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A post over at Mike Blumenthal’s blog on Understanding Google Maps & Local Search regarding receiving a score of 100% in the Local Business Center for completeness of your Local Listing got me thinking.

Carter Maslan, Director of Product Management for Google answered a series of questions from Mike back in June about the new data rich Desktop for the Local Business Center. One little gem of an answer indicated that the percentage of completeness (say that 10 times fast) doesn’t have any bearing on your ranking in the 10-pack (or #-pack, depending on the day.)

Mike’s post showed us that use of categories doesn’t contribute to percentage of completion at all – but experience tells us that use of categories can have a profound effect on your ranking.

The irony: Google is showing a score for relevance based on how complete your listing is for human consumption, yet not for how complete your listing is for the search engine to show your listing to the humans you’re being scored for.

Did you know Unk Snargletoe the caveman invented the round wheel?

You don’t know for sure, because you weren’t there.  But my mother in law was… and she told her son, her best friend Gilda, her hairstylist, the checkout man at the natural grocery store, six people in her book club and called me (to let me know I was not feeding her son the way she used to) and let the news of the wheel slip.  Behold!  In thirty days, everyone got rid of their square wheels (that were murder on the paved streets) and bought into the new round wheels.  There was much rejoicing and the whole world was changed.

Ask any small business owner who was around in the 50′s and 60′s what the best type of advertising was and without doubt they will all say it was word of mouth.  Back then, if your apartment was flooded and you could not turn off the water main, you probably called Gus the plumber because he was the same guy who saved your sister when her basement flooded. You undoubtedly stayed with him too and even sent him a nice card for the holidays. When your son moved down the street with his new wife and baby, he took Gus the plumber’s name with him.  Now they use Gus the plumber’s son, Gus Jr, because he too, comes recommended.

Word of mouth.  It is the trusted evaluation with the human touch. It is the story passed down from generation to generation.  It is the oration that turns simple white lies into urban myths and it is the legitimacy of  ”he said, she said”. In these times, it is also social media marketing. Many think social media marketing is relatively new.  It is not new, but the tools are. One thing for sure, social media is evolving very quickly. As soon as an advertising agency was able to monetize it, it became a viable means of advertising.  Good thing too, as this web site stuff was getting boring.  The question I put out for people to talk about is:  With the emergence of social media, that enables cross media pollination of an internet presence, do we really need the static web sites of old?  Most static web sites invite the reader to… well… read.  Social media transforms the reader into a  participant.  Social media invites participants to interract with others and develop a network of people and freely exchange information. Just like the historic word of mouth advertising model.

What forms of social media work best for different sectors of business?  Can social media be effectively applied to a corporate model or is it just a toy for college students?

What are the questions you would like answered?

2 days ago Google launched a new dashboard for the Local Business Center, allowing users to see the statistical data associated with use of their local listings. The information available is as follows (taken directly from an entry on the Google Lat Long Blog):

Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.

Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for “tea” or “coffee”?
Zip codes where driving directions come from: Which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.

Even if you’re a brand new user, just claiming your local listing for the first time, you’ll be able to see data from the last month.

Read the full article from Google here.

So it is Friday… and the latest version of #FollowFriday blog post hit the rails this morning from WordStream.com. Those guys do a great job there of bringing to the forefront issues that companies should be conscious about. Today’s food nugget for thought that I latched onto pertains to social media ownership and specifically, Twitter. Below is the blurb I want to address from WordStream.com’s blog.

Another interesting topic this week was well summarized by Search Engine Journal’s Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) entitled “Lawyers, Guns, and Twitter – Who Owns Your Twitter Account.”  This was written on the heels of a Business Week survey that showed a disparity between c-level executives and employees on the topic of social media ownership.  While “60% of c-level executives believe they have a right to know how their employees represent themselves and their companies on social networking sites, 53% of employees believe their activities on social networking sites should be of no concern to employers” according to the survey. Combining Gabe’s own experience as a marketing consultant and social media participant with the legal opinion of Mike Pisauro, we have a while to go before this becomes a black and white issue (Grey Hat Tweeting, anyone?).

As you may expect, the proper course of action is related to various factors such as Twitter equity, company expectation and job description.  For the lucky ones out there, the answer can be found in your SNEA.

For the rest of us, it depends on the situation.  Your choices and recommended actions are summarized below. Which one do you fall under? Be careful which one you choose, especially if you’re tweeting on company time!

1) A Grandfathered Twitter Account: You had an existing Twitter account when you joined the company and Tweeting was not listed as a core responsibility

• Verdict: Twitter account belongs to you

2) A Grandfathered Twitter Account PLUS Job Responsibility:  Same as above with the caveat that employee has agreed to use his or her Twitter account to help promote the company

• Verdict: Check your SNEA or consider slicing followers depending on when they started following you (if they started to follow you before the job, they’re yours, if it happened after your hire, they’re the companies)

3) Work-Related Twitter Account: Employee sets up a personal Twitter account at request the of company to help promote said company

• Verdict: Twitter account belongs to company

4) Social Media Marketer Account: The Twitter account was set up upon hire as the Social Media Marketer for the company and doesn’t have its own equity

• Verdict: Account belongs to the company

5) Social Media Marketer PLUS Existing Account: If your Twitter account existed before you joined the company, but you were hired specifically as the company’s Social Media Marketer, the outcome may be different from option above

• Verdict: Twitter account belongs to you assuming company didn’t make specific request to buy your Twitter account upon hire

David Leonhardt followed up with a post that said the above scenarios neglect to ask whose name the Twitter account is in, and that may make things even more confusing.

Bottom line, says David, in who owns your Twitter account?  Answer: Twitter does.  

So the question I want to pose is thus:  Where is the line?  I see a hundred tweets a day from individuals who are using their Twitter accounts to represent a business, who post tweets telling the universe that they just saw a great home run at the local baseball game. Shouldn’t we then consider the true purpose of entities like Twitter to be to develop relations in general?  If so, are we now considering our Twitter network to be nothing more than an extensive contact list that becomes the intellectual property of our companies?  If that is the case, leaving a company and leaving your Twitter network behind certainly could start to feel like a divorce, where everything is divided up… like friends.

Thoughts?

I was reviewing a client’s Google local listing today and I noticed a link to a Google Local Business Center Feedback survey that I hadn’t seen before. It’s not showing up in all my client accounts, just some of them.

I took the survey, it allows space at the end to include the things you like about the Google Local Business Center as well as problems you have encountered and things that you don’t like about the interface or the functionality. You can also submit your email address at the end of the survey for contact regarding your survey or further research opportunities.

I’m curious as to whether this is a new survey Google has issued after all the recent changes in their local listings or if it’s a survey that’s been around for a while and I’m just now seeing it. Has anyone else out there seen it, and if so, how recently?

In a blog post this morning on Search Engine Watch, Mark Jackson came REALLY close to tweeting about Search Twitter’s importance in the search world. ( View Mark’s post here ) He addressed the major differences between what Google is presenting in search, including blog results, news and press release results, product results, maps, etc., and Twitter’s search, which brings to light a more real time search focused on what people are looking for RIGHT NOW, rather than yesterday.

I wanted to comment today on the convention of revolution, as this fits in with what we keep seeing with Twitter and upstart search engines across the internet.

Jackson’s title referred to Twitter as a Google Killer, though he did clarify he does not think that Twitter will truly challenge Google. But the challenging of Google is where I want to focus.

Take a walk with me…

It seems that there are always a ton of dissenters – or revolutionists – who wish to see our greatest available tools fail. Years ago, it was the dethroning of Yahoo!, at the hands of the upstart Google, that was the shot heard around the virtual world launching the search revolution. Like governments around the world, populations are always happy at the fall of the evil regime and eager to place some other power hungry monger in the fallen government’s place, be they dressed like saviors.

As history shows us, it is not long before there is new discontent among the people and soon every new power hungry monger thinks they can challenge the ruler. The ruler is no longer able to provide services as they had in the past, like 100% uptime on free web based email and free statistics with no loss of data or search completely free of spam.

So what???

Clearly, the trail that Google has blazed is now filling in behind them with weeds. Clearly there are others out there who THINK they can do IT better than Google. But no one provides the whole package like Google. No one knows the full extent of “IT”. Google headed the original search revolution and opened all of the world’s eye to internet search possibility. Google’s reach has gone far beyond just search.

Let these upstarts continue to believe they can assassinate Google. Let the people believe these upstarts can offer something better. If all the services Google really provides come tumbling down, lets see which upstart can pick up the pieces. It won’t be Twitter or WolframAlpha. There is much more to providing a good search portal and algorithm then being mentioned on NPR or getting tweets that Johnny Depp just bought a latte. More importantly, until there is catastrophic failure (not just something identified by a whale) with the status quo, there just isn’t a reason for revolution.

There have been some changes recently to the way that Google is returning local listings in both the 10-pack and Google Maps. Businesses that have consistently maintained high profile listings for competitive keywords have noticed their listings dropping from sight. New listings have been showing up containing incorrect contact information and in some cases reflecting odd categories.

If you are experiencing a drop-off in local rankings or problems with duplicate listings showing incorrect information, I recommend the following:

Search for your business by name in Google Maps. If necessary, add a local qualifier, i.e. “My Business, City”. Once you find them all, you will need to claim them and modify them to reflect accurate information. It seems to be commonly agreed upon that duplicate listings that contain the same information will merge into a single listing in Google’s system. Do not delete duplicate listings. The information in them was pulled from somewhere, and there is a possibility that they may regenerate if you delete them.

Be vigilant. This is not a case where you can “set it and forget it” – check back in on your listing every once in a while, make sure it’s alone. The Google Local Business Center allows you to add additional information to your listing, and has a new User Guide.

It seems to me that the only people that know everything about Google Local are the people at Google Local, but in searching for answers to my questions I came across some really good resources:

Understanding Google Maps & Local Yahoo Search
Local Search

Marketing Insights from the High Seas

It’s October, 2008, I am officially on vacation. Ten exclusive nights on a cruise ship bound for the Mexican Riviera with nothing much to do other than catch the warm Pacific Ocean breezes, swim, eat, read, relax… and …somehow figure out a way to save my client base from an ill-fated economic collapse.

There was never a better week to unplug. After two years without vacation, I knew I had earned this precious time away, and nothing was going to ruin it!

The week of my holiday departure was unique in that the economic sky was falling on both Main Street & Wall Street. The news was ablaze with global business turmoil and a determined downward spiraling DOW.

The majority of my clients were in the throes of drastically declining sales and interest generated from search engines. Nothing could have shielded them from this meltdown. Retailers, e-commerce companies, home builders, financial companies, health beauty & lifestyle services, were all being decimated by a sharp decline in historic and valuable search productivity. I saw it coming like a landslide, I had no choice but to face it head on – my clients were expecting a remedy.

I needed to enjoy my vacation; I had worked far too hard, for far too long to not soak up every minute. This time off did not however, exonerate me from having to find the answers to my clients’ woes once I stepped back onto land – they were all expecting new action plans, strategy, answers, and most importantly… business. And they needed answers fast.

I had no choice but to accept the fact that that the best thing I could do was to use this time to unplug, regenerate, and to gain a different perspective on the problem.  I needed a global remedy that could be plugged into my entire client base equally. Increasing pay per click, re-tooling print ads, or deploying hasty site changes was not going to solve anything.

For the next eight days and nights, I blissfully unplugged, no laptop, no cell phone, no newspapers, no e-mail. In my 13-year career working online, I had never completely unplugged like this – the best I’d been able to do was escape for a few days.

It was impossible to avoid what was happening in the news from passing TV screens in on-ship bars and through the rumblings of people talking pool-side, but I just couldn’t muster the energy to apply the bad news to my business or clients.  A weird form of “business paralysis” came over me; I could not even muster a cohesive business thought for eight days. When I tried to dedicate time in my mind, I couldn’t hold onto a thought for more than a few seconds before I moved onto something more pleasurable. Mai Tai’s and the pool-side BBQ, sandwiched between napping was roughly the extent of my focus for nine blissful days.

It was on the very last night of this cruise that I had to emotionally ready myself for stepping back into the real world. It was 7:30 PM and in approximately 12 hours, my real life would begin again.

My wife and I were just sitting down to our final cruise dinner when she asked me “have you had any thoughts about how you are going to help all of our clients?” I simply replied “no, but let me think on that for a minute.”

I remember putting down my fork. I had to concentrate in order to wrap my head around the enormity. How was I going to solve everybody’s problems after being completely void of thought for nearly 10 straight days?  Was it avoidance, was it fear, was it insurmountable?

At that moment the most amazing thing happened. As I sat staring blankly into my plate, in the blink of an eye, data came streaming into my head. It poured in faster than I could process, gigabytes of information, strategy, concepts, imagery, and answers to questions that had not even been asked yet. Like a film reel unraveling in a breeze, the answers to my clients’ woes had been downloaded into my head. Download complete, files sorted, marketing machine gun locked and loaded.

I looked at my wife and said “I think I just figured it out. The answer is simply & universally – engage the reader and develop a deeper connection – or die trying.”  Somehow the answers to all of our clients’ needs were right in front of me. The solution now relied on my firm’s ability to help them do a better job of engaging their site prospects, developing a stronger and more succinct connection than their competitors.

As I thought to myself about each of my clients and their individuality within their industries, I knew that they all have one thing in common – each of them are special, and no other competitor can emulate them. If we can get our clients to show their site visitors/prospects that they are different and do so in the first 15 seconds of a person entering their site, their essence and distinct message will be delivered effectively regardless of industry.

It has been six months since my cruise holiday. I leaned many valuable lessons on that trip that have since helped my clients stabilize their businesses. This is what I learned:

1. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Sometimes it is necessary to entirely pull oneself from the game to get a new perspective. We live and market in a world where we seldom unplug entirely and that can be a detriment.
2. In times when the economic going is rough, one can never go wrong with using our client’s individual character, personality and attributes to help foster a strong personal connection. People buy from people.
3. Mai Tai’s may have medicinal marketing properties.