Local Search - Local Products

In stock nearby? Look for the blue dots.

Thursday, March 11, 2010 9:00 AM

(Cross-posted with the Google Merchant Blog)

Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, demonstrated last December a preview version of Product Search for mobile with local inventory, which lets you see right in your search results whether items are in stock at nearby stores. We're happy to announce that as of today, if you're searching for a product that is sold by participating retailers, including Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, or West Elm, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it's available in a local store. If you see a blue dot, you can tap on the adjacent "In stock nearby" link, and you'll be taken to the seller's page where you'll see whether the item is "In Stock" or has "Limited Availability" near you. You'll also see how far away the stores are from you -- as long as you've enabled My Location or manually specified your location.

If you have an iPhone, Palm WebOS phone, or any Android-powered device, and you're in the US, just go to Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on the "more" link, and then select "Shopping." Or look for the "Shopping results" section in Universal Search results when you search on Google.com.
Finally, if you're a retailer and you'd like to participate in this program, we want to hear from you. Please fill out this brief form to let us know that you'd like to be considered. In the meantime, you can get prepared by making sure your Local Business Center data is up to date, and ensuring that your Product Search data is in great shape.

Posted by Paul Lee and Yury Pinsky, Product Managers

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via googlemobile.blogspot.com

This will be useful. And I believe there is a business for local media properties creating the FTP platform that allows local businesses to upload their products. This actually might be a value proposition that could generate revenue worth a full-time employee.

Posted via web from Randy's Stuff

KOHD to cease all local newscasts

When the ax falls on KOHD tomorrow, the once booming city of Bend will be reduced to having only one full-time TV news station. Employees at the ABC affiliate were informed this morning that the station will become a Bend bureau for KEZI, Chambers Communications' sister station in Eugene. Bend employees will then create local packages for KEZI-produced Bend cut-ins.

Executives at KOHD and KEZI aren't yet talking, but information that we've learned, some from sources who were specifically instructed not to talk to blogs about this news, is that there will be three "one-man bands" in Bend and an anchor/producer hosting KOHD cut-ins from Eugene. We hope to have more information after laid-off employees cash their severance checks tomorrow.

KOHD launched as the United States' first HD television station to be built from the ground up in September 2007. Chambers paid an ambitious $8.5 million at auction for the station's FCC license in 2006. Their 11,000 square foot facility will now be used as KEZI's Bend bureau, if not also a shrine to media industry and Bend industry hopes during the city's population boom and before the advertising recession.

KOHD cut its weekend newscasts in a major reshuffling last summer and rearranged its evening news lineup as recently as a month ago. At the station's last Christmas party, employees were told that Chambers was committed to maintaining KOHD's news operations without cuts through 2010. KOHD equipment will now be moved to Eugene, which may enable KEZI to become that market's first station to produce newscasts in HD.

The Bend TV news market is also served by NBC affiliate KTVZ, which airs morning, evening and late newscasts each weekday, as well as half-hour shows at 6 and 11 pm on weekends. The station also produces a weekday half-hour at 10 pm on Fox affiliate and sister station KFXO. CBS affiliate KBNZ simulcasts Portland sister station KOIN's newscasts with one-minute local cut-ins.

In addition to KOHD and KEZI, Eugene-based Chambers Communications also owns KDRV in Medford and its semi-satellite KDKF in Klamath Falls, as well as Chambers Productions in Eugene and Chambers Cable in Sunriver.

KOHD's last locally-produced newscast will air tomorrow at 11 pm.

via oregonmediacentral.com

In case there's still any doubt that TV will face similar consequences to the new digital media landscape that newspapers are grappling with, here is Bend, Oregon. In my opinion, a significant difference between the consequences newspapers and TV station face will be the effect of market size. Small market newspapers continue to be in a better position than large metro dailies. Conversely, small market TV stations will probably face the negative consequences of the digital landscape before their larger market brethren.

Posted via web from Randy's Stuff

Local, Local, Local

When it comes to the future of local advertising, Dave Morgan is someone to watch.  He’s the Wayne Gretzky of the online advertising world – a guy who’s always skating to where the puck will be.  (He even looks like Gretzky.)  And in an interview we did with him recently, I found his thoughts on the future of local media right on the mark.

We interviewed Dave at the Grand Hyatt in New York last month as he was attending an advertising conference where the CEOs of Yahoo and AOL had just spent a lot of time talking about their biggest advertising opportunity:  You guessed it, “local.”

Dave will be back at the Grand Hyatt next month as a keynote speaker at our 2010 Local Online Advertising Conference.  You can see our interview with him on YouTube, or learn more about the conference here.

Dave has been at the forefront (in front of it actually) of ad-serving systems such as 24/7 RealMedia and Tacoda, which he founded and then sold to AOL for $247 million two years ago. He’s steeped in local media.  When I met him 15 years ago, he was general counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association looking for a way to get step into the Internet skating rink.

So where is local media headed?  “All too often,” he says, “we’ve always seen local as about channels – local is newspapers or local is radio or local is television or local is directories. But that’s not how things are happening in the emerging media economy.  It’s now more about the customers in the market as they’re trying to reach local and they’re trying to understand now how they work with all the different touch points to reach consumers and for the merchants to be able to best exploit their marketing dollars.”

Thought Dave is right, it’s not an easy concept for traditional media companies to grasp.  That’s why we’ve asked the people who are following that path – the Yodles, Local.coms, Reply.coms and other fast-growing local online advertising companies – to address the conference.  They’re offering local advertisers multiple touch points that in the end makes the phone ring or drives store traffic.

Dave believes we’re at a crucial point in the evolution of local media.  “It’s a really important time,” he says, “here in new York City, essentially the headquarrters of advertisers and marketing the world, to have a really important conference focused on local.”

I look forward to hearing more from Dave, and to seeing you there.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Conference, News, Projections, local advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

via borrellassociates.com

In my opinion, the key line from Dave Morgan is this, "...they're trying to understand now how they work with all the different touch points to reach customers..."

The key to unlocking local digital dollars is being the key to local SMB's effectively utilizing those different "touch points."

Posted via web from Randy's Stuff

Village Voice Happy Hours App Debuts

​When we noticed the Cocktail Compass app, showing local happy hours, that L magazine was bringing to New York, we wondered why Village Voice Media didn't have something like that. But, keeping to our usual journalistic method, we didn't ask any questions. Now, surprise! VVM is releasing Happy Hours, available now on iTunes.

Village Voice Media Holdings' Scott Tobias says in the release, "We want to be everywhere our readers are"; that, apparently, is in bars with cheap drinks, which explains why they hired us.

Due to the reach of the network, you can get happy hour info in 30 cities, including this one. GPS finds them in Your Area. We tried it and got three joints holding HHs nearby at this very moment (9:15 a.m.) -- the Cartoon Lounge in Elmhurst, the Blarney Cove in the East Village, and Bailey's Corner Pub on the Upper East Side. One's phone was disconnected, but the other two didn't even answer, so those parties must really be raging.

For 4 p.m., however, we got 53 choices in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, all of which looked legit, and dozens of which we haven't been thrown out of yet. You can also shake the thing to get a random happy hour, enabling a technologically advanced pub crawl. It's a good toy for adults and, like all the best things in life, free.

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via blogs.villagevoice.com

What took this so long?

Posted via web from Randy's Stuff

Report: More TVs connected to Internet

Report: More TVs connected to Internet
By Brian Santo
CedMagazine.com - February 24, 2010

More than one-quarter of all TVs purchased by American consumers in January were linked to the Internet, affirming consumer desire to distribute their media across multiple devices in the home.

According to a survey conducted by iSuppli Corp., 27.5 percent of U.S. consumers who bought a TV in January indicated their sets were connected to the Internet, either through the internal capabilities of their TVs or via external devices, such as digital video boxes or game consoles. This is up from 24.3 percent in December 2009.

“From video-sharing sites like YouTube, to online services like Hulu, consumers increasingly are turning to the Internet for video entertainment,” said Tina Tseng, analyst of television systems for iSuppli ');document.write('');}//-->. “And these consumers want to view Internet content on their primary displays in their homes – their televisions – rather than being relegated the small screens of their desktop and notebook PCs. With the increasing pervasiveness of large-size, flat-panel digital televisions and the rising availability of Internet-enabled TVs (IETVs), more consumers are linking their sets to the Web.”

iSuppli’s survey revealed that 41.9 percent of Internet-connected televisions in the United States in January were IETVs. The next most popular means of connection, at 20.3 percent, was through video game consoles. This was followed by Blu-ray players at 13.2 percent and digital video boxes and other means of connection – such as PCs – which were tied at 12.3 percent each.

IETVs’ share of Internet-connected television in January rose by 14.2 percentage points from 27.7 percent in December.

How is your new TV connected to the Internet?
	December 2009	January 2010
It is an Internet-enabled TV	27.7%	41.9%
Through a digital video box (i.e., Roku, Vudu)	10.3%	12.3%
Through a game console	17.7%	20.3%
Through an Internet-enabled Blu-ray player	14.1%	13.2%
Other (Internet module, PC, etc.)	30.3%	12.3%
Source: iSuppli Corp.

iSuppli defines an IETV as a set that has the capability to connect to the Internet, either with a wired link or wirelessly, and provides sufficient system resources to support thin-client applications such as Yahoo Connected TV widgets or the Adobe Flash Platform for the Digital Home.

“IETVs provide easy, integrated Internet access, attracting the interest of consumers,” Tseng said. “Because of this, all the major brands now are offering more flat-panel sets with Internet connectivity, including Samsung, Sony, LG Electronics, Vizio, Sharp and Panasonic. IETVs now are available at lower price tags and in a greater variety of screen sizes than ever before, from 24 to 65 inches.”

iSuppli forecasts worldwide sales of IETVs will rise to 87.6 million units by 2013, up from 14.7 million in 2009. An estimated 60 percent of total North American flat-panel TVs shipped in 2013 are expected to be IETVs.

via cedmagazine.com

All these televisions come with some internal navigation tools for the net. But I wonder if there is an opportunity for TV and/or newspapers to create content or a show that basically revolves around, "What's on the net?" There's lots there and more coming.

Posted via web from Randy's Stuff

The allure of the Google 7-Pack

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The allure of the Google 7-Pack

Marketing Matters

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04:59 PM PST on Thursday, November 5, 2009

By Cindy McMahen

Most men would love to acquire a "six pack"; that well-defined rectus abdominis muscle of the human abdomen. But a business would do well to acquire a "Google 7-pack" presence today. (That's a listing that you often find among the first page of Google's well-defined local search results.)

No doubt you've seen the Goggle 7-pack and may not have realized that's what you were looking at.

You enter a Google search query for say, "chiropractors Los Angeles" and the first results it displays are 7 chiropractic businesses all adjacent to an eye-catching map of business locations. What many people don't realize is that these local business Listings are pulled from Google Maps results and aren't derived as part of the regular Google search results.

Ranking in the Google 7-pack is becoming more and more mission-critical to having a good overall Google presence. Searches done by people looking for local goods and services are estimated to comprise some 40% of online searches today.

In addition, Google's increasingly displaying Google Maps listings for keyword phrase queries that include both localized (i.e. Los Angeles) phrases AND now, non-localized phrases (i.e. chiropractors). Google's able to do this by serving up local businesses for a set region in matching the query to the searcher's IP address. (It's the IP address which essentially serves as your online numeric address. Each server connected to the Internet is assigned a unique IP address which can indicate which region you're being serviced from and what you would therefore be more interested in seeing.)

Even savvy webmasters and search marketers who've managed to finagle themselves into a top ranking in Google's search results for choice keywords, have found that ranking in the Google's local business results isn't a given. That's because Google Maps has its own algorithm. It has its own ranking formula, separate from Google's organic search algorithm that determines just who it will display in the 7-pack.

So how can you acquire a Google's 7-pack presence?

The exact formula for acquiring one of these coveted spots is a closely guarded Google secret; however top search marketers have some recommendations:

Step 1: Claim your businesses' local search listing TODAY, before some unscrupulous person does. Chances are good that Google already has your basic business information in its index. In order to improve you're listing you'll need to claim it and verify you are the appropriate person to modify the listing for that particular business location.

Step 2: Get customer reviews. Search engines are increasingly pulling in data from social media sites and customer reviews. These testimonials are viewed as less susceptible to any shady search engine optimization tactics and search engine spam.

You'll also want to develop a strategy of ways to entice customers to add more customer reviews over time.

Step 3: Grow online mentions of your company. Citations, which are mentions of your business in other online sources (and not necessarily linking to your website) are also good for growing your presence. What's deemed a recognized authority site for citations varies by industry.

You'll want to do some research as to what Google seems to be responding to by examining those sites that are currently ranking in your business sphere.

But keep in mind that having a top listing is a moving target.

As other businesses grow their own online presence you may find yourselves preempted.

Anyone who has worked hard to acquire a nice six pack physique knows it requires regular workouts to maintain it. Obtaining a Google 7-pack listing and keeping it is no different.

With some consistent effort you can acquire and keep a top Google listing for your choice keyword phrase. This puts you front-and-center with your online audience when they are looking for local goods and services.

Cindy McMahen is owner of search marketing PROS in Riverside and is secretary and past president of the American Marketing Association - Inland Empire chapter. Contact her at 951-637-9561 or visit www.searchmarketingpros.com.

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via inlandsocal.com

If you're a local business, or work with/for one, it's time to start cracking into the Google 7-pack. Here are some tips to get started.

Posted via web from Randy's Stuff

Augmented Reality - Finally Becoming Useful?

via readwriteweb.com

Augmented reality.....OK, this finally shows some promise beyond novelty.

Posted via web from Randy's Stuff