Your Suspect

The Kelsey Group is like the ESPN of the local search and advertising world. They’re the authority. They host about four major conferences every year, attracting industry insiders from around the globe. Their next one is next week in San Diego, called MARKETPLACES 2010: THE LOCAL VERTICAL OPPORTUNITY. It’s the who’s-who and that what’s-what of local and vertical solutions and advertising. I’ve attended numerous Kelsey shows and have come to know the Kelsey staff as warm and generous professionals, and many of the conference regulars. The Kelsey Group and their conferences have been absolutely critical for CitySquares. If it wasn’t for them and their shows, I don’t think we’d be a player on this big and competitive field.

I was asked to speak at the Marketplaces show alongside Colin Pape with ShopCity and David Vazdauskas of Local Thunder. The panel will be moderated by Steve Marshall, who I always enjoy. He doesnt pull punches and he adds a certain kind of intensity to the panels. I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll be at the show from Sunday through Wednesday with my colleague and VP National Sales Todd Salerno. We have a few meetings teed up but if you’d like to catch up with one of us just email me, tweet me or send smoke signals, whatever works for ya!

If anyone wants to go, but does not yet have tickets, please get in touch with me, I have a discount code for you to save a little.

Looking forward to seeing a whole lotta people! See you there!

“You stay classy San Diego” – Ron Burgundy

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Today CitySquares got a voicemail from Merchant Circle.It’s not the first time either. Usually I just roll my eyes, shout something out to whoever is nearby for a laugh, and I move on. In fact, just about anything Merchant Circle does gets a similar reaction from me: roll of the eyes, wise-ass remark, laughter, move on. Always in that order too. For those of you who may not understand my response – it’s because CitySquares, my company, and Merchant Circle are direct competitors.

Today, though, I am in rare form. I think it’s all the cold and flu medicine I’m doped up on. The voicemail came through as a wav file, as they all do, and I decided to play it over the speakers in the office for everyone to hear. We all laughed. But I wasn’t done.

So I decided take full advantage of this opportunity today. They called me, for the third time, and this time I responded. I went to their site, I claimed my listing, and voila CitySquares.com now has a profile in Merchant Circle’s directory. Actually, it seems we’ve had a profile there for some time, I just had to claim it. The address they had for us was three years old and it was a little tricky figuring out how to change it, but we figured it out.

Ya know I gotta say too, I was very impressed with the process! The obnoxious, spammy phone calls aside, claiming my profile and spicing it up was actually a very painless and enjoyable experience. In fact, we really should emulate some of it. But that’s all we’ll emulate, that’s for sure.

Anyone wanna place bets on how long it takes for them to take this down?

Along with Aaron Irizarry, Andrew Shotland, Greg Sterling, Michael Boland, Mike Belasco, and Will Scott I was asked by Steve Espinosa to be a contributor to a new industry blog called Local Search News. I posted my first entry there, just in time for the site’s launch today. So if you’re interested in local search please subscribe to it and be sure to post your comments. Below is an excerpt from my first entry.

… there’s no shortage of predictions and opinions, that’s for sure. But as it pertains user intent, nothing is changing. Consumers still have a need – they’re still searching for local business information. They still use Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. They still go to the IYPs, the city guides, the local directories. But now we’re seeing them turn to different devices and different sites than ever before. Consumers are using their mobile devices to call free 411 services, or use free text messaging services. They’re using their mobile browser, or mobile application. Consumers are starting to find local business information from stranger places too, like Facebook, YouTube, even twitter. How about that! As if this local search thing wasn’t fragmented enough, it seems to be fragmenting even more. Yet the consumer isn’t really looking for anything different, are they?

Videos may be more prevalent, more available, more accessible. But are consumers specifically searching for local business videos? Unlikely. Local business profiles, and the websites they’re on, may be optimized for a mobile device, but the user doesn’t necessarily care about clever bells and whistles. Local search apps may have really fancy user interfaces that take advantage of the wow-factor on say, the iPhone, but the user’s intention is still very much the same. They’re looking for the same information as always and they’re still performing recovery or discovery searches.

read more…

Back in August of 2007 Google announced their Local Business Referrals Program. A lot of people shook in their boots, others doubted any success. I suspected that it was doomed to fail.

I just don’t see Google coming into this space, sprinkling it’s Google fairy dust on the marketplace and voila – cracking the code. OK, so maybe Google’s isn’t trying to crack the code, but just penetrate the market a bit more than they’re able. Google should want to penetrate this space, of course they should, but doing it themselves? Gimme a break! And this approach is just silly. I kind of get the sense that this is a desperate move by an increasingly clumsy and goofy corporation that will yield very little. Next step for Google? Snatching up local search players.

Success in the local search market will not come from a giant like Google or Yahoo or Microsoft. It will come from the small startups like, well, like CitySquares.

Here’s Matt McGee’s post on the demise of the program, which gives some more detail. Here’s what Google had to say:

On December 31, 2008, we will end the Google Local Business Referrals program, which was one of many Google Labs initiatives that we had developed as part of our ongoing commitment to experimentation and testing new ways to help businesses establish a presence online.

Many relationships have been built as a result of Google Local Business Referrals, and local connections between representatives and businesses have been forged that we hope will continue. However, the program will conclude at the end of the year as part of our effort to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.

So, what’s next for Google and their local ambitions?

A few months back at the Somerville Local First launch party I met a fella named Steve D’Agostino. We talked briefly about what CitySquares was doing, and he spoke passionately about what he’s doing in Worcester for Worcester Local First. We hit it off pretty quickly, and realized how well aligned our missions are. I later found out that Steve also hosts his own talk radio program. Well, today I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Steve on WICN 90.5 FM‘s Business Beat program. It was a 30 minute interview almost entirely about local businesses, their impact on local economics, and of course CitySquares too.

I’ve uploaded the audio file here but you can also find it up on WICN’s website.