Local SEO guru Andrew Shotland just alerted me to the fact that Google is now serving the local “10 pack” in searches that don’t include geographic modifiers (original discovery by Google Maps expert Mike Blumenthal).
For those unfamiliar, the 10 pack is the block of 10 local results that occupies the top results in searches where …

Idearc announced it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas, a move that it signaled in its year-end 2008 earnings announcement, when it indicated some form of bankruptcy filing was likely if not inevitable.
Here is how Idearc describes the process it will go through:

Idearc also announced that it has reached an agreement in principle with the …

MySpace and Citysearch today confirmed the launch of MySpace Local, a new local city guide using functionality and feeds from Citysearch, including its taxonomy of categorization, geography structure, search functionality and content. A beta version of the site launches this week, with a general U.S. launch next month. It will be available on the Web …

On a recent visit to Stockholm, we sat down with Eniro President and CEO Jesper Karrbrink, who is managing Eniro through a strategic shift described in a presentation late last year as moving “from print dependence to online opportunity.” In a videotaped interview, Karrbrink insisted that Eniro’s product is its content. Print directories, the Internet, mobile phones and …

The local appointment space has a new entrant in the form of Austin-based HourVille. The start-up, created by several friends from UT’s business school, premiered at SXSW. It lets users book anything by the hour, including services, rentals, classes and places.
Users may use the service to “search locally,” “book and pay,” check out “profiles, reviews …

As rumors over the past week have indicated, Skype’s iPhone app will launch tomorrow and will be available in the app store.
The application will allow users to operate the Skype client from their iPhones. Like Skype’s online service, this will involve free calls to other Skype users and cheap calls (requiring Skype Premium or pay …

Techcrunch has a guest post today from Google VP of engineering for mobile Vic Gundotra, which pinpoints the factors that will drive the growth of the mobile Web.
Among them are the easy-to-use mobile browsers (i.e., iPhone and Android-based devices), and the introduction/growth of application marketplaces. The arguments aren’t anything ground breaking but are supportive of …

One of the great mysteries is what Wal-Mart is really doing with classifieds. Last June, it signed up to use the Oodle platform, but not much has been heard from it since.
In this week’s Ad Age, Wal-Mart’s Duncan Dreschel sheds a little light, noting that the company seeks to simultaneously extend the brand, drive traffic …

Here is a recap of posts from last week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.
The Knot Launches Local Wedding Sites
The Knot has launched 75 local URL sites as well as several niche sites, including Chinese weddings, gay wedding, beach weddings and destination weddings. More than 200 local and …

The Knot has launched 75 local URL sites as well as several niche sites, including Chinese weddings, gay wedding, beach weddings and destination weddings. More than 200 local and niche sites are planned by the end of 2009, according to coverage in The Wall Street Journal.
Much of the local sites content is repurposed and put …

We did a podcast interview this week for MobilOpen on the subject of mobile marketing. It gets into lots of the driving factors behind the growth of the mobile Web, and what that means for big and small advertisers.
This was a key subject at our Marketplaces conference last week, in our recent mobile forecast and …

We all live in Google’s world now. Nobody would dispute that there are many positives associated with that. But how do industry practitioners really feel about it?. Can it be improved? We asked three executives who cover different parts of the local ecosystem, promising them anonymity.
An aggregator said he thinks he should be treated as …

The independent Atlanta-based Yellow Pages publisher Metro Directories will go out of business this year, and its rival Yellowbook has agreed to honor the contracts of Metro advertisers for books yet to be published this year.
Here is a statement issued to TKG today by Yellowbook:
Yellowbook did not acquire Metro. Metro is still operating, as it …

AdAge’s Bob Garfield famously sketched out a “chaos scenario” in which the media/advertising infrastructure collapses, venerable media brands fold bad poker hands and feral cats carry off small children.
This week, Garfield says it is all actually happening because of fragmentation, a shift to consumer control and hard economics. “Media and advertising today amount to a …

Krillion announced today that it will power product inventory search on the ShopSavvy application for Google Android based phones. This app gets high marks on the cool factor.
Produced by Big In Japan, ShopSavvy has been a popular free Android application (400,000 users) that lets users scan bar codes to see what deals are available. The …

Following yesterday’s preview of Dex’s new line of mobile search products, I had the chance to talk to the company today about the ins and outs.
First, the product line consists of an SMS search tool, a mobile Web site, a smartphone java application, and an iPhone app. The idea, as it’s been executed by many …

A great deal has already been written about the work Microsoft is doing with Ford to make the car itself a more powerful mobile device. I just came across an interesting video that shows some of these features in action.
Ford’s head of Information Systems, Gary Jablonski, walks through some of the features of the Sync …

As pre-announced at last week’s Marketplaces conference, DexKnows has launched a new line of branded local search products, including an iPhone app.
The line is built and powered by mobilePeople, a company that has built strong applications for a number of European publishers such as Yell and Eniro. This marks its first major move into the …

Online leads for cars are broken. The vast majority of auto shoppers won’t even fill out a request for bid because they think they’ll get inaccurate, incomplete and tardy information from the dealer.
But that doesn’t stop vendors from working on better solutions. Today, Cobalt’s Dealix division rolled out a new leads platform that it claims …

AdMob has supplied a steady stream of monthly reports that extrapolate mobile market data from its ad network. Its latest report (February) has a few interesting points about mobile Web traffic shares among smartphone operating systems in the U.S. and globally.
The iPhone holds the lion’s share (and fastest growing share) of mobile Web traffic. In …