Frequent readers know that for five months a year, I have college basketball on the brain. But while the hardwood is vacant, I happily fix my gaze upon the college gridiron for a few months. My assertion with this article is that the college football BCS serves as a great analogy for Local Search–only in this case BCS stands for “Best Citation Sources.” The post looks at why InfoUSA, SuperPages, Acxiom, Localeze, Yelp and InsiderPages are so important in Local Search.

I continue my monthly website design award series, showcasing seven websites I’ve come across recently deserving of special mention. Featured this month are HellYeahDude, 5th Avenue Theatre, Unit Interactive, Jonathan Yuen, the School District of Philadelphia, Trale, and Conde Nast Portfolio.

Amidst all the negative publicity from the failed Microsoft merger (that, like the old man in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail, appears to be “not dead yet”), Yahoo is proving that it still has the potential to be an innovative company. Their Local Search interface blows Google’s away.

A Soon-to-Be Must for Small Businesses
My friend Eric Lander, in addition to writing some very nice things about me and the Local Search Ranking Factors project yesterday, also highlighted a very important news note in the Local space: Best of the Web has just launched a Local directory, appropriately named BOTW Local.
Greg Hartnett, President of [...]

I invited 20 leaders in the Local Search Marketing community to rate the importance of 47 criteria with respect to their influence on rankings in the Google and Yahoo Local “Universal” search algorithms (those that drive the 3-pack, 10-pack, and authoritative onebox search results and NOT the standard organic algorithms). Selected responses and some commentary from yours truly are contained in this post, as well as a link to the full survey results.