I read Himmelstein on G’s Local Biz Referral Program with interest. I find Marty’s musings very thought-provoking and much more deeper than 99% of local-search talk out there. But I also feel the need to disagree (to a certain level) – some things touted as positives have a negative side to it. First off, Google’s [...]
The thing about local blogs is … unless you live in a city, you likely don’t know it exists. The only reason I know of Gothamist LLC was because of their Toronto blog – Torontoist. So with that in mind, I’ve been amazed at how established some local blogs are. While reading about Bloggers Bring [...]
The traditional Yellow Pages companies depend on the number of books distributed to charge their advertisers the maximum possible. As such, it creates an (obvious) incentive to keep distribution numbers as high as possible. It has been quite common to talk about the real distribution number vs stated number – it is a very common [...]
A few days late, but better late than never. Today Bloggy Network announced the launch of is My Home. A mini-network blog, focused around cities. Launched in nine cities, we should be in at least a dozen by month’s end. This all ties into iBegin‘s increasing reach into the local space. While not part of [...]
I have a post over on the iBegin Blog about messy geodata. I’ve also included a little peak into something iBegin should be rolling out soon.
There are a few headaches with local. While my current headache is as ambiguous as you can get, the persistent headache has always been search. Search isn’t fun. Providing relevance for what a user is looking for is a painful task really – you take what a user searches, try to build relationships between what [...]
Read this first on The Local Onliner, BackFence, one of the more visible hyperlocal sites has bit the dust. BackFence almost feels like the old grandpa of the entire hyperlocal market – there are now half a dozen other sites all trying to crack hyperlocal (including a few of our customers of iBegin Source). I [...]
The most popular specific searches across our local properties are always brand names – Sears, [local grocery chain], McDonalds, etc etc. What has always boggled my mind is if you visit a franchise/national brand store (eg Sears or McDonalds), they all have a franchise locater. It is an obvious feature that people would like. But [...]
And I am happy to pronounce the launch of our geocoding service – iBegin Geocoder. We now feature: City sites (eg Toronto) Business data/listings Weather Geocoding Whew
The first of my previously mentioned three releases, this is a soft launch of our geocoding service: iBegin Geocoder. Basically enter any address in the US/Canada, and it can convert it to GPS coordinates. Enter any lat/long in the US/Canada, and it can give you the address it translates to, the nearest intersection, and the [...]