feed hat blog

That was one of the topics of Luther Lowe’s presentation Tuesday at the annual SearchFest conference in Portland. Lowe — Yelp’s Manager of Business Outreach — gave a generally clear description of what the company says are the benefits of advertising on Yelp. I say “generally” because he said that advertising on Yelp gets a business owner “SEO,” but he really meant to say “visibility.”

These are not the same examples he used during the presentation, but they show the same points he made.

1. Visibility on Yelp search result pages

Advertising on Yelp gives a business the opportunity to show up above the regular search results for category/city combinations, like this search for dentists in Los Angeles.

2. Visibility on other business profile pages

A Yelp ad may show up on a competitor’s business profile, like in this example here.

3. No competitor ads on your profile page

Using the example above, no competitors’ ads will show up on the profile page of that dentist because she’s advertising. She’s essentially paying to keep competitors from advertising on her profile page. But note that Yelp still does show other competitors on the page under a “People Who Viewed This Also Viewed” heading.

4. Added content options

Yelp advertisers can also add extra content to their business profiles, such as a photo slideshow and an extra content spot to post alerts or discounts.

5. Promote a “favorite review”

Yelp sponsors can also choose one review of their business and mark it as a “favorite.” In doing so, that review will show up first on the business profile page, as seen here.

Lawsuits: The 800-lb. Gorilla

Before his presentation, Lowe called out the 800-lb. gorilla in the room: the recent lawsuits from small business owners who claim that Yelp has offered to remove negative reviews in exchange for payment. I don’t recall his exact wording, but Lowe rejected the claims of the lawsuit, saying that the alleged behavior — if it were true — would cause Yelp to lose the trust of its users and advertisers.

But from several conversations I’ve had at conferences over the past two weeks, that trust is on shaky ground with some. This isn’t the first time Yelp’s been accused of taking money to remove negative reviews (see Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0 from last year), and some are wondering if the phrase “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is appropriate.

One suspects that, as long as Yelp offers a way for business owners to manipulate reviews in exchange for advertising (see #5 above), they’ll continue to run the risk of lawsuits — no matter if the lawsuits are justified or just the result of misunderstanding.

Advertisement: Improve your website rankings and traffic in just 15 mins/day! LotusJump will show you how to do your own professional-grade SEO. Find Out How Today!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

What Does Advertising on Yelp Get You?

Related posts:

1. Yelp.com: New player in Local Search
2. Yelp is Growing Like Gangbusters
3. Are Yahoo and Yelp Dating?

Excerpt from:
What Does Advertising on Yelp Get You?

Small business owners: Just when you thought it was safe to send prospects and customers to your Google place page, think again. Google has added a new content section to place pages — recommendations of other nearby businesses. And as I point out on Search Engine Land, those recommendations often include your competition.

In that piece, I suggest this idea: If the small business has claimed its local business listing, then Google should turn off the nearby recommendations. Reward local businesses that claim their listing, don’t punish them.

The bigger question here is, who owns the place pages? The obvious and correct answer is Google; Google can do what it wants with place pages. But in Google’s never-ending quest to promote local business listings to small business owners — Google just sent a rep from Mountain View to Spokane for Thursday’s GetListed Local University seminar to show about 125 business how the LBC works — there’s never been any indication from Google that it might start showing information about other businesses on a place page.

It’s a strange thing for Google to do, that’s for sure. When I said I wanted more from Google’s place pages, this wasn’t what I had in mind….

Advertisement: Improve your website rankings and traffic in just 15 mins/day! LotusJump will show you how to do your own professional-grade SEO. Find Out How Today!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Google Place Pages: Who Owns Them?

Related posts:

1. Alerts on Place Pages? I Want More From Google

Continued here:
Google Place Pages: Who Owns Them?

Does the world need another local business/reviews site? AT&T seems to think so. Forbes says the company is planning to launch a Yelp competitor soon at Buzz.com. If nothing else, it’ll have a great domain name going for it.

But, a great domain or not, is any new site going to come along and even put a dent in Yelp’s armor at this point? (I think Twitter could if it steered itself in the direction of places pages/profiles for businesses, but that’s another story for some other day.) Yelp has been growing for years, and had a huge 2009: 26 million unique visitors in December 2009, up 60% from 16 million unique visitors in December 2008.

The article hints that there will be some differences between Yelp and Buzz, including something that sounds like a Q&A element that involves local experts. And this, too:

“On buzz.com, users won’t be writing full-fledged reviews. They can choose to “favorite” a business or not and write brief comments, but there isn’t a place for airing grievances.”

The article says Buzz will soon go into a testing phase for AT&T employees plus their family and friends. There’s also a form on the site now letting you request an invite … you know, if you think the world needs another local business/reviews site.

Advertisement: Try Site5 Web Hosting free for 30 days! 99.9% Uptime Guarantee and our customer’s love us!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

AT&T: Good Luck with Your Yelp Competitor

Related posts:

1. Yelp is Growing Like Gangbusters
2. Yelp’s Dramatic Growth in 2009
3. Inc. Magazine Goes Deep on Yelp

See original here: 
AT&T: Good Luck with Your Yelp Competitor

Tri-Cities, Washington — where I live — is generally about two years behind the rest of the country when it comes to adopting whatever’s hot. I know this from spending close to 10 years as a web designer and marketer in this area, and from living here for more than 15 years.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise a couple months ago when I noticed that local businesses were really getting a lot of reviews on Yelp. After all, the rest of the country started noticing Yelp in 2007, so of course Tri-Citians would adopt it in droves by 2009. Have a look at the number of reviews these Richland restaurants have right now:

That won’t seem like much to those of you in big cities, but it’s a lot for our area — and it’s a sure sign of Yelp’s dramatic growth.

If it’s actual numbers you want, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman shared some Friday on the Yelp blog:

• 26 million unique visitors in December 2009, up 60% from 16 million unique visitors in December 2008
• more than 8 million reviews posted worldwide

Impressive numbers, to say the least. And as Yelp continues to reach into smaller communities (like mine) across the U.S., it becomes an even more important player in local search and a must-use tool for small/local business owners.

And while I’m on the subject of Yelp, don’t miss David Mihm’s Yelp Comes of Age for more about how Yelp has grown and where the company is today.

Advertisement: Try Site5 Web Hosting free for 30 days! 99.9% Uptime Guarantee and our customer’s love us!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Yelp’s Dramatic Growth in 2009

Related posts:

1. Yelp is Growing Like Gangbusters
2. Kelsey Forecasts Mobile/Local Search Growth
3. Yelp.com: New player in Local Search

Original post:
Yelp’s Dramatic Growth in 2009

As long as I’m handing out reading suggestions today, here’s another one. Don’t miss Tamar Weinberg’s excellent annual Best Of post:

Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009

I’m happy to see a few of my posts on the list, both from here and from HyperlocalBlogger.com. But there’s a ton of great stuff over there, and you’ll want to plan on returning to that several times to get through it.

Advertisement: Improve your website rankings and traffic in just 15 mins/day! LotusJump will show you how to do your own professional-grade SEO. Find Out How Today!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Online Marketing Reading Suggestion

Related posts:

1. Local Search Reading Suggestion
2. Your January Reading List

More here: 
Online Marketing Reading Suggestion

Mike Blumenthal is running an annual series of posts that involves a variety of people writing guest articles about important things that happened in local search during the previous year. I sent in a short piece a few days ago as my contribution, but the series started today with an excellent set of information and links about local search patents from Bill Slawski:

Loci 2009: Bill Slawski’s Important Patents of 2009

It’ll be quite technical reading, but highly worth it if you care to sort out what the search engines are doing re: local search. And then check back in the coming days for additional posts, or just subscribe to Mike’s RSS feed (which is a no-brainer of a decision).

Advertisement: Try Site5 Web Hosting free for 30 days! 99.9% Uptime Guarantee and our customer’s love us!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Local Search Reading Suggestion

Related posts:

1. Bylines Elsewhere…
2. Bill S. on Google’s Latest Local Search Patent App.
3. Bill S. delivers a glossary of Google Local Search terms

Go here to read the rest:
Local Search Reading Suggestion

Continuing our tradition, the third annual Best of Search Conferences 2009 is upon us. Over the last year there were five search engine marketing conferences that Bruce Clay, Inc. covered live on the blog, including SMX West, SES New York, SES San Jose, SMX East and SES Chicago. In the Best of Search Conferences 2009, you’ll find the most popular liveblog coverage from those five shows, as well as some other special posts and features.

Search marketer Marty Weintraub, founder and president of aimClear, guest posted on the blog, sharing his takeaways from PubCon Las Vegas 2009. You’ll also find BCI’s director of Eastern region operations, Christopher Hart, sum up his presentation from IM Spring Break. Plus, you can close out each day of the Best of Search Con by kicking back with a podcast of live broadcasts from search conferences this year. Here’s the agenda of what will be presented during this year’s Best of Search Conferences, coming to the blog all this week. Enjoy! And happy holidays!

My wife went on a kitchen cleaning binge yesterday. When I came home from some errand-running, three yellow pages books were sitting on my office desk. So I asked what’s up.

“You’re the local SEO guy,” she said. “Do we even need these anymore?”

I thought about it for 30 seconds and decided no, we don’t need these anymore. If I’m always talking about local search and people using the web to find local information, I should walk the walk, too, right?

So there they are, as you can see in the photo, sitting in my office trash bin. (Actually, you can only see one, but anyhoo…) Perhaps I’ll drop them off at the local recycling station this week.

Two questions: Do you still own a print yellow pages directory? Do you still use it?

Advertisement: WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool delivers more keywords, faster than paid tools and always 100% free. Try it today!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Walking the Local Search Walk

Related posts:

1. TMP Local Search Study (2008)

See the rest here:
Walking the Local Search Walk

Due to my recent overload of travel, I’m not at the SMX East conference this week in New York City. Yes, I’m skipping the conference put on by the people who pay me to write for Search Engine Land. (That was a fun email to send. “Dear Danny, sorry but I can’t help out this year at one of our signature events. Love, Matt.”)

Anyhoo, if I was there, I’d have grabbed a front-row seat at the Ranking Tactics for Local Search session. Since I wasn’t there, I’ve had to settle for reading Lisa Barone’s recap on the Outspoken Media blog. Would suggest you do the same….

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Local SEO Tips from SMX East

No related posts.

See the rest here:
Local SEO Tips from SMX East