2 Search Engines -- Google and Bing
According to Bing this a.m. Today I am happy to share that Bing is powering Yahoo!’s search results in the US and Canada (English only for now, the other languages will come in the weeks and months ahead)
Bye bye Yahoo search, hello Bing. Note the Powered by Bing at the bottom of the Yahoo! search page. Bing notes the migration to adCenter and the great milestone this is for Yahoo and Bing. We as marketers could not agree more, hello two search engines!
According to Mashable and HubSpot, location-based social networks are becoming a mainstream feature of social networking. Well yes, I would say so…now that the most popular social network in the world has a location-based social network.
Facebook Places for Socialites
Individuals can sign into Facebook Places and allow Facebook to know their location. They can then add places, check-in to places and tag friends who are with them.
Facebook Places for Businesses
With Facebook Places, businesses can claim their location by simply adding the location of their business to the system. Then, similar to foursquare, official representatives of a business can claim the location as the page for their business. Advice for businesses: as soon as Facebook Places is available, claim your location!
So is Facebook Places in competition with location-based service providers such as Foursquare and Yelp? Thats to be determined. In my opinion, sure is. Unlike Yelp and Foursquare, Facebook has the added benefit that its services, such as its many applications and features and ads and business solutions, go through one central service, but thats just the opinion of one, intrigued SEOer.
Kevin Ryan of iMedia Connection beautifully sums up the reason why local search is becoming so important. “The essence of local search lies in the nature of users seeking information about services in which they already have a need.”
Unfortunately, about 70 percent of small and medium sized businesses don’t have websites (Rob Wright, ReachLocal.com). This creates a huge gap between increasing customer demand for local goods and services and an inability for local companies to supply that demand because they don’t have websites. But it also leaves room for phenomenal growth in the local search sector and untapped profit.