Are Google’s local results costing your site traffic?

Google now integrates local results (Google Places) into ‘standard’ organic results and it’s going to push your site down and off the page. That means less traffic and response unless you do something about it. Mark Nunney investigates and shows you how to fight back.
In the following image you’ll see a Google search engine result page (SERP) for the keyword quality shoes. Only the top two ‘standard’ organic results (highlighted with a yellow border) will be seen without a scroll down the page.

After that top two, the results are ‘integrated local’ results (see these ’Place’ pages inside the red border below).

Google has decided that I (as the searcher) am based in Paddington, UK (part of central London). Google thinks I might want ‘local’ results – real world shops I can leave my house and go buy quality shoes in.

(By the way, I live in Cornwall, 260 miles away from London, but we’ll put that bit of lame geolocating to the side whilst acknowledging that Google will let me ‘Change Location’.)

There’s a ‘Places’ (local) map in the top right too.

Google has decided that my Keyword Deserves Local (KDL) results (or Query Deserves Local - QDL).

I’m not going to argue about whether or not my keyword does deserve local results. Nor shall we spend any time looking at the sometimes seemingly random choices of keywords that G decides do. Not here, anyway ;-)

I’m interested in what’s happening, how it will affect your sites’ traffic and response and what you might do about it.

Below is another Google SERP for which keyword deserves local (KDL). This time for debt advice and the local (Places) results are presented with a subheading (‘Places for debt advice near ...’).

But there are just three standard organic results showing above the fold. (Notice how hard it’s getting to distinguish the ads from the organic too?)

Keyword Deserves Local could cost you visits and response
. So Google is delivering more and more local results.
If your target keywords are deemed to ‘deserve local’ results then if:

• your site can’t appear in local (Google Places) results for every location in your target market (and whose can?); or

• you aren’t ranking top two or three

... then you’re going to be losing visitors in 2011.

Even the standard organic results (including those top two or three positions that might remain your last shot at getting any decent traffic from some searches) are influenced by the searchers’ location.

Searches made on mobile phones (increasingly important, of course) are even more likely to see local results.
You get the idea – your hard-worked-for organic results are getting squeezed of the first page of Google’s results pages. That means less traffic and response.

So what can you do about?
How to fight back against Keyword Deserves Local results

Unless you have an office or a shop in every town in every country you’re selling to, this is not going to be easy. Here is a list of actions you can take ...

• Get a Google Places listing for every office and shop you have.

• Find affected keywords. Monitor Google SERPs results to find out which of your prioritized target keywords Google deems deserve local. For those affected keywords ...

• Make the top two. Work like never before to get into those precious top two or three positions.

• Target other integrated results. Is Google also integrating results for Images, Videos, News, Products, Real Time or any other non-standard organic results? If so, target those results.

• Consider PPC.

• Hit the long tail. A major target keyword might get local results, eg debt advice and quality shoes in our examples. But their long tails might not eg, the many thousands of other keywords that contain debt advice and quality shoes.

An ironic example of this is that a search for local debt advice does not show integrated local results. Work that one out.

by Mark Nunney, 7 January 2011

You were told repeatedly that your participation on Facebook was no longer optional (but mandatory) and now you have proof.

You were told repeatedly that your participation on Facebook was no longer optional (but mandatory) and now you have proof. According to Website Mag, Bing announced an expansion of its partnership with Facebook yesterday and it’s a doozy. Bing will be enhancing its search results with Facebook Likes.

When you search for information on Bing, with “Liked Results” you will now see which of your Facebook friends liked that same result listing. Bing will also be enhancing its index with Facebook profile search. By pulling in your Facebook friends, Bing is essentially narrow down your list to those included in your own social graph. Bing is even enabling users to take action and add the friend directly or send them a message.

Before the Web’s privacy advocates double-over with worry, Bing’s “Liked Results” surface content that is specifically designated as “public” and linked to a person’s Facebook friends. According to Bing, “This is the same information someone could access by viewing their Facebook network directly, except it adds relevancy by being presented alongside “traditional” Bing search results.” Users will also be notified when the feature goes live and have an opportunity to disable the functionality if they so choose. The features will start rolling out this week with full features expected over the next few weeks – it will initially only be available in the U.S.

You were told repeatedly that your participation on Facebook was no longer optional (but mandatory) and now you have proof.

Bing announced an expansion of its partnership with Facebook yesterday and it’s a doozy. Bing will be enhancing its search results with Facebook Likes. When you search for information on Bing, with “Liked Results” you will now see which of your Facebook friends liked that same result listing.

Bing will also be enhancing its index with Facebook profile search. By pulling in your Facebook friends, Bing is essentially narrow down your list to those included in your own social graph. Bing is even enabling users to take action and add the friend directly or send them a message.

Before the Web’s privacy advocates double-over with worry, Bing’s “Liked Results” surface content that is specifically designated as “public” and linked to a person’s Facebook friends. According to Bing, “This is the same information someone could access by viewing their Facebook network directly, except it adds relevancy by being presented alongside “traditional” Bing search results.” Users will also be notified when the feature goes live and have an opportunity to disable the functionality if they so choose.

The features will start rolling out this week with full features expected over the next few weeks – it will initially only be available in the U.S.

Survey: More Americans get news from Internet than newspapers or radio

Is your business still relying on print media to reach your target market? This study will shed some light on why your advertising strategy isn't working. Social networking sites like Facebook have made news a more participatory experience, the survey suggests.

(CNN) -- More Americans get their news from the Internet than from newspapers or radio, and three-fourths say they hear of news via e-mail or updates on social media sites, according to a new report.
Sixty-one percent of Americans said they get at least some of their news online, according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
That's compared with 54 percent who said they listen to a radio news program and 50 percent who said they read a national or local print newspaper.
Almost all respondents, 92 percent, said they get their news from more than one platform.
"In the digital era, news has become omnipresent. Americans access it in multiple formats on multiple platforms on myriad devices," reads the report, based on a survey conducted in December and January. "The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone."
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have made news a more participatory experience than ever before, the survey suggests.

People share links to news stories by e-mail, post articles on their Facebook and other networking feeds and tweet them on Twitter -- often following up by discussing the articles on message boards and other sites.
Seventy-five percent of respondents said they get news forwarded through e-mail or posts on social networking sites, while 37 percent of online users said they've reported news, commented on a story or shared it on sites like Facebook and Twitter, the survey said.

"To a great extent, people's experience of news, especially on the Internet, is becoming a shared social experience ... ," reads the report. "[T]he advent of social media like social networking sites and blogs has helped the news become a social experience in fresh ways for consumers."
Most people said they use between two and five online news sources, and 65 percent said they don't have a single favorite Web site for news.

When looking for news online, people said they're most often seeking information about a common topic: the weather.
Eighty-one percent said they search for weather information online, followed by national news at 73 percent. Just over half -- 52 percent -- said they look for sports news, while 47 percent said they look for entertainment or celebrity news.

Online news users are generally younger than the average population, according to Pew. About two-thirds of the study's online news users were younger than 50, and nearly 30 percent were younger than 30.

Racially, that group is more white and Hispanic than the national average, while half of non-Hispanic black respondents said they get all of their news from offline sources.

Only television news still outpaces the Internet, with 78 percent of respondents saying they watch local news and 73 percent saying they view a national network or cable news channel like CNN, Fox News or MSNBC.

The report was based on a daily tracking survey of 2,259 adults age 18 or older. The margin of error for all respondents is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points -- 2.7 percentage points for Internet users. A combination of land line and cellular numbers was used in the survey.
By Doug Gross, CNNMarch 1, 2010 12:12 p.m. EST

Yahoo + Twitter

North Star Web Services just found out that Yahoo announced a partnership with Twitter and by the looks of the official announcement, it actually looks like the planned integration is far deeper than those of either Google or Bing.




Yahoo will integrate Twitter's real-time social feed for users of Yahoo!'s global network. The partnership will enable Yahoo users to access their personal Twitter feeds across Yahoo!'s products and properties including Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Sports, and update their status and share content from Yahoo! in their Twitter stream. More in line with how Google and Bing have used this Twitter "firehose", Yahoo! media properties like News, Finance, and Entertainment will include real-time public Twitter updates across a variety of topics. IMPORTANT: Yahoo! Search users will immediately see real-time Twitter results starting today.



“Let me try to capture the enormity of this integration in 140 characters or less: We’re turning the key to the online social universe — you will find the most personally relevant experiences through Yahoo!,” said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president, consumer products group, Yahoo!. “We’re also simplifying people’s lives by bringing their social worlds — and the world — together for easy access.”



No word at all from Yahoo! on how this will stand in the face of the pending Bing integration.

from Network Magazine by Peter Prestipino

Social Media Survey (2010)

Social media is an important and effective tool for businesses large or small. Are you taking full advantage of this, sometimes time consuming, but free advertising resource? The following article is the result of a study by Website Magazine in January. See how other businesses are using it...

Website Magazine readers weighed in on their social media initiatives in January. We received a total of 186 responses. These are your business peers, and here is what we learned.
We see tremendous value in social media. A whopping 81.7 percent of respondents said they will spend more time on social media this year than last year. Just 3.8 percent will spend less time, indicating that Website Magazine readers see opportunity and are aggressively pursuing it.
Website Magazine readers weighed in on their social media initiatives in January. We received a total of 186 responses. These are your business peers, and here is what we learned.
We see tremendous value in social media. A whopping 81.7 percent of respondents said they will spend more time on social media this year than last year. Just 3.8 percent will spend less time, indicating that Website Magazine readers see opportunity and are aggressively pursuing it.

We need to do a better job measuring success in social media. Just over half (58.6 percent) say they see a positive return on their social media investment. The remainder (41.4 percent) claim either they don't know if social media is providing a positive return, see no return or actually see a negative return. We can only assume this means the time commitment is too much. In short, our efforts need to be better quantified.

The biggest value our readers get from social media is increased website traffic (66.3 percent), followed by incoming links (36.5 percent) and better search engine placement (33.7 percent). Just 18 percent are selling more products using social media.

Overall, the least valuable social media site appears to be MySpace, no surprise there. However, considering the large percentage of B2C companies in the survey, it is surprising to see that Yelp is not providing more value. When we dig deeper, we found some interesting differences between social media usage of business-to-business (B2B) companies and business-to-consumer (B2C).

B2B companies find less value in Facebook (35.5 percent) than their B2C counterparts (47.5 percent) when asked if they "strongly agree" with the website's value to their company. Perhaps this is an indication that B2C companies are more adept with dealing directly with consumers, or that Facebook simply houses more of these companies' core audience. B2C companies also find more value in YouTube (34.8 percent 'strongly agree' vs. 23.9 percent) while B2B companies find more value in LinkedIn (39.2 percent 'strongly agree' vs. 21.6 percent). This information points to the critical importance of knowing your audience and choosing your network wisely.

We also received 149 type-in responses to "What is your primary goal using social media this year?" Find those responses on WebsiteMagazine.com.

•Drive more traffic to my website

•Engage with prospective customers and add value

•Increase website traffic and conversions

•To reach out to more people that are interested in the information I provide

•Gain more repeat business

•WOM & Buzz

•Connection, collaboration, network, marketing, sales

•Get more business visibility

•Press coverage via Twitter

•Establish myself as a leader in my field

•build brand awareness and loyalty

•Continue to grow awareness for our brand

•peer contacts with the same interests

•increase dialog and authentic personal relationships with customer base

•Increase customer awareness, move the needle toward ubiquitous presence

•Help customers with common business and personal interests to connect (and, of course, to draw new business in as well)

•To obtain new customers for local retail store.

•Connect with Non Profit organizations in Southern California

•Better search engine placement


Big thanks to everyone who participated. We are delighted to know that our readers take Web success seriously and that they value the thoughts and opinions of their peers.


Posted Feb 19 2010, 09:21 AM by Peter A. Prestipino at Website Magizine

Young Consumers are Internet Coupon Clippers

Young Consumers are Internet Coupon Clippers

A research study from Platform-A and IRI polled more than 36,000 panelists and found that online coupons hold great interest to Internet users - particularly the younger generations. The study revealed that nearly 4 out of every 10 shoppers would be "very likely" to use coupons accessed online. That number rises to 51% when polling the 18- to 24-year-old segment.

Other findings include that younger couples are the most likely life-stage group to use online coupons, and young couples without children are the most likely, followed by young couples with children.

It's a good time to offer online coupons. As Mark Ellis, senior vice president, AOL/Platform-A explains, "We have an economy that makes coupons much more relevant to the average consumer, a rising generation of families totally at home with the Internet, and an overall decline of the newspaper and its Sunday circular distribution. There's clearly a huge window of opportunity here."

Online coupons have a significant advantage over their paper-bound ancestors in that they can be distributed almost anywhere. Businesses can offer coupons through their websites, e-mail, networking applications like Facebook and Twitter, SMS, even 2D barcodes on posters, signs or magazine ads. Of course, there are also online coupon networks to leverage. Some popular choices for consumers, (therefore, places to list your coupons) are Coupons.com, RetailMeNot.com, Shopzilla.com, CoolSavings.com and CouponCabin.com.