Small Business SEM

It’s not happening quickly, but Yahoo continues to integrate Flickr photo content across its network. The newest instance I’ve seen is on Yahoo’s Local News beta site. Here’s the Yakima-Pasco local news page:

If you were to follow the link above the photo, and then scroll down just a tiny little bit, you’ll find this little [...]

MSN’s Local Search property, Live Search Maps, used to rely on Localeze for all its business listings. If you wanted to add or edit a listing in MSN Local, that’s where you went to take care of it.
That’s since been replaced by MSN’s own Local Business Listings Center, which operates quite similarly to Google’s [...]

When you do a business name/city name search on Google, there’s a good chance you’re going to get a Local Onebox result returned with the business name, a link to its web site, and a map showing its location. But what about when the business has no web site? And also hasn’t claimed a listing [...]

It’s no secret that customer reviews can have a big impact on sales and conversions for businesses of any size. But getting customers to leave reviews in the right places isn’t an easy proposition.
My friend Michael Jensen and his company, Solo SEO, hopes to change this with the introduction of Leave Feedback:
LeaveFeedback.org helps local businesses [...]

In response to news this week that affiliate marketers appear to be placing affiliate URLs into prominent hotel listings on Yahoo! Local, a Yahoo! official confirmed today that they’re “looking into it,” and suggested the situation may not be as bad as the reports make it appear to be.
Brian Gil, Director of Product Management for [...]

I’m at SES New York this week and enjoyed a really solid session in the Kelsey track called “Video Made the SMB Star” — it really opened my eyes to what’s going on with local search and video content. Best of all, my wife was sitting next to me during the session and is equally [...]

In light of my weekend post about ratings and reviews not mattering when local listings are shown in the Yahoo! Shortcuts, we had a little dustup today and it turns out the original post needs clarifying. Here’s the real and accurate story:
Ratings (stars) are taken into account, but review text is not.
That’s word-for-word from Yahoo! [...]

When search engine employees appear on panels at SEO/SEM conferences, they’re usually hamstrung by company PR regulations about what they’re allowed to say. And usually, they’re not allowed to say much. There are exceptions, of course, but one of the more common phrases you’ll hear from SE reps is “I can’t say anything more than [...]