourselfers in the SMB space and to make it coherent enough for the "I want someone to do this because I see value but I don’t have the time or knowledge to do it" set.
Personally, I feel we are a long way off from either solution being put together well enough to engage more businesses and help them reap the benefits of well-executed local Internet marketing efforts. My goal is to make it more accessible for this important part of the American economy. How will I do it? Still working that out but it seems like something worth the effort.
What’s your take?
Originally published on Mike Moran’s Biznology
I have been pretty harsh on the Yellow Pages in the past. Most of my trouble comes from the fact that the medium just isn’t as effective across all verticals as it once was. That’s not to say that it’s not effective at all, because that is untrue. In some areas, it can work well–like plumbing, HVAC and other emergency situations. Of course, by the time you locate the book you probably could have done the search on your computer or smart phone just as quickly, but who’s counting?
Well, if there was ever a white flag of truce thrown up by an industry under fire, it is this one: the Yellow Pages industry has created an opt out of delivery site at http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/. Here is the home page:
There is a Canadian version as well, but the message there is not as glaring as the US site. Check it out here.
This move means several things regarding the state of the Yellow Pages print industry.
1. The industry is feeling pressure. If you have driven past or even dropped off Yellow Page books at the special dumpsters for them, there is a clear message that these directories are simply not wanted. Now YP groups will say those are just the old, out-dated versions being recycled, but I know I have thrown current versions in there just to get them out of the way from wherever they landed in my house (usually the garage).
These dumpsters are due to pressure from environmental groups and from people who simply don’t want the delivery to begin with. In other words, it’s better for the YP industry to police itself or have more situations like the one in Seattle, which levied a 14-cent fee per book delivered by Yellow Pages distributors.
2. The industry is changing. It wasn’t too long ago that an action like an Opt Out of the Yellow Pages delivery Web site would have been seen as an act of heresy. I suspect that there has been a realization that taking certain actions will be seen as positive moves to keep any wolves at bay, so rather than circle the wagons the YP industry will play the game.
3. The industry suspects that impact will be nominal. I don’t know how this site is being promoted, but I doubt there is much effort by the YP folks to draw a lot of attention to it. Personally, I tweeted it so my Twitter followers would be made aware. I suspect that the YP industry knows that beyond the highly technical crowd, the masses will likely never know this exists. Perhaps they are banking on that.
4. The industry is rattled. To sum up these points, it looks as if the Yellow Page industry is back on its heels. Bankruptcies (RH Donnelly) and overall trashing of the medium for sales tactics, coupled with an antiquated perception by consumers and marketers alike has the industry on the ropes. They need to look like they care about moving forward and adjusting to the new digital world order.
5. The industry needs to concentrate online. The online Yellow Pages are also struggling because Google has taken away some of their search bread and butter. Google’s changes in how the SERPs render local search results (the heart of any YP offering) has moved online directories down the pecking order of what is considered a good result for a searcher looking for services.
Of course, there are cries of foul play by Google (and maybe Bing, too, since they copy Google’s results!) but the fact of the matter is, that as a searcher myself, I hate being directed by Google to another directory that I have to maneuver through. That’s a bad search result. I want actual businesses that do something rather than a third party aggregator’s version, loaded with their advertising.
In the end, this move by the Yellow Pages industry is one that needs to be watched. We live in a world where the appearance of "taking care of business" is easy to create. Many of these kinds of efforts are by industries merely looking to avoid lawsuits—what I call "Wizard of Oz moves." "What’s that?" you ask? It’s simply creating something that looks like a huge gesture but when you pull back the curtain there’s more "show than go." In this case, I bet that the industry is making this look like a grand gesture and the hope is that no real large number of people will act on it.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where this kind of thing can be passed off as real action and the result is the ability of the Yellow Page industry to say "Look we are doing our part!" when they know full well that most people won’t even know the option exists.
Welcome to online America, home of the shallow. Where people can look like they are concerned and give any appearance they need to get by. Sorry for the cynicism but can you blame me?
Your thoughts on the subject?
Originally published at Biznology
Recently, I have been talking about local Internet marketing and the rapid developments in the area. Well, as we start 2011, there is a strange sound in the local Internet marketing space—silence. There is a temporary lull in the frantic pace of change and innovation in the Google local search results.
Whether you are a large retail chain or the Mom and Pop shop on Main Street, local is the new black and the rapid pace of innovation in local search can be too much for even industry pros to stay on top of. What is happening at the start of the new year, however, is actually great for the SMB crowd and the Internet marketing industry as well.
It has actually been quiet. There hasn’t been a major change or something that makes everyone run around doing the "search marketing sky is falling" dance in this first week of the year. So what does one do with a rare moment of relative silence in this space?
Get caught up with all the recent events by updating your local presence. Here are the tasks that should be on your short list for local search as we start 2011:
 
Verify your Google Place Page. Just verifying your Google Place Page doesn’t necessarily help with ranking, but it is an important step to utilizing other services that Google is offering. A business can also directly answer reviews about their business that were done in Google Maps if they have verified their page. That alone is worth the effort.
 
Take control of your online data. Most businesses are not aware of just how many places on the Internet have their business data (name, address, business classification and more). Check out services such as Universal Business Listing and Localeze.
 
Perform basic search optimization for your Web site. Fresh content, specific keyword focus, unique title tags with keywords and using H1 tags with keywords. These are the absolute basics and can do wonders on the local level.
 
Consider Google Tags. Tags are a new way to make your Place Page listing pop. Run promotions and get attention for just $25 a month (right now there is a 30 day free offer coming from Google).
 
Start following local Internet marketing blogs. Follow the Google LatLong blog and Google Mobile blog. Follow Mike Blumenthal’s blog about Google Maps. Stay on top of things.
 
This short list can be put into action pretty quickly. My suggestion is that you do it ASAP because before you know it there will be something that changes or is added to the equation. If you don’t take the time now you could fall further behind.
It’s time. It’s 2011. Local Internet marketing truly matters. Make sure your business benefits. If you don’t, your competition will gladly take the business you leave for them.
Originally published on Biznology
I am declaring 2011 the Year of the Online SMB.
For the uninitiated, SMBs are small and medium businesses. They are the Holy Grail for business service providers because there are so darn many of them. They account for around 95% of the businesses in the US. (Either that or they supply 95% of the jobs but either way, it’s pretty impressive.) I like the definition of an SMB being under 100 employees, but up to 500 employees can be deemed an SMB also. There are no hard and fast criteria for determining SMB status but we all know one when we see one.
Why do we know them? Because they are regular people trying to make their way in life and live the American Dream of being their own boss etc, etc. They are also the business people who wear so many hats that they don’t have time to do half the things they need to do to be successful. They are often local business people who still feel that real relationships (ones that might actually involve an in-person look in the eye and a handshake) are important. They also are told by the Internet industry that they need to be doing all the latest and greatest Internet tricks in order to be truly successful.
This last point has resulted in some serious push back and skepticism about Internet marketing by the group, and deservedly so. They are usually fiercely independent—often to a fault. They frequently represent the best (and the worst) of the American entrepreneurial spirit, and they don’t like it when someone calls them stupid, which is what the Internet marketing industry does in not-so-concealed fashion. I would say that most times the people saying these things don’t even realize how they sound (which is another problem with the industry but I will not address that here).
As a result, SMBs are not as advanced as the Internet Retailer 500s of the world, but they are poised to take full advantage of Google’s play into the local space. Google Place Pages, Hotpot, Boost, Tags, and whatever else Google has up its wealthy sleeves are all pointed directly at the SMB market, both B2C and B2B. Get the hint?
Google is entering a mammoth struggle for the SMB marketing budgets with the likes of Facebook, Groupon and others. They are so dedicated to this market that they are even staffing real people (that’s right, warm bodies with no chips installed) selling to the SMB market.
All these factors lead to my prediction that 2011 will be the Year of the SMB. Not only will there be enough critical mass to see a real impact for many more small businesses, but there will even be an understanding of just how Google and Facebook’s Places concepts will allow SMBs to enter the Mobile Age without having to spend tons of money reinventing their Internet wheel. Have you ever seen how good a fully-optimized Google Place Page looks on an iPhone or Android device? It’s pretty cool.
Want another reason I am so confident that this is a safe prediction? It’s the influx of Android devices (which are optimized for Google service delivery) that are hitting the market at a rate of 300,000 activations per day. It brought me into a completely other phase of the mobile age as I went from BlackBerry user to Droid X user,now using Google’s free Navigation service to put Place Page layers over the GPS directions to see where restaurants and services are. I have even discovered new local businesses in my little town because of this device. I honestly thought I knew about every place here but Google proved me wrong.
Suffice it to say that I am bullish on 2011 being the year that the SMB gets into the full swing of the online marketing world. It’s exciting to think about because we need more stories about people from more walks of life than the Fortune and Internet Retailer 50s who are having success online. Those stories are old and recycled to death.
I look forward to 2011 being a year of telling the hundreds, even thousands, of success stories that will help SMBs not only to be more successful but to pull this economy out of the ditch it seems to want to remain in.
What are your thoughts on my prediction?
Originally published on Biznology.
Whenever we bark about Facebook and privacy I liken it to complaining about politicians. In my mind, you have no, as in zero, right to complain about a politician if you didn’t cast a vote during the election of that official. Plain and simple. If you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem.
The same thing goes for Facebook. The Internet industry is always up in arms about Facebook privacy concerns. We write angry posts fueled by our righteous anger and the righteous indignation the whole world must feel when Facebook treats our privacy like a piece of toilet paper by, well, you can guess where this is heading so I will stop.
 
Well, now Facebook is pulling another stunt regarding privacy and how you can manage who is getting easy access to your information. Now, please note it is only your public information but the easier it is for Facebook to connect the dots with people the better it is for them even if the new feature equates to a “de-facto follow feature” as noted by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler. He writes:
A few days ago, Facebook made what seemed to be a small tweak to its Friend Requests area. As first noted by Inside Facebook the social network changed the way friend rejections work. Previously, you could either Confirm or Ignore (deny) a request. Now, Ignore has been replaced by “Not Now”. This new option takes some of the pressure off you having to reject people as it instead moves them into a state of limbo, where they’re neither accepted nor rejected. But it actually does a lot more as well.
You see, when someone requests to be your friend on Facebook, this automatically subscribes them to all of your public (“Everyone”) posts in their News Feed. Facebook doesn’t talk about this much, but it’s a very real feature, which we reported on in July of last year. You see these posts until this person rejects you (because obviously if they accept you as a friend, you’ll keep seeing them). So with this new Not Now button, and the removal of the simple rejection mechanism, Facebook has basically created a de-facto follow feature.
Facebook is becoming masterful at knowing just what people fear (rejection and actually doing the rejecting) and as a result they are using that to get ever sneakier in how they push data out into the world. Considering the apparent lack of morals and ethics that exist at the top of the Facebook tree (as in few if any) this kind of action is really to be expected but it doesn’t make it any more acceptable.
Siegler continues
Now, to be clear, all of this information seen by “followers” is information that is already public. A random person could visit your profile page and see all of this stuff. But it’s interesting that for pending friends (which again, will now be a ton of people), Facebook starts pumping this info into people’s News Feeds. Remember, this was basically the cause of one of the early backlashes against Facebook when the News Feed was first implemented. Even though it was just showing information that everyone already had access to, it was doing it in a more streamlined way that freaked everyone out. Now they’re doing something similar again, just in a more stealth manner.
He last two words, stealth manner, are the ones we need to be most careful of regarding Facebook. They are not interested in your best interest or your privacy. They are interested in exploiting your data and using lawyer like precision to work around things so they can say it is an ‘acceptable practice’ but is it really without everyone at large knowing what they are doing and why?
Facebook is going to become a huge problem for many people when they start to see a lot of requests from people they have no clue as to who they are. I am seeing more of these already. I just reject them. If I have not been given some kind of genuine introduction I am not calling anyone my friend. To do otherwise is to feed into the apathy toward these requests that Facebook is relying on.
So what can you do? Lock down your profiles and tell everyone who is not a friend that you are not interested. You won’t hurt their feelings because they are likely some kind of Facebook spammer or miscreant anyway.
Until that time that you completely prevent Facebook from using you and your friends you have nothing to complain about. Remember to vote against Facebook’s schemes and deceptions designed to line their pockets. If you don’t then please be quiet and just let Facebook steamroll your apathetic social media existence. You deserve as much if you don’t take action.
I am a pretty big NFL fan. Have been all of my life. Why? Because the product is fun for me. The product of football that is. Anything else about the drama and the thoughts of players is something I see little to no value in unless there is a personal interest in the player. Personal opinion I know but hey I think we can still have those in the US for at least today.
I read a post last week over at MediaPost where the author wondered out loud why NFL players aren’t allowed to tweet during games and how terrible that is. I let it go as just being dumb (though I did comment on the post) but with the NFL season just around the corner I needed to say something more. Just what you needed, right? 
 
Professional sports leagues focus on the weirdest things when they start cracking down on misbehavior. For example, the NFL doesn’t seem to particularly mind players abusing steroids (the punishment for failing a steroid drug test is a four-game suspension — basically a slap on the wrist)… but NFL players who use social media during a game are liable for a $25,000 fine. This is part of a communications blackout which decrees players may not use cell phones, electronic devices, or social media including Twitter or Facebook within 90 minutes of kickoff.
While I am not going to get into the whole steroids thing (personally, though, I feel that if a guy wants to shorten his life to play football a little longer and make more money than he could even come close to in the real world then so be it) I do have something to say about people who feel the need to know everything at every moment and then want to monetize it all.
How about this. When I watch football, I watch the game. Part of the fun is NOT knowing exactly what is going on in between plays. These guys do something different than the rest of the world and I like the fact that some of it remains unknown. I think that not knowing is often better than knowing. Maybe that’s just me.
As for this next statement, this person obviously has never played a down of organized football in his life because if he did he would know just how ignorant this sounds.
Maybe someone can explain this policy to me. I can understand banning some kinds of communication during the time around games — specifically, anything which could be used to receive last-minute tips about the opposing team’s plays. But I can’t guess what the NFL hopes to accomplish by preventing players from disseminating their own content, provided of course it doesn’t fall in the category of game-sensitive information.
Huh? Look I know football is not rocket science. During a game however you need to concentrate and understand what is happening so you can make adjustments on the fly. if your offense can’t meet because the QB has to tweet then the game is compromised. It’s just a bad idea.
Then there is this one
The policy strikes me as counter-productive because allowing players to use social media during games could be a potential gold mine in terms of driving and tracking viewer engagement. Frankly, the only time athletes really have anything interesting to say is probably during the game, when they’re sitting on the sidelines talking amongst themselves — but the viewer at home usually isn’t privy to their bench chatter (unless they happen to read lips).
Listen people of the social media industry. STOP TRYING TO MONETIZE EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY! Please stop! It’s just annoying.
So there isn’t much else to say. I am a big fan of the NFL and if there was ever a business that has little trouble making money it’s this one. The last thing we need to do is hear from more guys like Chad Ochocinco who are as enamored with themselves as many in the social media industry are. Ol’ Chad is just that…..old. His routine is old and played out. He is a caricature of a celebrity because he has nothing of value to add to anything so why would we need to hear MORE of his like?
So let’s leave the tweets and the like to the in between game realm. There is plenty of opportunity for something stupid to happen then. Let’s keep the game as the game for the time it is played. It’s nice to actually step away from all the social media stuff and just have fun. Oh that’s right, I forgot, it’s not fun these days unless you “share” it in some way. Please! No one cares about you or me that much either.