Business-to-business companies are catering to a growing crop of decision-makers who are turning to the Internet for purchase information according to data from Marin Software. The average cost per click in the B2B paid search space increased 29 percent from Q4 2010 to Q4 2011.
According to additional data from Compete and Google, we’ll continue to …

ILM East is coming back to Boston March 26-28 with a lineup of doers and innovators who are transforming and redefining the local space. Highlights include a featured keynote from industry legend Ted Leonsis (Groupon vice chair/AmEx board member/sports team owner/AOL mastermind), along with keynotes/interviews from Jason Calacanis, Leslie Berland, Jay Herratti, Michael Zimbalist and …

Google’s local efforts have grown tremendously under the direction of Marissa Mayer, and now encompass a wide range of products, including Google Maps; Google Places; Zagat; Google Offers; and Get Online, a new SMB initiative.
At ILM West this week in San Francisco, Head of Local Consumer Marketing Jeff Aguero provided a rich portrait of Google’s …

Google has experienced five times growth in mobile search during the past two years, according to Google Mobile’s Surojit Chatterjee, who was keynoting our SoLoMo Morning at ILM West in San Francisco.
Mobile usage generally complements the desktop, with huge spikes on the weekend and in the evening and at lunch, said Chatterjee. “When people go …

How many small businesses have done a deal at this point? Twelve percent, according to a new survey of 2,500 SMBs by MerchantCircle. That’s about a third higher than MerchantCircle’s June survey.
The survey also found a lot of Facebook ad usage. About 23 percent of local merchants report having tried Facebook Ads to date, …

Yelp’s S-1, which was issued last week as a run-up to a $100 million IPO, reveals a lot of new data about the reviews leader. The big question about Yelp has been whether it can grow against increased pressure from Google, and also begin to take market share away from traditional media players such as …

Google’s march into local reached another milestone today with the acquisition of Zagat, a major international provider of high-end restaurant and lifestyle reviews in 100-plus cities.
Zagat remains a major player in a reviews space it pioneered in 1979. In addition to hosting its patented “30 point” reviews from some 350,000 “surveyors,” Zagat has a print, …

Google has acquired Dealmap, a deals aggregator and exchange, and will presumably use it to complement its own sourcing of deals for Google Offers, the daily deal site now in New York, the Bay Area and Portland and coming soon to Austin, Boston, Denver, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Terms were not disclosed.
Dealmap, a 15-person company, …

Writing about Google+ wasn’t an option. When an 800-pound gorilla makes a frontal assault on Facebook, Skype AND Twitter, sending the tech punditry into breathless buzz and sparking curiosity about the potential seismic effects on social networking, well, that warrants ink. The question wasn’t if…but how. What hasn’t been said already (10 times over)? Where …

We work with online and mobile services every day, so it is easy to lose perspective on what “civilians” really do with such services. There is no better reality test for the progress of technology in our society than going on summer vacation.
This year, my wife and I joined a group of friends in the …

Not a day passes without the question “Can Google Get Social?” popping up in the tech punditry. After several ill-feted answers (Buzz, Wave), the search leader has a new social reply: Google+.
Actually, it’s the Google+ “project.” VP of Social Vic Gundotra says that’s an important distinction, as this is an evolving set of tools and …

The purchase funnel that takes consumers from awareness to transaction and retention has been an article of faith among marketers for many years. TV advertising, for instance, is “upper funnel.” Yellow Pages, at the point of sales consideration, has been “lower funnel.”
Google has other ideas. Any purchase consideration must now consider the impact of search …

Facebook today launched its Deals product as an “alpha” in five markets: San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Austin and Atlanta. The effort plays up Facebook’s social connectivity, making it simple to “like” and share deals, and promote throughout the site. The launch comes at a time of rapid expansion in the deals space. Google Offers …

“Content is king.” It’s one of the oldest, most frequently trumpeted maxims in media. Original work commands a premium, while aggregation and curation are merely commoditized collections for easy distribution…or so the thinking goes. Only, what happens if the script is flipped? That’s the question that Martin Nisenholtz, senior VP of digital operations at The New York …

In the “Field of Dreams” “if you build it, they will come” spirit, when Marissa Mayer takes the stage, thousands are sure to follow. Google’s VP devoted much of her keynote at SxSW Interactive to evolutions in Google’s mobile mapping products (Maps Navigation, route-around traffic and Latitude, among others).
Mobile mapping shares close synergy in the …

Groupon’s spectacular growth has now been quantified. According to an internal memo leaked to The Wall Street Journal, Groupon had $475 Million in revenues in 2010, and $760 million worldwide, with a presence in 35 countries. It also had 51 million subscribers, served by 4,150 employees. Groupon expects to follow up with with $2 …

Google announced today that it has upgraded Google Social Search to now include social data from Twitter, Flickr and Quora. In the past you may not have even noticed social results as they typically showed up at the bottom of the SERP. Now they are going to be blended throughout the SERPs as you can …

Facebook created quite a stir (again) with the recent projection that its global revenues could surpass $4 billion in 2011 … the majority coming from small businesses that are self serving. Now Twitter is abuzz, as eMarketer predicts that top-line income will triple to more than $150 million in 2011, and surge to $250 million in 2012. Considering …

From the cool stuff department, Google’s Goggles mobile visual search tool can now read print ads and (the cool part) Sudoku boards.
As part of a new update that includes faster scans, Goggles will now recognize any newspaper or magazine ad in major publications printed after August 2010. This not only lets users inquire more about …

One of the principal questions in the local marketplace heading into 2011 is how location-based services (check-ins, barcode scanning) and deals will continue to synergize to create an integrated user experience? Just as important, what role will Google play?
An early clue may have turned up with SCVNGR nabbing a third round of funding, this one for $15 …