Ask Poodle - Find local businesses, products, & services

Here's a local search site with "live' researchers to facilitate connections with local businesses:

Ask Poodle

Get personalized local search results with recommendations & reviews, price quotes, and
answers from local merchants that compete for your business within seconds, not hours or days.

My Take

Lots of questions ...
Isn't this labor intensive?

• If they hit it big, who'll they find to conduct the research?

What is their monetization model?

• Who pays?
• How do they arrange for payment?

Monday September 24, 2007 - 09:32am (EDT)

The internet yellow pages advantage over local search

Excerpts from PCM International’s Integrated Marketing Blog:

"In an age when search—particularly local search—is increasingly becoming the preferred solution by which consumers can find a specific product or service, it’s good to know that the Internet Yellow Pages still hold the advantage."

1. They already possess an outstanding sales force

2. They continually improve their IYP offerings

3. They offer both White and Yellow Pages

4. They enhance their IYP products so people can search either through the traditional Yellow Pages classifications or using a more local search-like approach.

5. Their tremendous opportunity for growth in the mobile devices

My Take

Are these advantages? Or vestiges?

1. The sales force is impressive in number. But in my opinion it won't be able to compete with the power of consumer involvement in an incentivized, word-of-mouth model. Plus, don't you think that the sales reps have rather "high negative" ratings for cashing in on the large ad fees they've charged small businesses over the years?
2. The Web is all about continual improvement. It is a key benefit to a decentralized structure.
3. White Pages? I have not used them since I found Yahoo.
4. See #2 above
5. See #'s 2 & 4 above.

Yikes! Do I smell desperation?

Friday September 21, 2007 - 07:54pm (EDT)

Local Search Is About Products Too, Not Just Restaurants And Plumbers

Excerpts from: Greg Sterling's
Local Search Is About Products Too, Not Just Restaurants And Plumbers

Often when people discuss local search they're referring to finding restaurants or plumbers. But the concept of "local search" should include goods and product purchases as well.

Whenever I discuss products and retail as part of the definition of local search people are often a little skeptical. Yet again and again studies show that consumers are using the Internet to do research before buying locally in stores. This is especially true for "considered purchases" (bigger ticket items), but it's generally true for products across the board.

The Internet has not emerged predominantly as a transactions platform, as many had predicted several years ago, but instead as a marketing platform driving offline transactions.

Jupiter and Forrester Research-- have more recently come around and said that the growth of online commerce is "flattening," while the Internet's influence on offline consumer purchases continues to grow almost unabated.

Here's what Jupiter's most recent e-commerce forecast had to say: Despite the slowing of growth in online buying, web influenced off-line sales will grow at a slightly faster pace over the next five years, reinforcing the vast advertising and marketing value retailer websites present.

To look out into the future a couple of years, the three most interesting trends in "online shopping" are local, social and mobile:

• Local: as in "Where can I buy it today?"
  
• Social: as in "Can anybody recommend a . . ."
  
• Mobile: as in "How much does it cost somewhere else?" or "These guys don't have it, where can I go to find it right now?"

Many other studies, including a recent one from Yahoo and comScore, have similarly documented the Internet's (and search's) impact on offline transactions. While conventional comparison engines leave "money on the table" by failing to capture or extract value from this dominant consumer behavior pattern, Internet-influenced local shopping has its challenges as well.

The "inventory infrastructure" is developing but has yet to be fully built out. Sites like ShopLocal, Krillion and NearbyNow, among others, are working diligently on this challenge. Once substantially accomplished, that inventory information will transfer into mobile with relative ease.

Another challenge is tracking: showing the online-offline connection. Right now offline conversion tracking is limited to after-the-fact consumer surveys, coupon redemption and phone tracking, as a kind of proxy for purchase intent. Phone tracking arguably doesn't work well for products because people many not call stores in the way they call service businesses (e.g., doctors, plumbers) for appointments.

My Take

The online shopping/overnight delivery model has revolutionized the retail industry for some products and services. But the big dollar items in our household budget can't be ordered on a Web site or delivered in a brown truck.

How do I make those big buying decisions? How do I find just the right local business? Probably the same way you do. And it is a process that's remained unchanged since the first word of mouth referral occured with the words, "You gotta call _____________."

Now, how will this process be facilitated by the Web?

Tags: localsearch

Wednesday September 19, 2007 - pm (EDT)

Google's Local Biz Referral Program

Excerpt: Himmelstein on G’s Local Biz Referral Program « Screenwerk

Marty Himmelstein is a local search expert who founded Long Hill Consulting.

Google’s recently announced Business Referral Program, where it pays individuals to submit information about local businesses, is important less for what it is than what it will be. It is a signpost not only of Google’s intent, but of their understanding of how the Internet will develop.

For while Google doesn’t make trends, they do have a keen eye for discerning them. Their patient execution of a plan based on their reading of the road ahead is nowhere more apparent than in local search. These trends have been remarked upon before, and at least some of Google’s advantage is that while others watch Google, Google’s attention is straight ahead. These trends include:

• Decentralized collection of business content, from the edges in
  
  The centralized collection of business information was an artifact of the organization of the telephone network. This was fine for YP Publishers but less than ideal for either businesses or consumers. ... the Internet has made the contrivance of centralized content collection unnecessary.
  
  
• The importance of community and neighborhood to local search: The fundamental role of a community in local search is to establish an environment of trust so that users can rely on the information they obtain from the system. Businesses exist in a network of customers, suppliers, municipal agencies, local media, hobbyists, and others with either a professional or avocational interest in establishing the trustworthiness of local information.
  
  
  
• Completeness is key: One of the fundamental tenets of local search is for it to be useful it must be complete – if there is a shop on Main Street it will be in the database. Completeness is necessary to gain the trust of the two most important local search constituencies – consumers and local businesses. Google has built its dominance by layering advertising on top of the best natural search results in the business. They will tenaciously adhere to the same philosophy in local search.

Some Google competitors might take comfort in the apparently haphazard and unfinished feel of various Google offerings. A more appropriate response would be alarm. Google’s fledgling projects are part of an encompassing architecture measured not in a year or two but five or more.

Consider that the results of a typical Internet Yellow Pages search have barely improved in the last ten years.) It is inevitable that the Internet will displace other mediums as the starting point of practically all local advertising – including advertising destined for print, television and radio.

It will also take time for Google and others to demonstrate the value of local search in a way that makes sense to Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), and other actors in the local search community. There’s still a lot of spadework to be done, and combined with the sheer size of the local search market, the extended adolescence of Google Base, Google Coop, the Business Referral Program, and other projects is closer to necessity than profligacy. The current value of the content in Google Base is of no consequence. Its function is to help Google build the next generation of Google Base, when content will matter.

Google’s ability to monetize local search doesn’t require they “own” business data and keep it behind a walled garden.

Google could easily decide the effort to build a direct relationship with businesses is more of a burden than an opportunity. They could leave that job to others, opting rather to provide tools and incentives that ensure the road for content between businesses and Google is easy to traverse.

My Take

The key to success in the local search market will be tapping into "community knowledge".

Getting small businesses involved in their Web presence is another. Most are too busy or too intimidated to create and manage their own Web presence and search optimization

Is Google's approach the best way to tap community knowledge and gain participation? Are they using the "wiki" way?

Tuesday September 11, 2007 - 11:52am (EDT)

Online classified ads take $3.1Billion from newspapers

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/09/online-classifi.html

"The Washington Post has an interesting story today about the online classified advertising market which recorded $3.1 Billion in sales in 2006, while newspaper classifieds have dropped by about $3B in the last five years.

"... The chart on the left, courtesy of The Washington Post, shows just how dramatic the shift has been, and will continue to be...

"Billions of dollars from small advertisers -Consider that Google generated over $10 Billion in online ad revenues last year, while Yahoo, Microsoft, and others raked in another $10B or more. The vast majority of this revenue came from small advertisers, not the Fortune 500.

"... Most of Google's billions in revenue comes from small advertisers paying 50 cents to $5 per click for a text ad.

"The Next Big Thing - Online classified ads, local search, and mobile search are huge markets, with no dominant leader, and lots of opportunity for innovation. New business models will emerge and a new set of leaders will reap billions in profits...pennies at a time."

My Take

The stats cited by Mr. Dodge tell the recent history. His observation that there is no dominant leader in the huge market for local search (into which I lump mobile search and classified ads) points toward the next revolution in advertising.

Sunday September 2, 2007 - 10:02am (EDT)