According to additional data from Compete and Google, we’ll continue to see B2B companies duke it out in paid search. Their report cites 73 percent of U.S. B2B execs used an online search engine last June to conduct purchase research.

In addition, the study also revealed more reliance on video. Google and Compete polled more than 1,600 U.S. execs and tracked the online activity of U.S. Web users both to and from selected B2B websites. Between February 2010 and March 2011, B2B-branded YouTube searches doubled.

Recently, Yelp posted a video on its business blog of SMB advertising success stories. Time will tell if we’ll see more brands using video content to share product-specific information, demos and testimonials.

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 Michael Silberman.

Other highlights of the two-day event includes a preconference rundown on local search run by Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide; a full plate of top BIA/Kelsey research and forecasts; a special venture capital panel; and innovator panels on social, mobile, deals, video and hyperlocal (the latter co-moderated by Merrill Brown).

KEYNOTES/KEYNOTE DISCUSSIONS
� Ted Leonsis: Owner, Monumental Sports (Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards); Vice Chair of Groupon; board member of AmEx, former vice chair of AOL; author, “The Business of Happiness”
� Jason Calacanis: CEO, Mahalo; investor. Calacanis’ career has been at the cutting edge of local and social media and reflects all the big trends, from his development of The Silicon Alley Reporter to Weblogs (AOL), Mahalo and the creation of TechCrunch50 and Launch.
� Leslie Berland, vice president, social strategy, American Express. Berland’s a major deal maker deeply involved in AmEx’ss mega Foursquare and Facebook deals.
� Jay Herratti, CEO, CityGrid Media. Herratti always gets top rankings at our events. He runs IAC’s super quad of the CityGrid Media Network, Citysearch, Urbanspoon and Insider Pages.
� Michael Zimbalist, VP, research operations, New York Times Co. Zimbalist leads the NYT’s 12 person-research unit. He’s deeply immersed in cutting-edge social, mobile, tablet and video efforts.
� Michael Silberman, GM, New York Magazine Silberman is the mastermind of NYMag’s development of a super set of verticals catering to the “New York state of mind.”

FEATURED SPEAKERS
� Bill Bice, CEO, SpaBoom
� Merrill Brown, Cofounder, MSNBC.com, Court TV
� Jim Douglass, EVP, Cartera Commerce
� Jere Doyle, CEO, EverSave
� Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
� Adam Japko, CEO, Digital Sherpa
� Maria Kermath, Director, New Tech & Sales Apps, AT&T Advertising Sales
� Mark Josephson, SVP, AOL Local
� Charlie Kim, CEO, Next Jump
� John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
� Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications
� Randy Parker, President, SMB Apps
� Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact
� Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360
� Andrew Shotland, Publisher, Local SEO Guide
� Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave
� Darren Waddell, EVP, Product and Corporate Marketing, Reply.com

Join hundreds of senior level local executives at ILM East for the local community’s best networking and insights. You can register here for earlier bird rates.

Internet Pioneer Ted Leonsis

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 thinking on local. “We are 10 percent of where we are and where we need to be,” said Aguero. “There is so much that needs to be done.” He added that Google is eager to work “closely with partners to create a rich opportunity” for all.

“The local experience is mostly disconnected,” said Aguero. “It is not consistent across user experience,” whether people are engaged in researching, finding, experiencing, reviewing or sharing. Google’s goals are ultimately to “get more local searches, more customers, more reviews, better content, higher engagement and more businesses online.”

Local is obviously an important part of Google’s core search business — 20 percent of desktop search is now local-oriented. But local is “fundamentally about places. Any type of action; how does it get there; how do you share what I am doing about my experience (i.e., photos, check-in); how do I save money on a deal?”

Within Places, Place Pages is a major effort. Currently, there are 50 million dynamically generated Place Pages worldwide. Of these, 8 million have been claimed by the businesses themselves. “It is the greatest catalog of place data on the Web,” noted Aguero.

The big trend is the convergence of Place Pages and Host Pages. “They have the same type of audiences in different ways, ” he said. “The functionality of both entities are likely to converge.”

Expanding ratings and reviews is also clearly a major initiative. Google Places is now getting more than a million ratings per month.

Mobile, meanwhile, is in the middle of it all. “Fifty percent of maps usage is mobile,” Aguero pointed out. “Mobile search usage has surpasses desktop usage on holidays. “People are using mobile phones as guides to the real world on an ongoing basis. Recently, the company introduced TalkBin, which leverages mobile to provide real-time customer feedback.

Google Latitudes, a check-in product, is also is getting a lot of attention, and already has 10 million users. “It is not just how many people are enjoying and sharing products,” said Aguero, noting that Latitudes has been greatly enhanced by the introduction of Google Plus social circles.

And then there is Google’s Get Online initiative, a partnership with Intuit that lets SMBs claim a place, update information and provides a free website. Get Online started in Michigan and is now in 14 states. New tools will continue to be added, said Aguero. “We need better toolkits for businesses.” Recently, the company introduced Adwords Express, which lets businesses set up an AdWords program in 10 minutes.

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 out for lunch, people are searching more on their mobile than on the desktop.”

Chatterjee said vertical segments have been especially high with mobile. Almost 17 percent of auto related queries are mobile, 17 percent of travel and car rental, and 32 percent of restaurants.

Mobile also is very strong for converting searchers. Seventy-seven percent of mobile searchers contacted a business; 44 percent led to a purchase and 59 percent led to a merchant.

Proximity and location, in fact, have become important criteria for Google search ranking. Make your ads location aware and help users make a decision quickly,” said Chatterjee.

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, which is 5 percent higher than in June. Sixty-two percent said they would use Facebook Ads again, citing ease of use (again, 62 percent) and the ability to start and stop campaigns (55 percent). Those that won’t do it again say it didn’t do much for customer acquisition (66 percent) and the ads were too expensive (41 percent).

Despite the Internet horror stories of bagel stores and cupcake stores going under because they oversold on Groupon and other deals sites, deals generally work well for SMBs. About 75 percent of respondents say they would offer another deal in the future. Sixty-one percent cited customer acquisition as the best thing about deals. Thirty-seven percent also said that deal profitability was a major reason to do another deal, up from 24 percent in June.

It is not all rosy in MerchantCircle’s survey, however. Twenty-five percent of SMBs that have done a deal said they wouldn’t do it again. Of those, 42 percent said it was not effective for customer acquisition, 36 percent said it was too costly, and 34 percent said they lost money on the deal.

When choosing a deals publisher, 64 percent of the SMBs cite costs (i.e., commissions) as their top consideration. Local targeting was cited by 57 percent, and local reach was cited by 52 percent.

What is especially surprising in the survey is how many deal-using SMBs report having tried Google Offers, which just launched this summer and is now past 30 markets. Nineteen percent of deal-using merchants have already tried Google Offers, compared with 26 percent for Groupon and 21 percent for LivingSocial. Forty-three percent have tried other deal providers. We know from experience that many SMBs don’t actually know what vendors they use for different things, so we’d suggest some room for margin of error here.

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 Yellow Pages.

Yelp’s plan for growth relies heavily on overseas growth. It is now in 22 international cities on top of 43 domestic markets. But it would also grow its primary business via local and brand advertising, monetizing mobile services that now make up 40 percent of its searches, boosting revenues from deals (where it has lowered expectations), and more revenue sharing dollars from restaurant reservations and travel.

Launched in 2004, Yelp had initially risen to the top of the heap among service and city guide leaders by dominating Google’s organic local search. After Google’s effort to acquire Yelp for $500 million ended under murky circumstances, Yelp has seen its prior dominance of Google search fade away. Moreover, Google Places — enhanced by Google’s purchase of Zagat — now looms as a competitor in its own right for reviews and advertising.

“Our success depends on our ability to maintain a prominent presence in search results for queries regarding local businesses on Google,” notes the S-1.

Yet, Yelp is growing splendidly, even with the apparent Google woes. Yelp earned $47.7 million in 2010 and $58.4 million in net revenues in the first nine months of 2011, representing 80 percent growth over the first nine months of 2010.

During the first nine months of 2011, the company claimed 19,000 paid accounts — up 75 percent from the same period in 2010, and 529,000 claimed pages, up 114 percent. And in a business where the number of current reviews is its currency, it has an archive of 22 million reviews, up 66 percent from the same period in 2010. Overall, it sees 61 million monthly users.

Yelp is primarily known for its restaurant reviews. That is still its primary image, and what has made “to yelp” a verb. But Yelp is also more diversified than generally perceived, and resembles a combination city magazine/Yellow Pages.

Restaurants and dining now make up 23 percent. Other major segments include shopping (22 percent), services (10 percent), beauty (9 percent), arts and entertainment (8 percent), health (5 percent), nightlife (4 percent), and travel and hotel (4 percent). It also has a broad demographic, with 42 percent between the ages of 18 and 34, and 33 percent between the ages of 35 and 49.

What investors will be looking at is not only Yelp’s ability to grow and move into new areas, but also its potential for profits. The company has accumulated a deficit of $32.1 million since its launch, and lost roughly $7.6 million in the first nine months of 2011. Sales and marketing costs have been especially heavy, eating up $38.5 million for the first nine months of 2011.

Business Insider suggests that “Yelp is Groupon without the cash flow,” basing its comment on Yelp’s increasing marketing costs for customer acquisitions. But to us, Yelp is working to get over a tipping point. And unlike Groupon’s one-time relationship with local businesses, Yelp is working on Yellow Pages-like renewal rates.

In fact, the key to Yelp is to continue its ability to maintain and leverage its huge user base, satisfy advertisers, and stay abreast of social media trends that help match users with establishments based on their interests. It won’t be easy and is not a sure thing. But Yelp’s trajectory to date has been an impressive one.

Shares of Yelp Searches

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, pocket-sized restaurant directory product that is often sold as a sponsored corporate giveaway. Online, it provides “Zagat Exclusives” deals using the Reach Deals platform and also widely integrates its reviews with key players for more traffic, including Urbanspoon, OpenTable and New York Magazine.

While Zagat is protective of its premium firewall, a February relaunch included more free content. The company also has very active smartphone apps. In 2009 the company also started expanding its platform to medical reviews via WellPoint/Anthem Insurance, part of a broader licensing effort that also included Priceline, Diageo liquor…and Google.

In truth, however, the closely held, 110-employee company was slow to react to the Web, and has basically underperformed, opening doors for companies such as Yelp and Urbanspoon to gain a foothold, especially among younger audiences and with more mainstream restaurants. Zagat had tried and failed to sell itself for $200 million in early 2008, but apparently did not find real interest at that price point.

Google’s failed effort to acquire Yelp in 2009, in fact, probably set the Zagat acquisition in play — as did the retirement age of founders Tim and Nina Zagat. We believe Google will focus on the reviews platform, and the archive of reviews, and probably de-emphasize the premium products.

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, was launched 14 months ago at BIA/Kelsey’s Marketplaces conference in San Diego as a spinoff of Center’d, a women-oriented hyperlocal site that had focused on sophisticated mapping and sentiment analysis. Originally launched as FatDoor, it has raised $8.9 million altogether. We estimate that roughly 50 percent, or $4.5 million, has now been spent on developing Dealmap.

Currently, the site aggregates 400,000 deals, from 450 local and daily sources. It claims 2 million users, including 1 million mobile users. It also boasts a large distribution network of 50+ publishers, including such players as Superpages, CityGrid, Local.com, Bing.com, T-mobile.com, MerchantCircle, American Towns, Reqall, Mypoints.com and Topix.com.

Google’s acquisition of Dealmap provides strong additional validation for the aggregator and exchange space, which includes such players as Analog Analytics, Tippr, Yipit, Local Offer Network, Adility, Monster Offers and 8coupons.com. In the wake of this deal, it is hard to recall that it was only a few months ago when the space’s future was questioned by many in the wake of LivingSocial refusing to let its feeds be packaged with other daily deals on a level playing field.

Dealmap, however, has been among those exempted from such bans, presumably because it does more than simply list deals. Since then, we’ve seen new funding coming in. Yipit, for instance, recently raised $6 million.

CEO and Cofounder Jennifer Dulski recently told us it was too easy to think that aggregators weren’t bringing real value to the table. The types of things that Dealmap does are “way more complicated than they’d do on their own,” she said, noting the site’s extensive geocoding and other features. “We are getting comprehensive access to deals from the most number of sources, focusing on high-quality deals, and distributing to as large an audience as we can.”

Will deal commissions continue to flow as deal exchanges become more the norm? Dulski has consistently said that the company hasn’t had trouble collecting commissions for deal referrals. Other sites have hinted at problems getting commissions, especially from the largest players that don’t need as much help. Aside from commissions, revenues also come from display and text advertising.

During a presentation at BIA/Kelsey’s Deals 3D conference in San Francisco last month, VP Dan Visnick noted that aggregators have added value because they provide sourcing for a broad number of categories, rather than simply relying on shopping and dining to carry the day — even though those are the most searched for entities. Aggregators such as The Dealmap bring in hundreds of deals for valuable categories such as hotels, dental and services, he noted.

In the meantime, The Dealmap’s competitors seem to look favorably upon Google’s acquisition — at least, in the short term. “Aggregation thrives on fragmentation. So this is another validation of the aggregation model and the many competitors that it serves. It also throws some water on predictions that the industry will consolidate to the smallest handful of competitors,” says Local Offer Network CEO Dan Hess.

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 are the unique stones to be turned over?

Here’s what we decided: Google+ could eventually emerge as a robust platform for businesses of every ilk, including local, and its wide-ranging integrations with other Google products will open up social marketing possibilities that heretofore don’t exist. In our latest Advisory for Social Local Media clients, Andrew Shotland and I dive deeper into these business implications.

Over the past 12 to 18 months, Google has been on a frenetic streak of local product launches: Places, Hotpot (since rolled into Places), Boost, Talkbin (through acquisition), Offers, Wallet, +1. Yet we wondered what kind of meal these various ingredients could bake.

Google+, tied into Places, Offers, +1 social search signals and Analytics, may be the connective tissue that creates a new, comprehensive business communications suite for merchants. Or as Andrew put it:

“One day we are all going to wake up and find “Places” as a default stream in our Google+ experience and a business’ “Plus” stream as part of the default Place Page experience. When this happens it will be like local search chocolate meeting social media peanut butter.”

Of course, we’re making some assumptions about Google+ winning enough adoption to become at least an additive social layer. We think it can, but that’s no layup. Facebook already has 750 million users and is quickly iterating to become a full-serve media (movies, music) and commerce (Credits, Deals) company. How many social networks will the average Joe populate before closing off newcomers?

For you Google+ pioneers, let us know your early impressions. And from a local business perspective, what are the possibilities that you envision?

SLM subscribers can read the full report here.

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 Fingerlakes in western New York state — a fairly rural location. We really don’t have much desire to be plugged in on vacation. But online and mobile services have become so helpful, that at this point, it would be an unnecessary and arbitrary handicap to try to do without them.

Our trip began at the Wi-Fi-enabled Buffalo Airport. On the Thruway, we quickly noted that we were driving by Batavia (the home of Howard Owens’ hyperlocal site, The Batavian). We were well-served on The Thruway, in any case. NY State Thruway signs featured Wi-Fi, alongside Mobile, Tim Hortons and other services.

We then made our way to The Horse Farm B&B in Naples, which we found via a Google search reinforced by an excellent review on TripAdvisor. The place was truly special. (See my own review here.)

Over the next several days, we didn’t really need to overtly plug in very much. But without thinking about it, we were heavily plugged in. Most notably, a friend extended his stay in the area for two additional weeks, made possible by the Wi-Fi at a Starbucks a few miles up the lake. Several people, apparently, were camping out there doing the same thing, although his Skype conference calls were pushing it a little.

And then there were the little things. The Pontoon boat ride up Canandaigua Lake, for instance, wasn’t especially plugged in. But when we needed to figure out whether we’d be on time for our lunch reservation at the Inn, out came the iPhones and BlackBerrys. Google Maps had us about ¾ of the way up the lake, about 30 minutes from our destination.

The Rochester Symphony Orchestra’s Red White and Boom patriotic concert at the CMAC theater wasn’t necessarily a high-tech affair, either. But we couldn’t help but notice Ticketmaster’s entreaty on the ticket to download its app for up-to-date info on the entire CMAC concert series.

The wineries and craft breweries in the area are certainly a major attraction as well. At the Heron Hill Winery, we were invited to check in to Foursquare. Many more places asked us to friend them on Facebook.

At Yellowstone last year, I noticed something interesting: very few iPhones. Not the case this year in the Fingerlakes. In fact, I saw a number of smartphones, including some carried by older ladies. The demographic barriers are clearly falling.

Every year, people who know me know that I talk a lot about going off the grid. I make a conscious effort to do so. You won’t find me bringing a laptop or iPad with me on most trips. But I don’t think I will talk about it that way anymore. Unless I want to hurt my vacation experience, I’ll stay plugged in, thank you.