Google Commerce last week introduced Zavers by Google, a coupon/transaction marketing management and loyalty rewards service that it purchased last November. Using Zavers, shoppers find offers on their websites and save them to their Zavers account. The offers are then automatically redeemed in real time when shoppers present their reward cards, mobile wallets or type-in …

As the New York Times noted this morning, Apple’s initial iOS6 foray into mobile maps has been greeted with a thumbs down by iPhone 5 reviewers, who prefer the polished Google Maps experience that was the prior default.
But maps –and by extension, local — are strategically important to Apple’s future. You can bet Apple will …

A study commissioned by YP Holdings (formerly AT&T interactive and AT&T Ad Solutions) has concluded that phone calls generated from listings distributed on YP.com and its Local Ad Network outperformed those sourced from Google Ad Words, as measured by cost per call.
The study contends that cost per call on ads served by YP ranged from …

Google is adding Wildfire to its social-oriented suite of business services, paying “about $250 Million,” according to a source cited by The Wall Street Journal. The San Francisco-based company provides social media analytics for 16,000 customers, ranging from large SMBs to major brands such as Amazon, Unilever and Virgin.
Wildfire launched in 2008 as a self-serve …

Google Offers has just celebrated its first anniversary and now has a presence in 40 markets, says Group Products Manager Nitin Mangtini, who was speaking Tuesday at the Street Fight Summit West conference in San Francisco.
Mangtini, who also spoke at BIA/Kelsey’s ILM East in March, stressed that Offers has gone far beyond a homogenous daily …

Zagat is Google’s great equalizer against Yelp. Google has now demonstrated why it paid $151 million for Zagat last September by including Zagat, which formerly cost $4.95 a month (or $24.95 per year), as part of its new rollout of Google+ Local. The newly branded service replaces Google Places.
As a result of the integration, which …

During the first ever public presentation of Google Offers at ILM East today, Google Offers head Nitin Mangtani noted that Google Offers is now live in 40 cities, but he emphasized that Google’s after more more than just deals. The local commerce space is much broader and richer than deals, although deals are very exciting, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Google continues a long line of recent mobile advertising additions with today’s launch of Boost ads for mobile. This is essentially the mobile version of Boost, which it launched on the desktop in October. There it joined Tags in an effort to appeal more directly to SMBs with simple advertising.
The appeal will be much the …

Local consumers are looking beyond pure search when they are looking for family fun. That’s the unmet need that Boston-based Goby.com is trying to meet in its 350-category, events and family fun search site. The site is now reaching 500,000 unique visitors a month — double the number from our prior writeup of the company …

As my colleague Jed Williams has previously written, Yext’s Tags initiative is a big one, going up against Google Places with a broad (and “open”) network of 20 participating Internet Yellow Pages and online directory sites, including AOL’s MapQuest and Patch, Citysearch, Superpages, Yahoo and Yellowbook.
Yext CEO Howard Lerman describes Tags as “full-time, real listing …

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 …

The ILM:10 conference in Santa Clara ended with what is arguably the most important topic of the conference. How can businesses take all of the incredible users experiences emerging in local and social media and convert them into SMB sales?
Tackling this subject were Court Cunningham, CEO of Yodle; Todd Rowe, head of global channel sales, …