Bing vs. Blekko: A Difference in Attitude

A couple of weeks ago I saw Blekko, the as yet unlaunced search startup from Rich Skrenta (formerly of Topix and other significant places). Yesterday TechCrunch made an early positive assessment of the site after taking a look:

“Stunningly cool.” I direct messaged Skrenta on Twitter this morning: your success is assured. Seriously, that’s a pretty strong endorsement from the most visible general tech blog in the market.

In some ways, Blekko can be said to be the “anti-Bing.” Hate the name Blekko? They don’t care; they like it.

While Microsoft’s new Bing (which I like BTW) features a lush interface and lots of high-end functionality, Blekko is stripped down and spartan — but in a different way than Google is. I won’t offer a review of Blekko, which would be premature because the site won’t launch until later this year. But I will say that Skrenta and Mike Markson, among others behind Blekko, are being smart and understand well who their audience is. They’re not aspiring to the kind of broad audience appeal that Bing is going after. And that will help them with the press and to build their following.

As I said in my SEL piece comparing Bing and Google I don’t yet know how audiences will respond to Bing and whether it will gain traction over time. But my intuition is that Blekko will quickly “imprint” on its intended audience and that they will embrace the search engine in earnest.

We’ll see if I’m right.

MSFT vs. Google: Zoho’s Perspective

This is from Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu:

Inevitable comparisons are made between the hugely enthusiastic developer response (including from us at Zoho) to Google Wave yesterday with the relatively tepid reponse to Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. The real interesting contrast to us, as independent software developers, is the way developers responded to Silverlight as opposed to the reaction yesterday to Google Wave. Both Silverlight and Wave are aimed at taking the internet experience to the next level. To be perfectly honest, Silverlight is a great piece of technology. Google Wave, as yet, is not much more than a concept and an announcement.

It is easy to dismiss all this with “Oh, the press just loves to hype everything Google, and loves to hate Microsoft,” but that cannot explain why even competitors like us are willing to embrace Google’s innovations, but stay away from perfectly good innovations from Microsoft, such as Silverlight?

Read the rest of it on the Zoho blog.

Newish Local Mobile Search Posts

For those not following me on Twitter are some posts from the world of Local Mobile Search:

• ChangeWave: iPhone a Big Success Factor for AT&T
• Goog 411 Adds Intersections Info to Service
• Nokia Wants to Emphasize LBS As Differentiator
• Sprint Launches Customizable Screen Saver
• Palm Pre Coming to Verizon
• Google Announces Android Developer Challenge 2

Mapspam Already on Kumo/Bing?

I said I was going to do some poking around on Kumo/Bing on the local side of things beyond what I did yesterday for Search Engine Land. But Matt McGee beat me to it and found . . . mapspam on Kumo/Bing. He said he compared it to Live Search results for “locksmith” and found the results to be the same in both places.

He then questioned whether there was any “back end” update to results as opposed to just interface changes. I was explicitly told by Microsoft that there were algorithmic changes and upgrades beyond what’s going on with Live Search. But Matt found the same spam on the local results for Bing that he discovered on Live. Certainly a disappointment there. I’ll do my own checking around later on.

Here’s Matt’s screenshot:

Here’s the Live Search screen from the same search for Locksmith, New York:

On this particular search result it’s not clear (to me at least) whether these listings are true spam or simply a failure to properly identify businesses that actually exist at these addresses. It does look like spam however.

RHD Files for Chapter 11

RH Donnelley, parent of Dex and Business.com and one of the four major US YP publishers, has confirmed what was long-anticipated by many and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. From the Marketwatch report:

Shares of Cary, N.C.-based R.H. Donnelley closed Thursday at 14 cents a share, off by 6.7%. The stock has had a tragic run, peaking at around $78 in 2007 before plunging on signs the economy was beginning to cool off.

R.H. Donnelley said it has already reached an agreement in principle with key creditors to reduce its debt by around $6.4 billion, eliminate roughly $500 million in annual interest expense and extend the company’s bank maturities out to 2014 . . .

Since 2000, R.H. Donnelley has rung up more than $12 billion in acquisitions, including its $9 billion buyout of Dex Media, which included about $5 billion in debt. The company also purchased Sprint Directory Publishing and certain businesses of SBC Communication Inc.

Last year, the company swung to a $2.3 billion loss from a profit of $46.9 million, primarily due to non-recurring items. Total revenue came in at about $2.6 billion.

Idearc also previously filed for a “pre-packaged” bankruptcy to restructure its debt. Absent the debt these directory companies are still generating lots of cash and fairly healthy margins though revenues have been in decline to varying degrees, generally in the low double-digits.

Yellowbook’s parent Yell has been under tremendous pressure in the UK. Only AT&T’s yellow pages, buried within the larger corporate structure is shielded somewhat from these same pressures and concerns, though the print business there is also under similar revenue pressure.

YPG Promotes Answers

I previously posted on the new Answers service from Yellow Pages Group, but a formal press release went out yesterday:

Available at http://answers.yellowpages.ca/, the Yellow Pages Answers Service lets consumers ask questions and get recommendations in real-time for the most relevant local merchants. The service also gives users the opportunity to broadcast their questions within their Facebook or Twitter networks with all answers coming back to a unique page that leverages the more than 1.2 million YellowPages.ca business listings.

Praized Media is behind the new service.

As I said before:

The ability to ask questions of a group on local sites is nothing new. Both InsiderPages and Judy’s Book offered Q&A functionality from near inception (in 2007). It’s no longer on InsiderPages, now owned by IAC. And Judy’s Book has been sold and relaunched. Yelp has had questions and answers for several years as well (though not well integrated into the experience). Trulia and Zillow have very robust communities and Q&A tools in which local real estate agents can participate in conversations or provide answers to consumer questions. Beyond these there are a wide range of pre-existing services, Yahoo! Answers, Amazon’s AskVille, LinkedIn and several others, that also offer Q&A — though not in “real time.”

However, Twitter has brought Q&A or “real-time answers” into vogue and this is a smart (as well as useful) thing to add to the site.

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As an aside, Microsoft’s Bing/Kumo is being positioned in forthcoming ads as a “decision engine.” YPG bills itself as a “find engine.”

Microsoft’s Bing Announced

I’ve written up my initial thoughts, together with a comparison of Bing vs. Google results for a range of queries including a couple that are local at SEL.

I’ll try and do a post on the local dimension of Bing if I have time later. It will be available to the public early next week.

TeachStreet Gets Funding, Expands Cities

Local vertical for classes and teachers, TeachStreet, is expanding and just announced some A round funding of $1.2 million:

TeachStreet announced that it expanded to Chicago, its sixth market, bringing combined site selection to more than 140,000 classes and teachers. In addition, they announced an additional $1.2 million round of financing from existing investors and management team.

There are several competitors in this segment, including takelessons.com.

Telmetrics: Traditional Media Complement Online

Telmetrics released call and URL tracking data that show how print YP and online complement one another in some interesting ways. The company “measured consumer Web activity generated by more than 1,200 print Yellow Pages ads from November 2008 through April 2009. Each [display] ad included both a unique URL and phone number.” The URL redirected in most cases to a business website.

The story has always been print YP vs. online. But the more complex consumer reality is that print (traditional media) often drives online and search. Telmetrics data reveal that.

Here are the topline data:

• On average, URL visits represented 44 percent of leads, while call traffic generated 56 percent of leads
• Tracking unique URL activity in addition to call measurement shows a 78 percent increase in the overall leads driven by print Yellow Pages
• Select categories including Automobile Dealers and Florists, demonstrated significantly higher volumes of Web activity
• Ads for Automobile Dealers resulted in 184 percent more clicks than calls, while Florists generated 126 percent more clicks

I spoke with Telmetrics CEO Bill Dinan yesterday about these findings. He told me that they weren’t able to measure the overlap between people who visited a site and may have subsequently picked up the phone. He also told me that in anecdotal interviews with consumers following the collection of this data consumers often said they were less inclined to consider a business that didn’t offer a URL in its print YP ad. He was surprised by the degree to which consumers came to the print book expecting to be directed to an Internet site.

I also asked Dinan about his theories about why certain categories might generate more clicks than calls. He said he thought that circumstances in which people needed to consider inventory or get more information (especially to see an item or product) drove more URL visits.

There are lots of studies from among others Google and SEM firm iProspect that show how people use multiple media to get information. These same studies also show how traditional media stimulate or generate online search behavior or other lookups.

What’s interesting here is that people are coming to the print book as a starting point and going off to the Internet, consistent with those studies, to get more information in almost 50 percent of cases. So rather than an island separate from the Internet, print YP is being shown here to be a complement and even a driver of online activity.

Local Search Ranking Factors Vol. 2

David Mihm has just published the next installment (Vol. 2) of his Local Search Ranking Factors report. There is a ton of rich material for SEO practitioners and those just interested. Contributors are a who’s who of local SEO experts.

Won’t do it justice to try and summarize. You need to dig into it yourself.

The Campaign for ‘Bing’: What Would You Do?

AdAge published a story yesterday that speculated about the forthcoming Microsoft search engine, allegedly to be called “Bing.” Here’s the essential information:

The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. That’s a big campaign — big compared with consumer-product launches ($50 million is considered a sizable budget for a national rollout) and very big when you consider that Google spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, with about $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting. Microsoft, by comparison, spent $361 million. Certainly Google has never faced an ad assault of anything like this magnitude.

JWT has been tapped for the push, which will include online, TV, print and radio.

Say you’re at JWT, what would the campaign look like? Would you go directly after Google or not? Would you use humor? This is a huge creative challenge. I’m curious to know what your “messaging” might be.

Advertising in Limbo

There was a piece in the NY Times by Claire Cain Miller that ran this weekend about how online advertising is no longer a viable revenue source for many startups and how they’re looking at alternative business models to supplement online ad income:

For anyone with a crazy idea for a Web business, the way to make it pay was once obvious: get a lot of visitors and sell ads. Since 2004, venture investors have put $5.1 billion into 828 Web start-up companies, and most of them are supported by ads, according to the National Venture Capital Association. Now advertisers have cut back their online spending. So Web start-ups are searching for new ways to make money, like selling real, or virtual, goods or asking customers to buy subscriptions.

Here’s the thing, the Internet has damaged or undermined the “credibility” of many traditional media as advertising vehicles: newspapers, magazines, radio and TV (to a lesser degree). All have lost audiences and advertisers to the Internet. Yet the Internet still is embraced with some reservations. Take for example a recent CMO survey reported by AdWeek showing frustration about the complexities of online advertising.

The facile logic that went, “audiences are moving online so will all of advertising,” has not proven to be entirely correct. In addition, the idea that all online sites and services could be “free” and ad supported is also proving false. Online advertising will return as the economy returns to health but that won’t solve many of the problems and challenges that publishers and marketers face.

Ad budgets are migrating online to varying degrees but some of those dollars don’t show up as “advertising” per se. (Some go to website development and SEO, as well as “social media” efforts on Facebook and Twitter.)

We are witnessing a shrinking of the advertising economy and the creation of a consumer environment where it’s increasingly complex and difficult to reach people with ads. Yet advertising remains paradoxically one of the few ways marketers can notify interested consumers about new products, services and events — even as it adds more noise to the increasing marketing din.

Should Facebook ‘Just Buy Yelp’?

Matt Greitzer of Avenue A pens a provocative column (How to Solve Local Search, Once And For All) in which he argues that Facebook should buy Yelp:

Facebook should not build its own socially powered local search engine; it should just buy Yelp. This combination makes both companies better. It would instantly propel Facebook into the local search space with the backing of an active reviewer base and a proven service model. And Facebook’s scale would rocket Yelp from niche to mainstream, making a good service even better by combining reviewer opinions with vetting via the social graph.

There’s also this related piece from AdWeek on user behavior, advertising and social networks: Poll: Few Use Social Media to Guide Purchases:

Knowledge Networks polling released this week finds fewer than 5 percent of social-media users age 13-54 “regularly turn to these sites for guidance on purchase decisions” in a range of common product/service categories.

The figure is a lackluster 4 percent in the “travel or travel services” and “banks or financial services” categories, and a mere 3 percent when it comes to “clothes or shoes,” “eating out or restaurants” and “personal care products.” It’s lower still for “cell/mobile phones and services,” “cars or trucks” and “groceries or food” (each at 2 percent) and lowest of all for “prescription or OTC drugs” (1 percent).

Social networks are not “directional media” — they’re not search — at least they haven’t emerged as viable alternatives to search. Twitter is a bit of a different story there although we’re still in Act I.

I would argue that social networks are primarily a branding medium, though the survey above disputes that a bit. With better search integration they could also drive query volume and paid search revenues. But perhaps that ship has sailed. If so, there is still the potential to be a source of trusted (local) recommendations and to create an ad model around that. That’s what Greitzer is getting at in arguing that FB should just buy Yelp.

Facebook, despite its deal with Microsoft for search, has failed (so far) in capitalizing on the search opportunity I allude to. This search for “sushi” is a case in point:

Web:

Facebook results:

The irony is that Facebook began life as a local site (organized around schools in specific places), yet it really has no local strategy or really good SMB ad strategy from what I know. But it still could be a huge force in local. (It does feature a lot of localized apps.)

There’s a question in my mind whether FB could build an effective local search experience at this point. It’s possible in the abstract but might not be in practice. So Greitzer’s suggestion is interesting from that point of view. FB probably wouldn’t want to pay what Yelp’s investors would want. The company has received roughly $30 million in funding and I’m guessing would want at least $200 million. I’m also going to guess that FB wouldn’t want to pay that in cash; one could imagine a stock deal (a la Twitter) and a similar rejection from Yelp. There are cheaper companies in the local search/directory space that FB could potentially buy.

I can see the multi-faceted local opportunity at Facebook so clearly (I even articulated it in specific detail to someone at FB who’s gone now), yet I don’t think the company is going to buy Yelp or otherwise realize its local potential.

Who thinks I’m wrong?

Yahoo Helping Newspapers with Online

AdAge reports that Yahoo!’s  APT platform is helping newspapers do a better job of selling display advertising online:

Cox Newspapers’ Atlanta Journal Constitution has sold targeted online ads for five years, but it didn’t have enough inventory to carve up. The audience slices it offered were often too small even for local advertisers. Joining the Yahoo partnership tripled its inventory to cover 70% of the Atlanta area — enough to let the paper successfully chase fast-food-franchise and telecom accounts previously devoted to broadcast and outdoor, according to the paper.

As the quote suggests newspapers can now compete with local TV and sell greater reach through Yahoo in addition to selling BT:

Hearst Newspapers is getting traction with the system and extra inventory from Seattle, where SeattlePI.com has outlasted the Post-Intelligencer in print, to Houston, where the Chronicle just started using the Yahoo platform on May 1. The papers have been able to win some spending from marketers’ radio and TV budgets, charging 15% premiums or more for the behavioral ads they sell, according to the company.

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Related: NYT Update on Yahoo!-Newspaper Consortium

Borrell: Direct Mail Next to Go

OK, I “sexed up” the headline a bit but the newest Borrell report predicts that direct mail will suffer mightily (-39%) over the next five years as ad spending continues to shift:

The firm sees email marketing taking a larger share of direct mail’s dollars and the local/SMB email segment growing significantly from where it is today.

Email marketing is underappreciated by many. My work with Opus Research has found that SMBs consistently rate email marketing as their most effective advertising tool. This is something that local media companies should bear in mind as they seek to diversify the suite of tools and services that they offer to their advertiser-customers.

Do you agree that direct mail dollars will shift directly to email and that “local email” will see this kind of growth?

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Here’s more discussion of the numbers in MediaPost.

Think Piece on Local Search from Mihm

Here’s another thoughtful article from David “GetListed” Mihm on local search (SEO & PPC). Thanks Will Scott for calling it to my attention.

Placecast Teams with Alcatel for Lo-Mo Ads

1020 Placecast and Alcatel-Lucent have teamed up for opt-in location-based mobile advertising, and specifically opt-in “geo-fencing.” Here’s how the release explains it:

As part of this service, 1020 Placecast leverages its unique ad engine to weave location information into highly relevant messages — enabling brands and advertising agencies with scalable, proximity marketing campaigns that will be pushed to consumers’ mobile devices in SMS and MMS formats. Alcatel-Lucent, leveraging its Geographic Messaging Services Platform (GMSP) as a hosted service, tracks opt-in subscribers’ locations on behalf of the service provider and pushes mobile content to the subscriber when and where is appropriate – based on the advertising campaign developed and managed by the 1020 Placecast platform.

Consumers will encounter the prompt to opt-in to receive these ads/messages in several ways. It could be in online ads, on a retailer website; it could be in-store — any number of ways.

Once they opt in they will be targeted with messaging if they enter the advertiser’s specified zone (e.g., within two miles of Palo Alto Shopping Center). This is the “geo-fence.” Alcatel-Lucent’s technology will convey the user’s mobile location to Placecast, which will serve the relevant brand/retailer message or ad (based on the user’s opt-in preferences) when the user gets within the zone.

The old LBS “fantasy” was the “Starbucks Coupon scenario”: you’re walking by a Starbucks and they beam you a coupon. This is a more sophisticated version of that scenario. The difference here is that users have previously opted-in to get the advertiser’s message (so it’s a mixture of push and pull). The objective is to drive in-store or real-world traffic.

There are lots of SMS based ad and opt-in mobile advertising and loyalty programs today (see, e.g., SmartReply). The geo-fencing precision is the novel dimension here.

In my research with Local Mobile Search we continue to ask consumers about their attitudes toward and interest in mobile advertising in various forms. In the abstract consumers often say they don’t want ads on their mobile phones. Consumer receptiveness to mobile advertising is a long discussion but the responses change if they’ve had experience with mobile ads and/or you show consumers a concrete benefit. This question was asked in Q3 2008:

Source: Opus Research/LMS (8/08, n=789)

Believe it or not this 43% number is very favorable. Over time consumer receptiveness to mobile marketing and advertising will continue to gain partly contingent on its presentation. There’s a much longer discussion here that I won’t get into now.

This Placecast program is a taste of the sophistication to come with location-based ads on mobile devices. The problem is not so much consumers or privacy concerns. Rather advertisers and agencies in general lag way behind both consumer adoption and the technology. From the WSJ piece on the Placecast and Alcatel-Lucent deal:

Ad executives say they need to see more research on how targeting ads based on location translates into sales.

“The question is always the same: Can we drive more sales?” says Alexandre Mars, head of mobile advertising at ad holding company Publicis Groupe and chief executive of its Phonevalley mobile-marketing agency.

In a year or so this question won’t be asked any more.

LBS is already real and, as I just said, it will become more central to online and mobile advertising going forward.

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If you want to hear a discussion on LBS advertising online and in mobile you can listen to the recorded webcast on the Placecast site and look for this module in the lower right (roughly an hour).

Skyhook Brings One-Click Location to Publishers

As I’ve written many times in the past, as location on the PC becomes more precise lots of interesting things happen for both users and advertisers. This is something I’ve also been talking to Skyhook Wireless CEO Ted Morgan for about three years.

Skyhook’s location awareness technologies (triangulation) are in many mobile devices now, but also in Mozilla’s Geode plug-in and, of course, the Skyhook PC Loki toolbar. Now the company has teamed up with an impressive list of publishers to bring “one-click” location to their sites. Among them:

* AllMenus.com (www.allmenus.com)
* BrightKite (www.brightkite.com)
* CitySquares (www.citysquares.com)
* Flickr (www.flickr.com)
* Krillion (www.krillion.com)
* Loopt (www.loopt.com)
* MapQuest (www.mapquest.com)
* NearbyNow (www.nearbynow.com)
* Outside.in (www.outside.in)
* Praized (www.praized.com)
* RedPlum (www.redplum.com)
* TheFind (www.thefind.com)
* WeatherBug (www.weatherbug.com)

Here’s what it looks like on WeatherBug:

It’s to the right of the location box on the nav bar at the top of the page:

If you’ve already got the Loki plug in, clicking will immediately takes you to a localized version of the page:

If you haven’t got the plug-in it prompts you to download it.

Once the plug-in is downloaded you’ll simply have to click the “Locate Me” link/button on the other participating sites to enable the triangulation. Many of these sites above already ask users to input location manually. So what does this bring to them? Its faster and theoretically offers a better user experience. MapQuest told me yesterday that in some cases people neglect to input a location in the where box. (Google recently added location/triangulation to its PC toolbar.)

Beyond the ability to localize a version of the site, there’s also the ability to do a better job of geo-targeting ads. This offers more precision than current IP-based geotargeting (down to the neighborhood level if desired). For example, the Volvo ad in the screenshot above could mention a local dealership or other relevant local information. The advertising dimension of this, however, is not going live with the “Locate Me” button. That will come later.

This development is a big deal and part of this broader trend toward greater location precision on the PC, as well as in mobile (which we all know about already).

Some folks are just starting to get a sense of the potential here — location is about more than pizza and plumbers, it’s also about brands — and how location will become more and more central to the user experience and online marketing.

New Facebook Dir. Reveals Local Apps Bounty

Long before the iPhone apps store there was Facebook Apps. But with so many developers and apps the directory had become something of a mess. Whether inspired by the desire to simply make it more usable or influenced by the mobile apps stores modeled on iTunes, Facebook has improved its apps directory:

Among other things it allows you to see more clearly is that there’s lots of local stuff in there . . .

Yellow pages (although there are more that didn’t show up in my search results):

Maps

Dining

General local

Events

City guides

An interesting question to consider is whether and/or how Facebook might seek to leverage (#wordkill) or translate these apps within its fast-growing mobile presence.

Glympse in the NY Times

Bob Tedeschi has a humorous and favorable NY Times column about new location aware service Glympse. Here’s my write up from the launch the other day.

The appeal of the service is in its simplicity. Tedeschi also reflects the game-like quality of watching his wife drive on Glympse. This novel dimension — person “at home” watching “person driving” while both are on the phone — is one of the other keys to its appeal.