We know well that online search has considerable effect on local offline purchasing behavior. Likewise, it’s clear that the majority of retail purchases happen offline, while a growing percentage of research is occuring online.
Now, iProspect has released interesting figures that show conversely how offline factors affect online search activity. More specifically, the data show how …

I am in the middle of researching an Advisory on major metro markets, why they are such a challenge for Yellow Pages publishers and what, if anything, they can do to reverse the slide. In the course of doing research on this topic, I came across a survey generated by “The Wealthy Dentist” that seems to …

Here is a roundup of items from the past week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.
Grayboxx: A Sneak Peek
User ratings and reviews are among the hottest areas of local search (video and mobile being the others) in terms of media attention and funding. But there are still significant …

User ratings and reviews are among the hottest areas of local search (video and mobile being the others) in terms of media attention and funding. But there are still significant barriers to cross and challenges inherent in corralling a user base to participate in a review program.
One of those challenges, pointed out in UGC: To …

Service referral sites like ServiceMagic and Angie’s List have gotten some traction. But by no means are they dominating the business. What will it take?
Ashish Mohole, cofounder of start-up GetVendors.com, thinks the key is to guarantee that users get a wide assortment of choices when they make a query. Too many queries come up empty …

Citysearch earlier this week announced it will partner with MenuPages to integrate its menu content into local restaurant listings. I finally got the chance to catch up with Rob Angel, Citysearch VP of merchant products, yesterday to ask what this means for the company, and how it augments other ongoing efforts in what seems like …

I spent some time on the phone this afternoon with Stuart McKelvey, CEO of TMP Directional Marketing, to ask for his key takeaways from TMP’s recent local shopping research conducted via comScore’s online panel of 3,000 consumers. The finding that more of the respondents cite online media (IYP, local search and general search) than print …

Last week, we raised the issue of the potential for Internet Yellow Pages offered by print publishers. In a world where people seem to be routinely going to Google, Yahoo! and a few other sites for all their information needs, how can even the strongest IYP brand compete? In this note, I want to outline a …

Amid the many redesigns we’re seeing in local online media, Yahoo! Local today announced a series of functional and aesthetic enhancements. They are mostly meant to accentuate and motivate more user-generated content and social search tools but also include a number of other evolutionary improvements.
One is a modification of its relevance engine to include review …

Google Maps will launch a feature next week that will allow any Web site or blog to more easily plant an embedded map anywhere on its site. This will essentially allow SMEs to more easily integrate a “find me” map on their Web sites for customers to navigate to them.
This will include the ability to …

We’re seeing no shortage of commentary throughout the blogosphere on the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index, which shows Yahoo! beating out Google in overall customer satisfaction for its online network of products. But another notable data point many have ignored is that Ask.com had the largest increase in its score over the previous …

Gannett’s “Information Center” project to overhaul its newspapers with user-generated content and data-driven services is making some progress, per this month’s Wired magazine piece by Jeff Howe. Since I first reported on the initiative in November 2006, the company has zeroed in on Mom and College Age/Recent Grad sites – two demo groups that don’t …

Following up on last week’s post about the evolving mobile device environment, GigaOm reports (found via Digg) that a German company has developed an application that lets iPhone users access Skype.
This is an interesting development and well in line with the forecasted benefits outlined in last week’s post. A sequence of events should follow that …

Here is a sampling of posts from last week in case you missed them (click below to read each post in full).
Vehix Takes a Page From the Yellow Pages
My column for Search Engine Watch this month, Pimp My Vertical Search, takes a look at some of the directions being taken in vertical search, particularly in …

In the daily news gathering of the wide-reaching local media world, social bookmarking services, like MyWeb, have become my best friend. There is a lot of potential for social bookmarking providers — if nothing else to grow stickiness among a set of products within a network, such as Yahoo!’s positioning of MyWeb and Del.icio.us.
Other popular …

Summary
My column for Search Engine Watch this month, Pimp My Vertical Search, takes a look at some of the directions being taken in vertical search, particularly in autos. Autobytel has begun to do some interesting things with its recently launched MyRide, while Vehix is utilizing its partnerships with cable companies to create interactive television modules …

Web exec Bill Day, who formerly led WhenU (a behavioral targeting  firm), About.com and Prodigy, was announced yesterday as Marchex’s new chief media officer (an interesting title). The position is a new one for the publicly owned company, which isn’t well understood, but has considerable local assets, including 100,000 vertical domains, an ad network and …

Marchex continues to expand its local advertising and content capabilities with its acquisition of VoiceStar, the pay-per-call and call tracking company. The VoiceStar acquisition adds more than 100 local advertiser aggregators, including Comcast, The Cobalt Group, R.H. Donnelley/Dex and Yellow Book to Marchex’s current partner roster, which includes AT&T and Yellowpages.com.
Marchex also said it has …

Yellow Pages Group CEO Marc Tellier offered some more color on his company’s plans to roll out value-based pricing (VBP). According to Tellier, the company should roll out the new pricing approach by 2009 or 2010. One key to value-based pricing is YPG’s Customer First customer relationship management platform, which aggregates all the publisher’s customer …

Idearc Media and Yellow Pages Group announced their earnings today, and like R.H. Donnelley maintained their 2007 guidance estimates. As The Kelsey Group had estimated earlier in the year, print revenues are basically flat with growth coming from electronic, vertical and other new products. Idearc, in particular, entered a number of tests and distribution agreements …