What is Zooomr? Well, it is very much like Flickr, except Zooomr is very interested in “where” you take pictures, and provides tools for you to Geo tag your photos. So it’s sort of like a flickr+Googlemaps+frappr mashup. Ahh, ok, got it….. Oh except it allow for audio comments on its photo’s as well, so […]

This seems like a very interesting company, it’s a tool that allows a businesses to create locally targeted coupons that customers can find online, print, and bring into the business.
Now, for the sake of full disclosure my company Local Zing Inc. is an affiliate, in other words if I do refer them business I […]

Looks like google has finally unvieled some product/service specific searches that have spawned from “google base” (googles answer to craigslist).
The google real estate search can be seen here

and

The google auto search can be found here

hat tip

Paid search continues to provide excellent ROI for marketers, and a recent survey from ad:tech finds that 52% of marketers stated it was “great—outperforms other tactics”
Article on BtoB online
and
Article from MarketingVox

It’s not surprising that more people do searches for “plastic surgeon” in California than any other region, but I must say, I was surprised at the volume of searches in Texas.

Monthly Search Volume Estimates December 2005 * for terms that include “plastic surgeon”

# of Searches
Keyword/Region

290,634
plastic surgeon

16,443
california (OC, newport beach, san diago, […]

The Wall Street Journal reports that auto-classified ads in newspapers plummeted 16% in December, yes folks a 16% drop in one month, sounds like a continued exodus. This is a trend that has been continuing for 7 straight quarters.
Auto Ads Veer Off Newspaper Pages, Head to Web
Dealers that have discovered advertising on the web […]

In follow up to my recent post on GM pointing users to “google pontiac”, i’ve noticed that some companies are cashing in, namely mazda.
When you advertise on keywords on Google, you have a set budget and once you hit that budget your ads stop showing up. It would have been great if local dealers […]

Pontiac is telling people to “google pontiac”, now if only local car dealerships can cash in they could be capturing leads and phone enquiries from this regional campaign.

Last night watching the Daily Show I was quite stunned to see a commercial from pontiac, in which the closing statement was
Don’t take our word for it, […]

These are three sites that you must know about if you want to sell a product or service locally:

Craigslist.org - the 600LB gorilla of classified ads, you can list products and services for sale here, extremely high traffic
Upcoming.org - List upcoming events, seminars, happenings here for free, just purchased by Yahoo so traffic is sure […]

The market for online ads will increase 32 percent to $16.6 billion next year, fueling growth at companies including Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston analyst Heath Terry said in a research report. He had previously forecast 21 percent growth.

Online Ad Growth Accelerates, Outpacing Newspaper, TV Spending

According to Jupiter Research, 22% of all new car sales in the U.S. will be Internet-generated in 2004. Forrester reports that dealers currently spend as much as $700 monthly for Web site hosting and $10,000 per month for third party Internet leads for every franchise in the dealership, and that consumer use of third party […]

3 out of 4 online consumers looking for an automobile dealer use a search engine to find that dealer (Insight Express Study for Google, 2003)
More that 50% of automotive searches on the web happen on the google ad network (StatMarket, 2004)
Local commercial searches - those seeking merchants “near my home or work” represent 25.1% of […]

Most of the online advertising dollars for services are being spent by aggregators, essentially directories that have invested creating a directory in a particular service vertical. These span from sites that genuinely create content and value like edmunds.com in the auto industry to just industry directories like www.beautyschoolsdirectory.com or www.LegalMatch.com for lawyers.
If you are in […]

Just added some interesting case studies that detail the success of various companies using the LocalZing platform:
All the case studies can be found here: http://localzing.com/case-studies/

Auto Dealership Case Study (pdf)
Auto Glass Company Case Study (pdf)
Plastic Surgion Case Study (pdf)

A good Fortune magazine article that highlights the benefits of pay per click advertising for even small local businesses, and some incredible ROI numbers:
Even local firms can benefit from a search-engine strategy. “With local search, which is available now on the major search engines, it’s possible to have your ads show up only for people […]

Many of the big companies are jumping on the blog bandwagon but what about small businesses?
All businesses could benefit from creating a blog, not because its the latest trend, but it forms the cheapest, most organic way of generating a dialogue and a deeper relationship with customers and partners.
A blog is really an […]

Very good article from searchenginewatch.com on the topic of local search marketing tactics.
Local Search Marketing Tactics

An excelent blog on the topic of local search engine marketing.
Local Search… Is Your Business Ready?