Archive for December, 2010

I’ve just returned to the beautiful City of Roses after a fantastic packed-house AZIMA event in Scottsdale last night. Google is continuing its HotPot marketing blitz in our fair city via kiosks at PDX Airport, though judging by the lack of activity around this one in particular, Portlanders seem pretty non-plussed about it so far.

Obviously, it’s been a whirlwind last couple of months in Local Search…it may take all of next week to write the 2010 version of the Year in Review.  But I’ve had a few ideas bouncing around in my brain about Hotpot recently–why Google released it, and why they’re promoting it so hard, to the point [...]

It has been a struggle to get back into the groove over the weekend and the early part of the week. In case it wasn’t obvious from my liveblog, last week’s BIA / Kelsey Group ILM show in Santa Clara left me feeling nothing short of overwhelmed by the pace at which our industry is evolving.

I’m blogging live from the Kelsey Group’s Interactive Local Media Conference in Santa Clara for the next couple of days. Truly looking forward to hearing what the rockstar panelists have to say today, tomorrow, and Thursday…last year’s show was one of my favorite conferences ever. I’ll be in-and-out of meetings for the whole conference but will do my best to keep up with as many panels as I can and will follow-up with a full recap this weekend.

Seems like everyone is talking about the New York Times story over the weekend about Vitaly Borker and his shortsighted PR strategy to garner a bunch of bad publicity, partly in order to rank at Google.

Everyone from Danny Sullivan to Jessica Lee to Greg Sterling to Google itself has weighed in on the controversy.

Thing is, Local Search experts have long speculated that the valence of reviews has had an extremely low, if any, impact on rankings, whereas the volume of reviews has always been considered one of the strongest factors.