Wednesday, January 13, 2010

TNS PYP-IYP Top Searches

Interesting study...

Intermedia Shopping Study:

PYP

1. Septic Tank Service
2. Funeral Directors
3. Plumbing Contractors
4. Glass – Automobile/Plate/Window
5. Appliances – Service & Repair
6. Roofing Contractors
7. Towing – Automotive
8. Electrician/Electrical Contractors
9. Locks & Locksmiths
10. Doors/Garage Doors

IYP

1. Employment Agencies
2. Movers
3. Check Cashing Services
4. Air Conditioning Equipment
5. Building Contractors
6. Apartments
7. Nurses
8. Glass – Automobile/Plate/Window
9. Storage-HH and commercial
10. Septic Tank Service

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Ouch! Newspapers in big trouble

As bad as things are for print directories and other companies, newspapers seem to be taking the worst of the downturn, both in print and in the economy.  And it keeps accelerating...



From Terrible To Terrifying: Newspaper Ad Sales Plummet $2.6 Billion In Q1 2009

Google Launches Dashboard for Small Businesses



In another attempt to get Small Businesses interacting with their Local Platform, Google is offering them a web dashboard with detailed analytics and the ability to easily update their business profiles.  Looks like a good offering, but as always with Google attempts at luring SMBs, the question is if SMBs will self service.  As I always hear in this space, "small business don't buy advertising, they have it sold to them".  I'm starting to believe that and while G has a lot of SMBs in their adwords program, I think it's still too complex for most.  This looks simpler, but still not sure if people will self-service.  Nonetheless, Google is making it clear that this is an area they tend to continue working on and some day, they may get it done...

Google Local Lures Small Businesses With Their Own Web Dashboard


Friday, May 29, 2009

RHD in Chapter 11

Not a big surprise here, but RHD filed Chapter 11, to reorganize.  Like Idearc, should help lessen the debt load and give them room to operate...

Kelsey Group Blogs » RHD Follows Idearc into Chapter 11


Tuesday, May 19, 2009

FirstBank is giving little business big ads



To show their focus on small, local businesses, FirstBank is buying billboards and advertising some of their smallest clients.  Nice ad campaign and good way to make a point...

AdFreak: FirstBank gives giant ads to tiny businesses


Friday, May 1, 2009

Don't buy any local .tv domains



This isn't specifically local-related, but it's interesting, so I'm posting it.  There had been a big push to sell .tv domains (from the island of Tuvalu, which is a total disaster - read about it or listen to the great This American Life about it).  Anyways, I'm sure a lot of geodomainers or other local people have spent a fair amount of time and money buying those domains.  But what happens if you buy a domain and the country ceases to exist?  Tuvalu is actually sinking and may be gone soon.  Because of that, GoDaddy is warning against buying them.  Should be an interesting study.  Apparently some former Soviet Union (.su) domains still function, but who knows what will happen with this one.

Gizmodo - GoDaddy Tells Us Not to Buy .TV Domains Because Tuvalu Is Sinking? - GoDaddy Tuvalu Sinking


Wednesday, April 22, 2009

More questionable behavior from MerchantCircle

MerchantCircle, who has a history of questionable business practices (see here and here), now seems to be trying some more.  They're buying domain names with the names and locations of businesses for which they have (unverified) information.  The only assumption is that they'll launch websites for all of them, try to get traffic flowing to them, then use that to sell products to those businesses.  Chalk another one up for these guys, they're working hard on being search and video spammers.  They just keep coming up with semi-unethical ideas...

MerchantCircle Registering SMB Domains « Screenwerk


Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Superpages has an iPhone app too!



SuperPages now has an iPhone app too... Nothing too unique or new about it, although it does include movies, weather and wifi hotspots...

Kelsey Group Blogs » Superpages Gives a Thumbs Up to iPhone


Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Local Coupons Are Coming

There are tons of coupon sites on the Internet, but the vast majority focus on online retailers (though they have some offline as well).  What they don't have is local coupons.  The main issue with local coupons is that you need to have relationships with local retailers to get them and need to have scale to have an interesting destination site.  The logical routes to getting these coupons are through IYPs or the coupon mailers like Valpak.  Someone has finally started to aggregate these and put them online (Retailmenot), but their site is not optimized for local, so the user experience isn't great.  However, this is definitely blazing the path for other companies to do this in a better way or to integrate into existing sites with local focus.

RetailMeNot Launches Local Coupons « Screenwerk


Monday, April 6, 2009

Newspaper Lobbyists on the Colbert Report

John Sturm from the Newspaper Association of America was on the Colbert report. Colbert always does his job tongue-in-cheek, but it's still a rough time for Mr. Sturm.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a Lobby - Newspaper Lobby
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorNASA Name Contest

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Yelp Improving their iPhone App Even More



Not content with having the best local app for dining and entertainment reviews, Yelp is upgrading their app once again, and in some really smart ways.  The real benefit of a local device like the iPhone with good customer penetration and wide distribution is not just in sending information to it in a one-way flow.  The real long-term potential is using all of those distributed users as a way to collect and share information.  Yelp had some aspects of that in their previous version, and CitySearch has done that with its app as well, but Yelp is now taking it one step further.  The new app uses GPS more heavily, to allow you to more easily find a business you are currently at and provide a review about it, and also offers a new, shorter review format called "quick tips", which gets past the barrier users have trying to leave long reviews with the iPhone keyboard.  I'm anxiously awaiting this app and think it's going to be a huge winner for Yelp.

Yelp Focuses On Mobile, New And Improved iPhone App Coming Soon


Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Idearc Enters Chapter 11



Another sign of the times. I'm sure they think it's because of the economy, and at this point, it will be hard to separate the impacts of the negative economy from the decline of print, but in reality, it's probably a self-reinforcing effect of both. Print was declining already and the economy is accelerating it. Now the question is, will anyone else be following them into Chapter 11?

Kelsey Group Blogs » As Expected, Idearc Enters Chapter 11


MySpace Local Launches (with help from CitySearch)



MySpace has launched a local section of their site, using Citysearch data (although it looks more like a White Label than Co-Brand integration). Most of it seems focused on reviews, which puts them in competition with Yelp as a local social review site. I'm not sure if the reviews will be 2-way (publishing back to CitySearch), though I imagine they won't, as MySpace tries to build some footprint in the area. I think this makes a lot of sense for MySpace, to keep users on the site, provide them more valuable content and information to share, and CitySearch is the right partner for them. There are a lot of local content providers they could have worked with, but looking at MySpace's core demo, the categories that most YP providers focus on (home services, dentists, doctors, etc) are not as relevant as Restaurants and Entertainment, which are CitySearch's focus. It will be interesting to watch what happens with this, but it could be really successful.

MySpace and Citysearch Team Up to Challenge Yelp


Thursday, March 26, 2009

SuperPages Advertising SuperGuarantee Everywhere

A couple days ago, on his blog, Greg Sterling showed one of the new TV ads that Idearc has debuted. Today, in a story completely unrelated to local and YPs, TechCrunch posts a huge screenshot talking about how instant messaging service Meebo has turned their entire wallpaper into an ad. And who bought that ad space? SuperPages, to promote their SuperGuarantee product. Apparently, they are seeing that as the growth engine for their company, or at least a tool they can use to differentiate themselves for branding and advertising purposes. As I said before, I doubt any percentage of their users will register for this, send a lead form for it, or collect money on it, but they are at least being very aggressive trying to get the message out there.



Meebo Turns Into One Big Ad, But Users Seem To Like It

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

DexKnows launches Mobile Platform



DexKnows rolled out their mobile platform yesterday, allowing consumers to add DexKnows People and Business search to a variety of mobile platforms, including traditional cel phones, a mobile browser, text message search and of course, an iPhone app (which is the only one I've tried). The iPhone app looks like it has all the basic functions and works fairly well, allowing you to easily search for businesses or people by name and providing a somewhat fun, wheel-based ability to select your category (within Food, Entertainment or Travel/Transportation), combine that with a geo location (of which you can save multiple, which I haven't seen before in an iPhone local app), and get results for that combination. It has the other standard features as well, like saving businesses and returning to previous profiles viewed. All in all, a fairly solid app that covers the basics. It would be great for them to add some interactivity to the next version, allowing users to upload business data, reviews and images, to really utilize the iPhone as a 2-way device.

Dex® Mobile


Monday, March 23, 2009

Business.com Goes Local



Over the weekend, Business.com rolled out a redesign of their site. As part of it, they've integrated listings from their sister site, DexKnows.com. Now, on pretty much every directory page on their site, they've added a "Local Search" widget, which allows you to take their national listings and filter them down to find local vendors.

Merchant Accounts | Business.com


Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Yelp's Entering Dangerous Territory


(image from the East Bay Express)

I posted a while ago about the issues with reviews and the things you have to concern yourself with in the generation of that kind of content. In the local space, Yelp is definitely the leader in review content, but a while back they had an article written about them (more than one actually) indicating that they basically engage in extortion, offering to remove bad reviews only if advertisers pay them and removing good reviews for those who don't.

After that initial wave of stories came out, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman came out and vehemently denied them. He posted on their blog and stated they were outright lies. However, the stories didn't stop coming and now a new story has been posted (by the same person writing the original one) naming names of businesses that received this treatment and going into a lot of detail about these practices (even naming salespeople). I have no idea whether this is true or not, but even allegations of impropriety like this can permanently damage a business. Stoppelman really needs to come forward and, if this is true, needs to be clear about it, make a mea culpa, and outline how they are going to make sure it doesn't happen again. If it isn't true, he needs to go open kimono and show the world just how their process works, so he once and for all disproves this before it gains (additional) life of its own. It may not be the best option, but this could go downhill quickly.

East Bay Express | News | Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up


Local Conferences - Kelsey Marketplaces Show

I've spent the last 3 days at the Kelsey Marketplaces Show in LA and have to say I've come away very impressed with a lot of the companies on show and what they were doing (and the success they're having with them).  As Kelsey said on their blog, even in the current environment, everyone is very optimistic and there's tons of room to grow in the Vertical space.

A few companies jumped out at me from the discussions:

  • AutoTrader - They have a very traditional business model (paid inclusion with 2 flavors), but execute it so well that they have grown over 20% YOY, and were a $650 MM business last year.  This one shows me that if stay focused on one specific area, in a large market space, you can be very successful.  What they haven't done is dilute their message by selling 10 different products, but have sold one that works for both users and advertisers and also gives them comprehensive data to share with other sites
  • Dotmenu - Dotmenu has done something very different in their space.  While many local companies stay away from Restaurants because of their traditional lack of advertising spend (in YP, etc), Dotmenu is not only pursuing that category, but pursuing low-end and mid-level restaurants that their competitors like OpenTable won't touch.  Through their Allmenus site, they have focused on digitizing print data (menus) and developing comprehensiveness, making them the place to go for that info (also, unlike others in this space, they haven't just posted menu scans, but have formatted data that search engines can read).  They also have a college site that helps utilized those focused markets, where users are especially likely to interact with social components of their site, both online and on mobile devices.  But the real wow for me was how they are getting inside the transaction.  While their sites initially serve as marketing, for many restaurants, they will actually take orders and collect money on behalf of the restaurants.  They then deduct the advertising spend from the money collected and end up paying restaurants at the end of the month, rather than billing them, meaning no collections issues, while at the same time taking what had been a lead business and making it transactional.
  • TeachStreet - To me, this was the #1 wow company of the conference.  TeachStreet focuses on non-degree learning/classes (things like cooking, dancing, art, etc).  They have taken an interesting approach to this multi-billion dollar market.  The first step is that they determine a market to enter and have an offshore team scanning all the sites in that market to collect information on businesses and instructors, and classes available.  They create pages for each of these and are focused on comprehensiveness of data.  However, rather than creating a walled garden for that data, they are clearly focused on making it as open as possible.  How can they do this?  Because in my view, they are focused on being a platform for these businesses, helping businesses market themselves, schedule classes and collect money.  So they are making themselves part of the transaction, regardless of where the user comes from on the Internet.  This also makes it easy for individual instructors to set out on their own and make money outside of the school they work in, giving them more revenue and potentially lower prices for buyers.  Finally, looking at their website, they are making the smart move of encouraging their instructors to create content for their site, both adding value for users and SEO traffic.
There were several other impressive companies, among them the Active Network (up to $250MM in revenues with 3000 employees with plenty more growth to come - most interestingly they get a lot of their revenue from large brands) and Oodle, who really is taking the lead in classifieds aggregation and sounds like they really understand how to interact in the new, social world on the Internet.

All in all, this has been a great conference, interesting seminars and the ability to interact with the decision makers from a lot of great local/vertical companies.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Even in a Recession, You Can't Afford to Pass on Social Media



It's a recession, and a lot of companies are looking to cut back on Marketing spend. However, a new Forrester study says that, even in this economy, more than 50% of companies are increasing their spend on social media. This makes a lot of sense. Social media is fairly cheap to invest in and provides inexpensive content for your site. And, in a good scenario, it can create an ongoing content creation machine that can power your site far more cheaply and effectively than paid media.

In the local space, many of the traditional YP companies have been slow to adopt social media (in fact, some might say they haven't adopted it at all, with the exception of Reviews and Social Bookmarking). Instead, they are allowing insurgents like Yelp and Angie's List to take the lead on that, and as a result, those companies are gaining quickly. YP companies, and others in the local space who have yet to adopt social media, must look on it as an integral part of their content and traffic strategies and move forward now, not just integrating reviews, but other basic social features, such Commenting, Topic Forums, Local Content creation and more. If not, the Yelps of the world will no longer be the insurgents, they'll be the incumbents.

Despite Recession, More Than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media - ReadWriteWeb


Idearc Results Follow In Line with RHD's - What's Next?



Idearc has reported their results just days after RHD's, and the reports are very similar. They are both shrinking in revenues and profits (but both still with significant Operating Profits), but both have debt that will never be paid off at the current revenue and profit levels. As their businesses move online more and more, their Internet revenues are not making up for print revenue losses. They're both trapped in the space where they don't want to cannibalize their print revenue too much while they still have it, but are lagging on the Internet side for the same reason?

So what happens next? They have both mentioned bankruptcy, which is a realistic discussion because of the size of their debt and the current market for debt restructuring. The real question is will they really go bankrupt or is this a negotiating ploy? Or does it make a difference? In reality, neither of these companies is going to close the doors. The operating profits are still healthy and selling their assets will bring much less money to the debtholders than continued operation will. So, whether they go bankrupt or not, the only option seems to be for the debtholders to agree to forgive some of their debt, to allow the companies to continue to operate, and to be thankful they're getting paid whatever they get. Whether that happens in bankruptcy or not may be moot.

Of course, there's one more option too: Consolidation. YPC seems to be fairly healthy and could make an aggressive move to take an even larger lead, get national coverage, and try to take the dominant position in local, both on and offline. They already have a deal with Idearc to exchange listings. Could that be the first step?

Kelsey Group Blogs » Idearc Results Are Predictably Grim; Bankruptcy an Option


Monday, March 2, 2009

LocalPrice.com - Comparison Shopping for Local Goods and Services



There are a lot of companies out there to provide you contact with local service providers (ServiceMagic, the new Sears site, etc). Most of those have a similar model, though: Tell us what you want and give us your information and we'll give it to a bunch of people who will respond and you can take it from there. Those are good solutions if you're looking for a provider who can service your needs, but it definitely does not provide you much information about the person contacting you, pricing, etc. And in some of those situations, having less information that the person you're dealing with can really hurt you.

So today on Screenwerk, I saw an article about LocalPrice.com, a new company that's taking a new approach on things. They are currently only in Atlanta, but have a really interesting value proposition: They provide you information to compare local products or services up-front. Their model is more similar to a shopping engine model, and gives you a lot more information about the person you'll be contacting, pricing, etc. This really allows you to make a more educated decision and probably save yourself some money in the meantime. Their model depends on a lot of high-quality structed content, which is really going to be the bottleneck in their system (which is why its a good idea for them to focus on their starting market, Atlanta, before trying to expand too quickly), but that's also the strength of the system. It will be interesting to see how things go for them.

Price Comparisons of Atlanta Service Providers | LocalPrice.com


Wednesday, February 25, 2009

New DexKnows.com Site Goes Live



After a while in Beta, the new DexKnows.com site launched yesterday... It will be very interesting to see how this impacts their positioning in the marketplace and if they see significant traffic increases from the more SEO-friendly structure of the site...

Kelsey Group Blogs » New Dex IYP Goes Live

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Yellow Pages Around the World - Entry #1

For some of us who work in the YP/Local space, things aren't always the most exciting. But we are part of a global fraternity of YP employees, and from time to time, I'm going to try to bring a view of the world of the Yellow Pages. Here's a commercial from our brethren in the Phillipines. I'm guessing this is not officially licensed, but it's called the Jedi video (It's not in English, but there are enough English words that you should be able to figure it out)...

Sears Launches ServiceMagic Copy


Their hook, apparently, is that users will pay to list jobs, provide detailed project specs, and pre-screened contractors will bid on them. Long story short, I sincerely doubt this will ever get any kind of traction. Users don't want to pay for things they can get for free elsewhere and you're really trying to get them to decide on a provider based on price, when there are many more factors that are important to that kind of decision. Then, Sears wants to hold the money in escrow until everyone has agreed that things have been done to satisfaction, then will take 10% of the contractor's money? Sounds pretty bad on both ends...

Kelsey Group Blogs » Sears Launches ServiceLive, a Leads Site


Friday, February 20, 2009

The Life of an iPhone App


Very interesting analysis of iPhone app usage. What it shows is, in short, that iPhone app usage degrades severely starting almost immediately after first usage. Paid applications start at higher rates (in terms of % of users returning to use them on a given day), but degrade more quickly, almost zeroing out by 90 days out. Free apps, on the other hand, degrade more slowly, but are still around 1% of users returning by 90 days out. Sounds pretty similar to what I experience with apps on my own iPhone. This definitely doesn't mean every app loses its users, since this is an average, but it means if you want to really build a business on an iPhone app, you better find a way to differentiate yourself and make an app that brings people back beyond the first couple days.

The Life of an iPhone App: Nasty, Brutish and Short


Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Local Web Advertising is Slowing Down

All advertising spending will be going down in the next few years, with the state of the economy. Rates for ad space are decreasing and there are fewer people looking to buy. Even local, which had been the fastest-growing part of the online ad market, is looking at a decrease in spending, if this articles is correct (not just a slowing of growth but a decrease).



Local Web-Ad Market Cools Down - WSJ.com


Tuesday, February 17, 2009

SuperPages will be guaranteeing some advertisers' work

This is interesting. In around 300 categories (they don't mention which here, but I would imagine most are service-based categories like plumbers, locksmiths, etc - but ones where success or failure are fairly clear-cut), SuperPages will be insuring work done by specific advertisers who have opted in. If there is a dispute that can't be resolved by SP, they will pay the user up to $500 to make up for it. There's also some mention of potentially "punishing" the advertiser if they misbehave on this plan.

It's an interesting move, and a potential differentiator in the market. SP may have some issues getting advertisers to opt-in, but nonetheless, it could work (and I doubt they'd end up paying much out, though I don't know if they're prepared for the volume of problem resolution they might be dealing with). To me, though, the whole point of this is getting users engaged. SP is using this as a way to get users to register and leave reviews, which is becoming more and more important in the space (especially given the success of Yelp).

Superpages’ New ‘SuperGuarantee’ a Bold Move « Screenwerk


Thursday, January 29, 2009

ServiceMagic getting into SEM and site building



ServiveMagic announced an interesting acquisition today, buying a company called Market Hardware, which does websites and SEM for SMBs in some high-volume online verticals. This is going to be interesting, as it makes them more competitive to the IYPs and companies like ReachLocal who are all going after the same customers. I have to think that SM's stable of Lead customers will have huge potential to convert to SEM customers as well (and may shift their spend to SM from those other legacy providers). We'll see what happens...

Kelsey Group Blogs » IAC’s ServiceMagic Buys Market Hardware

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Idearc and YPC working together

Looks like the big boys are starting to work together. Idearc (SuperPages) and AT&T Yellow Pages (YellowPages.com) have signed an agreement to share advertisers (and I would assume revenues). This is the first step to creating a super-IYP that can start to think about competing with Google in the local space and give them a real competitor. Interesting stuff and will be interesting to see if RHD and others follow suit...

Idearc, AT&T YP in Distribution Agreement « Screenwerk

Tuesday, January 20, 2009