The Yellow Pages Group held a CMR summit in Toronto last week. According to the ADM Flash, "During the last three years, Yellow Pages Group has been the fastest growing publisher in the world, has the highest EBITDA, highest IYP growth, highest Internet reach and penetration and highest advertiser penetration …

Here are a handful of news items to round out the week:
—Google is moving further down the social search path by allowing users to tag video content with comments, ratings and labels. Search Engine Watch explains.
—Microsoft has come out with its "answer" to Yahoo! Answers and Google Answers, …

Mobile coupon engine Cellfire launched yesterday for Cingular users. The tracking and marketing benefits that online and mobile coupons offer will make this a big area of development in the local space over the next year. As more third-party software developers build platforms, more carriers sign on and more merchants participate, it could become a …

Google’s long-awaited online payment system launched today, which, among other things, will enable better tracking by closing the loop on search and online conversions. There is obviously a lot more to it, which we’ll get the chance to explore later. In the meantime, here is coverage from the San Jose Mercury News, The …

As the owner of a small business, I have always been interested in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition. Therefore, I was pleased to read that Perry Evans, CEO of Local Matters, was honored by E&Y with the Entrepreneur of the Year award in the software category.
Everyone who …

The New York Times' John Markoff has an interesting write-up today on a location-based service gaining traction in Japan, based on the technology of U.S.-based GeoVector. Achieving a similar end as mobile visual search, it uses a combination GPS, Web, and an electronic compass to help users find locations and …

Before leaving the Bay Area this week to go to Atlanta and Seattle, I needed to make a hotel reservation in Seattle. It was suggested I try the Westin Seattle, so I went to the hotel’s Web site — it’s part of the Starwood family. Once there, it offered me a click-to-call button and instead …

Univision Communications, the largest Spanish language media company in the U.S. was sold to a group of private equity players for $12.3B. This comes after intense bidding by Grupo Televisa — a large media company in Mexico. Univision is the fifth most watched network in the U.S. and delivers the highly desirable and often elusive …

The roll-up of mom-and-pop Spanish-language directory publishers continues. Hispanic Yellow Pages of America, a portfolio company of Hispania Capital Partners of Chicago, has acquired the Milwaukee Hispanic Yellow Pages and Resource Guide. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Here is the announcement.
HYPA is one of several investor-backed companies acquiring locally owned Spanish-language directories …

Some notable happenings from around the local search and media worlds this week:
—MapQuest launched the beta version of a new tool today that helps road-trippers plan routes. It includes some new Ajax functionality to drag and drop points on a map and recalculate directions accordingly. Users can also search for gas stations, hotels, restaurants, ATMs …

Dow Jones reported at roughly 5:30 p.m. EST that Local Matters has priced its initial public offering of 3.3 million shares at between US$14 and US$16 per share. This works out to a range of US$46 million to US$53 million, in round terms.
Denver-based Local Matters, led by longtime online directory entrepreneur Perry Evans, provides online …

Seat Pagine Gialle has recently announced a beta version of a three-dimensional online Yellow Pages directory, called Pagine Gialle Visual. You can check out the beta here. Here is the press release if you’re interested.
Conceptually, this is a powerful idea, though it also carries the risk of being a solution in search of a …

This afternoon Fast Search & Transfer and AutoTrader.com held a Webinar on how AutoTrader.com "is driving new product development, speeding time to market and improving customer satisfaction, by shifting from its proprietary search solution to one powered by FAST Enterprise Search technology."
Both of these companies are success stories. Founded in …

YellowPages.com has landed a new CTO, Brad Mohs, whose background includes stints at Scientific Games and AutoTrader.com.
At Scientific Games, Mohs worked on developing software for lottery organizations, including systems capable of more than 1 million transactions per minute. At AutoTrader, according to the press release:
…he was a finalist for 2002 Georgia CIO …

Sol Trujillo, CEO of Australian telecom Telstra, was quoted in a June 24 article in The Australian as saying that Sensis, Telstra’s search, directory and classified business, "basically is on track" to meet its target of doubling revenues by 2010.
Trujillo’s statement comes as some financial analysts in Australia are beginning to question whether the goal …

We offer our congratulations to Perry Evans, long a friend of The Kelsey Group, for being named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young in the software category. The award was given regionally and was announced at a Denver awards ceremony on June 22.
Here is a copy of the press release announcing the …

Google is testing video ads, suggesting that it might be interested in moving from a paid content model to an ad-supported one that could be integrated with AdWords.
In addition to testing the software, Google is no doubt testing the waters of user preferences, and their threshold for enduring ads. As we’ve said in …

comScore released May search share numbers.

Nielsen/NetRatings released May search numbers.

Tomorrow, Ingenio’s intellectual capital monetization machine — or Ether as Ingenio named it — goes live. Ingenio was once Keen.com — an early entrant to the peer-to-peer connectivity space. Ether is designed to help individuals leverage their IP capacity by building a marketplace where they can sell their "brains" to the highest bidder.
Having …