ionadas local LLC

Yelp Goes it Alone

TechCruch reported last week that Google Places has been purged of Yelp review content.

This results from a kerfuffle between Yelp and Google over the usage of reviews and other data from Yelp by Google within its Google Places listing. There’s a long history between the two companies of one using the other’s content, that one stopping using that content, one trying to purchase the other, and the other walking away from purchase negotiations.

Yelp’s current stance seems to be that they want to be paid if Google uses their content. Google isn’t all that interesting in paying.

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has stated that they’re fine with being excluded from Google Places. I suspect they see most of their traffic coming from their smart-phone apps, which include the powerful, useful, and very cool Yelp Monocle.

If Google limits them to the increasingly-irrelevant-for-local-queries organic results, then that works for them.

For several years now, the recipe for business success online has been to worship at the Google altar. Now yet another major playing in local marketing has pushed Google away.

Google Local Business Center Misbehaving

The local listing service from Google is a buggy system. It’s not unusual for a change (or new listing) to be submitted, to show that it was accepted, and then to have disappeared when you check a few days later. It’s the nature of the beast, and rechecking your work is part of the process.

Things have gotten much worse in the last week or so. A number of changes I’ve submitted via the Local Business Center are not being reflected within Google Maps. They do seem to be saved within the LBC, but are not being transferred over to the public listing itself.

This is reflected by a number of comments at the Google Maps Help site. So far, no official comment from Google about the problem.

ionadas local will continue to monitor the listings of its clients very closely while all this is going on.

Hat Tip to SEO Roundtable for the link.

Local Search Comparison: [coffee shop austin]

On occasion, I’ll run the same query on multiple search engines to see how the results differ. Today I decided to look at a search phrase near and dear to my own heart: [coffee shop austin].

All queries were run through an internet connection in Cedar Park, Texas (just northwest of Austin). I was not logged into any of the search engines, so impact from personalized search should have been minimal. The captures were what was visible on my screen, which is set at 1440×900.

Disclosure: I don’t have any clients in the coffee industry at this time.

First let’s look at Google (click on the screen shot to see a larger version):

Both the Google Map listings and the first few organic listings show a nice selection of local coffee shops, although there seems to be a strong bias towards the central part of town. The Google Map listings also show a strong bias towards shops with lots of reviews.

The paid listings are a mess, however. Other than Austin Roasting Company, none of them actually sell coffee. Might want to work on the relevancy, Google.

Next up, Yahoo.

First thing I notice is how little content there is on the screen. Between organic, map and advertisements, we’re looking ten listings total. The same query on Google showed nineteen.

The “Also try” line is wasted space. I searched on [coffee shop austin]. Is [coffee shop austin texas] really going to be that much better.

I’m only able to see two organic listings. The first is a coffee shop in Winter Park, Florida. I suppose the link to YellowPages.com is useful, but it seems like an admission that Yahoo can’t deliver the information directly.

And given the number of coffee shops in this city, three map listings seems rather anemic.

As for the paid ads, at least they had one coffee shop in there. It was Starbucks, but what can you do? The rest seemed of more interest to those who own coffee shops then those who might want to visit a coffee shop.

Bing… I knew ya when you went by Live.com. And when you went by MSN Search. You’re like that weird, quiet little cousin that you only see every ten years at a family reunion, but don’t really know.

Having seven listings on the map is nice, but the map itself is almost impossible to read.

Of the four organic listings shown, three are actually coffee shops in Austin. Not bad, Microsoft. Again the Florida coffee shop is on top. It appears that Yahoo and Bing don’t use local signals within their organic listings as strongly as Google does. With “Austin” in the name, it’s not surprising that it comes up.

The paid listings are probably the worst so far, with none of them actually taking me to the website of an Austin coffee shop.

And how about Ask.com, the search engine everyone forgets about?

I like the map. It’s easy to read and has ten full listings. It’s completely biased towards downtown, however.

And I really like the “Other Location Matches” pulldown menu. That’s a very nice addition.

Ask doesn’t both to show any traditional organic listings above the fold.

The paid ads are, um, interesting. Real estate and online recipes from grocery store Randalls? That’s not targeted. At least our buddies $tarbucks are there again.

We’ll close this afternoon with the new kid on the block, WolframAlpha.

Well, that’s one big goose egg. It seems it was able to compute that it was about Austin and coffee but that’s about it. It’ll be interesting to see if they get better with geographic queries in the future.