The Future of Local Search - Google’s Strategic vision.
Competition
Google is not the best. The best are professional concierges. Gooogl strives to imitate this group of local professionals.
Ways to Search
-general web search
-ask a question (voice)
-SMS a question
-browse visually for a location
Local Data is Expanding
Traditional Local Data listings, restaurant guides, etc
Emerging Local Data - reviews, self listings (no sales person), local weather, local traffic
Google is associating addresses found via Google Book Search to places on Google Local/Maps
Google’s geo-mission is to geographically organize all the world’s information and make it universally acceptable and usable.
Google serves 100 million requests a day for local data. (wasn’t specific about online vs SMS etc)
Just another note to remind you I will be covering as many sessions as I can from SMX Local And Mobile Monday and Tuesday (Oct 1 and 2 2007). I’ll post links to the session coverage on this post so please bookmark and check back often. Here is the list of sessions I will attempt to cover:
As you may have noticed from the buzz lately SEO for video is becoming more and more popular. With the invasion of Google Universal Search (including videos etc inside organic search results), marketers are starting to notice the advantages of using video online. This includes using video as a part of an SEO campaign. Recently Third Eye Media Group, a Denver web video production company, asked to interview me about how businesses can be using video online and for SEO purposes. Here is some video from that interview. Also to learn more on the subject, please check out the resources below on Video SEO and Google Universal search.
High quality Quicktime video is available on the Third Eye Blog
I wrote about this a few months ago, but since the event is getting closer I wanted to mention it again. The 1st Annual SMX Local & Mobile Search conference will be in Denver on October 1 and 2, 2007 (thats 3 weeks from now). You do not want to miss this event. Local and Mobile search are two of the fastest growing sectors in our industry. At this event you will hear the latest from the experts in this field. Not only that but as most of you know, going to a search conference is an excellent opportunity to network and make new friends and business associates. I have only had the opportunity so far to attend one search conference and I can tell you a good part of where I am today had to do with not only the information I learned at the event, but the networking opportunities that I was able to take advantage of as well.
Here are some sessions/speakers I am looking forward to at SMX Local And Mobile 2007:
First off, you need to attend this event. It is in your town, there are no travel expenses, and you can still kiss your wife/husband good night.
If attendance is good for this event, I am hoping it will return to Denver, and possibly other events will consider Denver a great place to hold a search conference. How cool would it be to have SMX Advanced here one day?
Lastly if all that is not good enough, (and in the effort of good networking), I will buy you a drink after Day 1 of the event. I know I don’t know everyone in town, but I would like to
Lastly, if you are attending the event, awesome, please send me an email and lets hook up at the event for lunch or something
Sorry for holding this one hostage for a while but Larry Sullivan has a great ‘newer’ local search blog at www.localbizbits.com. I am particularly a fan of Larry’s interviews with leaders in the local search space. Keep up the good work Larry, I’ll be keeping my eye on you (via Google Reader at least).
As some of you are aware Mike, The Internet Guy headquarters moved in May from Denver’s Washington Park area to the Stapleton Redevelopment area. The neighborhood of Stapleton is built on the grounds of the former Stapleton airport which was replaced by Denver International Airport in the early 90’s I believe. Stapleton is a very modern neighborhood but tries to stay away from the image of a “cookie-cutter” suburban development found so often in America these days.
To celebrate, Stapleton has decided to hold a video contest entitled “Why I love to live at Stapleton”. Basically residents make their own videos and upload them to YouTube. By joining the Stapleton contest group on YouTube and by tagging the videos with the ‘Stapleton’ and ‘Denver’, your video will be entered into the contest. I think this is one of the coolest ideas any neighborhood has ever come up with.
My friend Marni has entered the contest with these two videos. Please visit YouTube and give these Marni’s Stapleton Video Contest flicks a 5 star rating when you get a chance. (Marni will win two scooters;). Vote for second Stapleton video here. Or you can watch until the end of the video and vote on the bottom right of the player (I think you have to be logged into YouTube though.
Interesting internet marketing applications:
Ok so the contest itself was cool, but check this out. Now the neighborhood has an entire group subscribed on YouTube. What would you do with this asset. Certainly the neighborhood should start marketing its special events (sponsored by local merchants of course) via YouTube. Essentially they would be commercials for special community events. This is a fantastic way of incorporating video into local marketing.
Does anyone else have other ideas for what Stapleton can do with their new ‘channel’?
Dan Thies recently pointed out this great tip from GA Experts on the High Rankings Forum. The tip shows how to use filters to get detailed PPC data from broad matched clicks to show up in Google Analytics. Previously I was downloading log files into Clicktracks to get this kind of data, but now it is available for lower end clients using the Google Analytics platform only.
Oh and if you haven’t read Dan’s new SEO Fast Start Book, you should go get a free copy, and a cup of coffee and digest all the excellent information Dan provides!
I don’t know what kind of prison this is, but these inmates have talent! What kind of crime would you have to commit for them to let you play Michael Jackson?
Just to be clear up front this link will not have any search engine value, but you might get some great traffic from it and find some future link sources. There is a company called Sphere that has created a Related Content Widget which displays related external news and blog stories on a web page. CNN is now running this sphere widget on their news story pages. Check this example on a story about Michael Vick. At the bottom of the story you will see an expandable section called ‘From The Blogs’. If you expand it, you will see links to about 3 different blogs that have discussed this topic.
I only had a few minutes to look into Sphere and I am not sure how blogs get added to their engine. However I did notice on their Feedback page that you can submit a blog through the form.
Keep an eye on the stories running on Sphere’s big publishers. Make a post on a subject that is relevant to your blog and references the story being published on the sites you are targeting. Then sit back and hope you get a link. If you do, get a link inside the sphere widget, watch the traffic roll in.
My guess is if your story is getting links from CNN and the other very big players Sphere has running the software, you will be getting some significant relevant traffic. So go submit your blog and let me know what kind of traffic you are experiencing. You may also find some new link sources from this experiment as well.
A question I would like answered. What URL is shown as the referrer from a sphere link? I would assume the original page but just want to make sure it is not a Sphere proxy of some sort.
UPDATE: It looks like you can also earn a link back from CNN by linking to the story. Basically a trackback, but a more roundabout way of getting one.
I ran into an interesting local SEO tip today that I had not seen before. The tip was posted on Search Engine Journal by Sujan Patel.
Check your WHOIS information
This one is the easiest to perform, and simplest to explain. When you register your domain name, you have to put in a registered address. Make sure that you use your business information and not your personal information! If you’re unsure, I suggest heading over to whois.net and finding out what address your website is registered to. Most of the time if you need to change it, you can do this by logging into your registrar account and making the appropriate changes or contact whoever is in charge of your domain name. Very easy fix, and since it’s been suggested that Google takes this into consideration when delivering local results, it’s best to do this sooner than later.
I had heard things about hosting you site in your own geo-target region, but had not seen anything about the regitrant information. We know that Google is a domain registrar now, however no one knows for sure how they are using their new power. This is one of the those tips, where if you are registering a new domain you want use this advice. However for an older domain that does not comply (ie not using your business address etc.), it might not be worth changing or even worse could cause harm.
Mike The Internet Guy’s Blog
