It is Official. The Jewel of San Diego, La Jolla, once nestled on a prime stretch of Pacific, has taken root in a new exciting? location. With the help of Google and its location-based search, La Jolla, rated by the Robb Report as the Best Place to Live in America, has uprooted itself from its San Diego base and found itself in Fullerton, California….A major concern of the move has been the effective decrease in property value as La Jolla’s new location under the 57 overpass in Fullerton has found La Jolla’s housing market stifled to say the least. At its coastal location, the median home price sat around $964,000. In its new location near Fullerton, La Jolla’s average home price is teetering around $380,000”

Note to La Jolla - maybe it’s time to claim your Google Place Page.

And for more on La Jolla and the Little Mermaid I recommend checking out the Greatest Phone Message in the World.

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· 90 percent of SMB Plus Spenders have a Web site, versus 62 percent for average SMBs.
· Plus Spenders use more types of online media, and spend more for online advertising (well duh): In the past 12 months, Plus Spenders spent 26 percent of their total ad budget on online media, versus 21.8 percent for average SMBs, a difference of 4.2 points.
· Plus Spenders spend an appreciable amount of their total budget on broadcast media: 16.1 percent of their budget is allocated to broadcast media compared with 1.3 percent for all SMBs.

Interesting to see that SMBs are pushing more budget into online v. broadcast. I would have thought that online was growing faster but would still be a smaller % of the budget. Also interesting to see how much more Plus Spenders rely on broadcast v. their el cheapo SMB brethren.
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1. Facebook Places will (and probably already has) become the Twitter of location check-ins.  Anyone creating an application that relies on check-ins will need to use Facebook Places as its foundation.  And anyone who didn’t know what a check-in was two days ago probably knows what it is now.
2. This is actually awesome news for everyone, maybe even Foursquare, GoWalla, MyTown and the rest of the location-based-service crowd.  Let Facebook spend the resources refining how check-ins work, maintaining the integrity of the local data, etc.  Let everyone else build cool stuff on top of it and add value, kind of like the way Twitter works.  In a way this is a blessing in disguise for the Yellow Pages crowd.  They can jump-start a location-based effort much faster, instead of being left in the dust by all of the cool kids at the party.  Not that you’re not cool YP guys.  You’re beautiful babe, don’t ever change (that is unless you want to survive).
3. Maybe you don’t want to rely on Facebook check-ins as your backbone.  It’s pretty easy to spam and I wonder if Facebook is going to spend the resources to solve that problem.  As my brother-in-law commented as soon as I had checked into the Pleasanton Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints while sitting in my bedroom, “What?”  (Note to HBO, there is a potential Big Love viral thing here).  So I believe there is a lot of potential for the Foursquares of the world to create a more secure version of check-ins that solve these kinds of issues and become the necessary way that businesses interact with the system.
4. This is going to get a lot more businesses involved with the whole check-in thing.  When you see your cousins start checking in all over the place you are going to start to put two and two together.  And when you see your first customer check in perhaps the light bulb will go on in your head.  And when you see that people start commenting when your check in shows up in friends’ feeds maybe then you’ll realize that businesses that don’t have a giant “Check In On Facebook Places & Get A Free Cup of Coffee/Tire Inspection/Spinal Exam/EyeGlass Tune Up/Happy Ending, etc” sign are missing out on perhaps the cheapest, most efficient form of viral marketing there is.
5. And don’t even get me started on the SEO implications of having a crawlable Facebook Places Page for every business out there.

Well played Facebook.

Further reading on the subject:
5 Reasons Why Facebook Pages is Kind of a Big Deal (Duct Tape Marketing)
Facebook Places How To Avoid Getting Caught Out By Your Partner (Pocket-Lint.com)
Announcing Facebook Places for Advertisers (Facebook)
Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Places (The Next Web)
Local Search War Gets Hot: Facebook Joins the Game (David Mihm)
Facebook Places Launches (Failbook)
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Dear Uber Secretary of US Government Efficiency:

Please note the following:

1. .gov sites seem to do pretty well SEO-wise
2. seems to me that USPS.gov, and any other .gov site, could add some pretty great content to the site and optimize it so that it can get a lot of traffic for high value keywords
3. Pop some Adsense on the pages (or some affiliate deals - I bet you can get a great CPA from FedEx)
4. Deficit solved

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Another feature is the ability to call any business in Google Search. This does not have to be a company in your local contacts app — it can be any business.

I haven’t seen this in action yet, but if it acts the way I think it does then there will be one less reason to do a mobile Web query for a business.  Google Place Pages are already sucking away traffic from local directory services but if a lot of people start using Google’s “Voice Action” to search, then people will just be directly connected to the business, which is great for users, but bad for anyone who is trying to connect customers with businesses.  There will still be opportunities for service category queries (e.g. pizza in pleasanton) but big bro is watching those as well.
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As a little test I’ve posted a job Microsoft pinged me about yesterday.  Here’s a summary of the position.  If you are into SMB marketing (and acronyms) this could be the job for you:

Senior Marketing Manager, Global Trade Marketing
Microsoft Mobile Advertising (MoAd)

Microsoft Advertising (MSA) is looking for a star Senior Marketing Manager with an outstanding track record in local/online/digital marketing and a strong passion for emerging/mobile media to lead the global mobile advertising trade marketing team’s efforts around Small & Medium Sized Business (SMB), local and commerce. This is a high-impact, high-visibility opportunity for an experienced marketing manager looking to help build and scale a significant new business for Microsoft. The role is based in Redmond and will report to the Global Director of Trade Marketing, Microsoft Mobile Advertising Solutions.

Here’s the Full description.

If you are interested, please ping me at localseo @ localseoguide.com or on Twitter at @localseoguide and I’ll hook you up.  If you get the job, your first paycheck buys beers for anyone subscribing to my RSS feed.

And on a totally unrelated note, I fixed some duplication issues this blog has had for about a year and once again I rank #1 for “soup nazi“.  There is a God after all, and he serves damn good soup.

Anyhow, I just came across a similar story from Jonah Stein about a Berkeley Toyota dealer that did his wife wrong.  In this case it sounds like the Steins were treated shabbily by the dealer and the dealer ultimately decided not to do business with them because he was afraid the Steins would trash him in their customer satisfaction survey.

Maybe search marketers should have to disclose what they do when they enter into a customer service situation.  Then again, maybe businesses shouldn’t treat customers poorly and then provide disincentives to make it right.

Hey doc, here are some alternative ideas:

The Online Reputation Management Guide (OutSpoken Media)

Managing and Improving Your Business’ Reputation Online (GetListed.org)

8 Simple Reputation Management Emergency Measures (Tad Chef)

How To Use The Web To Build a Powerful Reputation in Any Industry (doshdosh)

Why Reputation Management Matters for Small Businesses (Matt McGee)

50+ Sites To Help Bury Negative Posts About Your Company! (Jeff Quipp)

Free Online Reputation Management Beginners Guide (Marketing Pilgrim)

And if you are a patient of the above doctor and want to see how to far you can push that gag order down his throat check out this post by Ann Smarty on how to spread a negative reputation online.

But here’s a data point of one:

The Main Street Meat N Fish Market recently opened in Pleasanton.  My wife asked me to find their hours so I went to Google and queried “pleasanton meat n fish market“.  At the top of the SERP was this result from Patch.com (congrats to them!) but no Google Place Page for the business.  The Patch article pointed to their website, but it’s serving GoDaddy ads right now.  I clicked on the Maps link to see if there was a local listing for this new biz but again there was nothing there.

I went back to the Web SERPs, scanned the results and found Main Street Meat N Fish Market’s Facebook Page, which, lo and behold, had their phone number and store hours, not to mention 151 fans (152 now).  And check out how the Wall aspect of this page makes it so much more interesting than a Google Place Page that has a bunch of scraped data from all over the place:

This made me wonder if more new SMBs weren’t claiming/creating a Facebook page v. a Google Place Page.  Inevitably many will do both, but Facebook may have the edge, particularly with new businesses.

A from-the-gut reasons why that could be happening - Many SMBs may already be on Facebook participating socially, so it’s not a big stretch to think that they would try to use their FB network to promote their biz.  And it’s certainly easier than building your own website.

While probably 100% are “on” Google too, the relatively “dead” feeling of Google Place Pages and the lack of the social net on GOOG doesn’t provide the same community feel as these Facebook Pages.  And a Google Place Page seems more like a “set it and forget it” kind of thing, while the SMB will likely visit its Facebook Page daily, and participate in the conversation there (if there is one of course).

A while ago I wondered aloud if Facebook was the new local Borg.  It’s still too early to tell, but I know one purveyor of dead animals that was just assimilated.

Resistance doth indeed seem futile.

UPDATE: Just got a call from a friend in town.  At the end of the conversation she said, “So you like the new meat market?”  I said “huh?”  She said “I saw you on their Facebook Page.”

We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us…We are the Borg.

1. The number of mobile subscribers accessing business directories on a mobile phone increased 14 percent year-over-year to 17.3 million users in March 2010
   
2. the number of people accessing business directories on a mobile device at least once per week increased more than 16 percent year-over-year to nearly five million in March 2010.
   
   
3. 42 percent year-over-year growth in the number of mobile subscribers using apps to access business directories.
   
4. On the non-mobile side - Searches on IYPs and portal sites increased 4 percent to 444 million in March 2010, or 5.3 billion annually
   
5. Traffic to IYPs from web search sites increased three points from the first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010, to 44 percent of visits.
   

The YPA doesn’t break down the data by specific IYPs so it’s hard to tell how much of this growth is happening because traditional yellow pages players v. brash upstarts like Yelp, etc.  Additionally it’s unclear if the growth in traffic to IYP sites is because of increased search volume, SEO, PPC or all of the above.  So it’s hard to say why searches on IYPs and portal sites increased. Is it because they bought more traffic, changed their UIs, etc?

It’s interesting that there was a drop in affiliate referrals, but again without knowing how Comscore defines “affiliates” it’s hard to see what’s going on here.

That said, it’s no big surprise that local search and local mobile search is continuing to grow.  More people are using smartphones, more local businesses are increasing their Web presences and more services are being created to improve the local search experience.  All in all a good time to be in the local-mobile space.

I just wanted to stop by and give you a quick update on things here at Superpages.com regarding seo love. As of last week, we will no longer be using nofollow tags when linking to an advertiser’s website from their business profile.

To follow up on what James Johnson said in late May, we will do this for advertisers and not just any business profile. In the search engines’ eyes when a site links to another, they pass part of their reputation to that site. Of course search engines are constantly monitoring both inbound and outbound links, which is why it is a priority to make sure we are not linking to any bad neighborhoods.

As you know, links are only one small part of the ranking process. It isn’t a coincidence that the websites that rank well are already optimized for their target keywords. You may have many links, but if you aren’t saying the right things in terms of titles, headings, and keywords, it won’t matter as much in the end. Get some relevant content, compliant code, and you will take better advantage of those links.

We work hard to establish a strong reputation and serve as a trusted source for consumers and businesses. Now, via follow links, our advertisers have yet another reason to trust in us and reap some backlink benefits.

Thanks,

Keith Brown
Search Marketing Analyst
SuperMedia LLC

Well done Supermedia.

Feel free to throw a few more links this way with “andrew” in the anchor text to reinforce my position of global andrew domination. :)  That dude at #2 has owned the #1 spot for years.

I love the smell of #1 in image search in the morning.  It smells like #victory.

According to Patrick this is the same whether the listing is verified or unverified.

Some thoughts as to why GOOG did this:

1. For the majority of cases GOOG thinks their Place Pages are a better experience for users than the typical SMB website
2. There are plenty of ad units on the Place Pages and why send traffic to a SMB website when you can make a few more bucks by getting in the user’s way?
3. If they make the big change to the local SERPs nationwide, IYPs will lose a lot of traffic and be forced to buy more via Adwords.  This tactic makes a lot more inventory available.