Posts tagged Listings
Latitude Express Utilise Social Bookmarking to Boost Natural Listings – MarketWatch (press release)
Dec 5th
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Latitude Express Utilise Social Bookmarking to Boost Natural Listings
MarketWatch (press release) Latitude Express introduced their digital mascot in September this year to entertainingly explain SEO in layman's terms through a collection of informative blogs and videos, which has proved to dramatically improve the agency's engagement with clients. … |
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How Users Search For Local Businesses + 5 Tips To Optimize Local Listings
Oct 24th
In a recent staff meeting, it emerged that the most regular question our customer support agents get asked by our customers* is: “When we track our local search rankings, how much should we focus on search terms that include a local term (e.g. town name, ZIP code) vs. generic keywords without the…
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Google Places Now Updates Listings First, Asks Businesses Later
Oct 13th
Google just launched a more streamlined process for updating small business listings on Google Places, but it asks forgiveness instead of permission. Instead of requiring owners to manually update the listing, Google Places will now automatically update with user-submitted info or updates to another source on the Web that Google identifies. When a listing is updated, the system will notify the business owner of the change by email.
Google touts this as a convenience and points out that a business owner can quickly log in from the email and correct any erroneous changes. But this is sort of a strange update. Google Places listings are an important way for businesses to be discovered from Web search, and business owners might not be partial to those listings updating without their expressed consent. Then again, some might feel that maintaining Google listings is a hassle, and this update will save them the effort.
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This update indicates that Google needs tighter control over the information in its business listings. It’s hard to spin an update that takes control out of business owners’ hands as a good thing. Local businesses are an important strategic part of Google’s expansions into local and mobile revenue streams, and imposing automatic updates on those listings is an aggressive play.
It’s worth noting that this a part of Google’s business for which the company is under scrutiny for anti-competitive practices. Yelp, Google’s most celebrated competitor in local business listings, testified in Washington against Google for, among other things scraping Yelp’s content for its own purposes and later pushing Yelp results out of the way.
Google is pushing hard to control this market. It bought Zagat to get better content about local businesses, it bought Dealmap to push against Groupon on local deals, and it’s using Android to close the loop and get businesses on board with Google Wallet NFC payments.
What’s the rush? Well, Google rules search for now, but Apple just shipped a record number of iPhones loaded with an artificially intelligent search assistant called Siri. Location – and thus mobile devices – is an essential part of connecting consumers to local businesses, and Siri is the most convenient way to make that connection on the new iPhone. Guess what: Siri uses Yelp.
Are you a business owner? What do you think of the change? Does it make your life easier, or would you prefer to have control?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Business Listings: What’s the Crowd Appeal?
Oct 7th
Although crowdsourcing local business content online can be a quick and perceived easy task for some local search platforms and businesses, particularly in vertical categories like restaurants and travel, there are many reasons why it should not b…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
A New Google Rich Snippet For Listings
Aug 26th
It appears Google is testing a new type of rich snippet for displaying listings. I reported this at the Search Engine Roundtable and included a few pictures from various sources. The rich snippet, which is not yet confirmed by Google, seems to show real estate listings as well as possibly…
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Google: AdWords Express Is NOT Sabotaging Organic Listings [Update]
Aug 20th
Google’s recently released local advertisement tool, AdWords Express, experienced a technical issue that made it seem users were having their ad displayed instead of their organic listing on blended search results.
Background of Google AdWords E…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
MapQuest Launches Local Business Listings Center
Jun 23rd
Local SEOs have another tool to add to the “citation belt,” as it were: MapQuest has announced its own Local Business Center, a place where local businesses can add and/or manage their listing(s) on MapQuest. As the video below shows, the MapQuest LBC functions very much like…
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Google Adds Business Characteristics To Maps Listings
Jun 14th
Searchers looking for local businesses on Google Maps can now see brief, descriptive characteristics as part of the primary business listing. And they’ll be seeing the same things soon on Google.com, Places search and Google Maps for mobile, too. Google’s announcement explains that the…
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View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
