Yellow Pages Sites Beat Google In Local Data Accuracy Test

Google Places, Google Search Engine, Local Search Marketing, Yelp /

In the brave new world of “SoLoMo” there are an increasing number of sites and mobile apps competing to help you choose a local business or lead you there. In addition to Google Maps, Yelp and Foursquare there are the venerable yellow pages’ sites and many others. They all get their local data from generally the same several sources; so one might expect all these sites to have comparably accurate information, right? Apparently not. Roughly a month ago I spoke with Marc Brombert, the CEO of Implied Intelligence. His company provides a range of data-related services (e.g., enhancement, cleansing, de-duplication) to marketers and publishers. At the conclusion of our call I suggested that Implied Intelligence test the accuracy and completeness of the business listings data on several of the leading local search sites. Surprise: Yellow pages beat Google for local search Several weeks later Implied Intelligence sent me the results of its test. They’re a bit unexpected and illuminating. Google, which has probably devoted more effort and resources to local search than any of its competitors, did not come out on top in the test. Overall it placed third. Two yellow pages sites beat it. Implied Intelligence crawled and hand checked 1,000 independent local business websites in the US (no chains or franchises were included in the test) and compared the information it captured to the data contained on the following sites: Bing Maps Citysearch Dexknows Foursquare Google Maps Mapquest Superpages Yellowpages.com (YP.com) Yelp The criteria and results Implied Intelligence evaluated and scored the local search competitors on the basis of the following criteria: Coverage (was the listing present) Number of duplicates Accuracy of information Richness of information (presence of additional information beyond business name, address and phone) The first table below offers a comparison among these sites in terms of basic listings coverage and accuracy. The yellow highlighting indicates the winner in each category. In terms of enhanced information, YP.com was the winner. Reviews and check-in data were not considered because Implied Intelligence felt this didn’t allow for an “apples to apples” comparison across sites. However, had reviews content been included Yelp, Google and Foursquare would likely have fared better. Superpages the overall winner Overall Superpages was the winner, followed by YP.com with Google Maps coming in third. Foursquare was the overall loser. However Yelp also didn’t fare that well either. The table reflects that Google Maps had the most complete coverage: 80 percent of the 1,000 local listings were present. No site had 100 percent of the 1,000 listings. Foursquare had the worst coverage at only 16.7 percent. In terms of error percentages, yellow pages site Superpages outperformed the others. YP.com had the fewest duplicate listings in the test. Source: Search Engine Land This is surprising but this is basically just saying that your contact info might not be the same everywhere and no doubt this can be a big problem for law firms.  You have to make sure that you check the accuracy of your law firms contact info, especially if you have multiple offices and have moved around a lot. 

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What is Google Plus?

Google Plus, Google Search Engine, Google+, Social Media Marketing /

Google Plus is one more Social Media network you should have your legal practice setup with.  Its the new player on the block but its growing quickly and I really like it. Google Plus is a social network, with similarities to Twitter and Facebook, but some interesting differences as well. The site is based around the idea of offering users some control over who they share information with through a feature called “Circles.”Essentially, a circle is a group of people you define and curate, designed specifically for sharing information. The site also features “Huddles,” which are group chats, “Hangouts,” which are group video chats, and “Sparks,” which are streams of content from around the Web based on topics you’re interested in. Instead of having a wall like on Facebook, the primary user experience is through viewing feeds of information, similar to Twitter or the Facebook news feed. But what’s unique about Google Plus is that you can view one feed of everyone you’ve added to a circle under the “home” view, select to view unique streams of information based on the circles you’ve created, or view a feed called “incoming” for people who have added you to a circle that you haven’t added to one of your own. Your posts aren’t limited to a short character length, and you can edit a post once you’ve shared it. Like a Facebook wall, you can comment on people’s posts and interact with other people, and if they’ve posted publicly, you can comment on someone’s post even if they didn’t share it directly with you. Google Plus integrates the +1 feature that the company launched last month, which has similarity to a Facebook “like,” except that it doesn’t actually share the content on your Google Plus profile. For example, you can +1 a comment or a post on Google+, just like you can +1 a website or blog post that has added the +1 button. GOOGLE PLUS FOR LAWYERS Should lawyers have a Google plus page?  YES! Without a doubt it makes sense to have a Google plus page for your law firm. Even though Google plus just started, it just makes sense to do anything related to Google. Especially because it appears that it can have a positive effect on your organic SEO rankings. Below is a great video describing what Google Plus is and how it compares to Facebook.

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Mobile Industry Stats

Mobile Advertising, Mobile for Lawyers /

More mobile industry stats showing that more people are using mobile and more people are going to use mobile ! By 2015, 81% of U.S. cell users will have smartphones (Source: Goldman Sachs, 2011) Android expected to have 31pc market share by 2016 (Source: IDC, 2012) 53% of American consumers use their smartphones to access search engines at least once a day (Source: Google and Mobile Marketing Association Survey) Globally, 80% of consumers have used computers to access the Web within the previous seven days. Sixty percent used their mobile devices to do so (Source: Google and the Mobile Marketing Association Survey) By the end of 2011, Android is predicted to have nearly 40% of the total global market share, with Symbian at just over 20%, the iOS platform with 16% and RIM 14.9% (Source: IDC 2011 report) US mobile subscriptions officially crossed the 100% penetration mark in Q4 2010 (Source: Chetan Sharma Consulting) The smartphone market is now larger than the PC market. Smartphones outsold PCs in Q4 of 2010 101 million to 92 million (Source: IDC) Smartphones and tablet computers will increase mobile Web traffic by 26 times during the next four years (Source: Cisco Systems, 2011) 86% of mobile internet users use their mobile device while watching TV with 37% of those browsing the internet for non-related TV material (Source: Yahoo, 2011) The number of Smartphone users worldwide is predicted to exceed 1 billion by 2014 (Parks Associates, 2010) 25% of US mobile web users only access the web from their mobile phones (Source: On Device Research, 2010 as reported by MobiThinking) It is predicted there will be 80 million new smartphone users in 2011 added to the already existing 60 million consumers who already own one (Nielsen, 2010) It is expected that half of the US population will use a Smartphone by the end of 2011 (Asymco.com, 2010) More than 65 million smartphones are to ship in 2010 in North America (Canalys, 2010) Mobile is predicted to be bigger than internet in 5 years (Morgan Stanley, 2010) 74 percent of online retailers have already, or are currently, developing a mobile strategy(Forrester Research study produced in conjunction with Shop.org, 2010) The number of available mobile retail applications has increased 350% from 2009 to 2010 (Acquity Group) 7% of Internet Retailer’s Top 500 e-retailers have downloadable mobile apps available to consumers (Internet Retailer, 2010) 44% of retailers plan to enable a mobile app in 2010 (Forbes Insights) Apparel, accessory and footwear retailers plan to spend an average of $65,000 on mobile this year (Internet Retailer, 2010) BlackBerry, iPhone and Android devices will account for over 80% of smartphones shipped in the region this year (Canalys, 2010) Source: http://www.digby.com/mobile-industry-resources/mobile-industry-statistics/

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Reports: Google CPCs Continue To Decline And Yahoo/Bing’s Rise While Spend Overall Grows In Q1

General Search Engine News, Google Search Engine /

By all accounts, paid search spending rose in Q1 2012 as compared to the previous year, but by how much depends on the source, and the sector. Covario, which serves mostly high-tech clients, says paid search in the Americas grew 15% in the first quarter, while Adobe’s Efficient Frontier, which serves clients in a variety of verticals, says it saw a 16% year-over-year increase in the U.S.. Meanwhile, the retail-heavy and U.S.-focused Rimm Kaufman Group (RKG) says search spend rose 30 percent as compared to the 2011 period. All three companies recently released reports that give insight into how paid search did in the last quarter, and predict what spending might look like for the rest of the year to come. Cost-per-click rates on Google continued to decline, according to Efficient Frontier. The company says Google CPCs fell by 5 percent year-over-year, and was down from the fourth quarter, as well. Still, by increasing clicks overall, the company has managed to hang onto its market share. It probably helps that Yahoo-Bing CPCs increased by 18% year-over-year, giving the Search Alliance less of an ROI advantage. According to Rimm Kaufman, Google CPCs fell 7% year-over-year in Q1, while CPCs on Yahoo-Bing rose 15% as compared to the year-ago period. Though Efficient Frontier said cost-per-click pricing was down in the automotive and finance sectors, the company found that CPCs dropped most precipitously (by 17%) in the retail sector. Covario also noted a drop in CPCs, saying they declined 3% from Q4 ’11. The company’s analysts believe search engine algorithm changes are behind the decline and predict pricing will stabilize in the second half of the year. The biggest trend noted by Efficient Frontier is paid search on smartphones and tablets. The company says spend on mobile devices in the U.S. represented 7.7% of all search spend in the first quarter, mostly driven by growth in spending on tablets. Tablet spend has grown from nearly zero in May of 2011 to 4.25% of all search ad spend by March of 2012. Spend on tablets is now greater than that on smartphones. The company predicts that overall mobile device spend will account for 15 to 20 percent of search spend by the end of this year. Part of what’s driving the move to tablets especially is that conversions on tablets exceeds that of desktop devices, yet CPCs on tablets continue to be lower. Rimm Kaufman said it saw mobile traffic share at just under 14% at the end of the first quarter, which was nearly double 2011 levels. Tablets represented nearly 8% of paid search clicks and 57% of mobile clicks. Google was the deliverer of much of that mobile traffic, and it continues to be the dominant player overall. The company commanded 78% market share in Q1, according to Covario. Spend on Google was up 1% from the typically-busy Q4 period, and up 23% over the year-ago period. The Yahoo-Bing Search Alliance showed 2% growth from the fourth quarter, but it’s still down 20% from the first quarter of 2011 and has 13% market share. Baidu, the leading player in China, grew 4% from last quarter and 142% year-over-year. The company rakes in 9% of global paid search spending. Of the three companies, only Covario and Efficient Frontier made predictions about the rest of the year. Covario forecasts 18 to 22% annualized growth globally in 2012, while the Adobe unit only gives a U.S. number, saying growth will come in between 10 to 15 percent this year. SOURCE  

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Mobile Stats

Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile for Lawyers /

Mobile is growing bigger and bigger every day and below are some of the recent stats about the growth of mobile.  Make sure your law firms site is in a mobile friendly format and consider setting up a Mobile App for your legal practice. Mobile Commerce and Engagement Stats 47% of consumers confirm they use their smartphone to search for local information, such as information about a local store they want to visit. 46% of consumers look up prices on a store’s mobile site, and 42% check inventory prior to shopping in the store (Source: Local and the e-tailing group, 2012) Nearly two of three shoppers use at least one device to research and purchase while shopping, and 28% use two devices at a time. More than one in three shoppers made at least one purchase with their mobile devices during the past six months, and tablet shoppers have an even higher propensity to make a purchase on the device, with one in four having purchased six times or more in the past six months (Source: Local and the e-tailing group, 2012) The number of US mobile phone owners who have used 2D barcodes in the past 3 months increased from 1% in 2010 to 5% in 2011 and reached 15% among smartphone users (Source: Forrester, 2011) 62% of shoppers search for deals digitally for at least half of their shopping trips (Source:GMA/Booz & Company Shopper Survey) 50% of U.S. cellphone users have smartphones (Source: Nielsen, 2012) 55 percent of consumers express an interest in mobile coupons but only 10 percent have actually received one from a merchant (Source:Mercator Advisory Group, 2012) 66% of Americans ages 24-35 own a smartphone (Source: Nielsen, 2012) 18 percent of consumers have redeemed a mobile coupon in the past 90 days (Source: Mobile Audience Insights Report from JiWire, Feb 2012) 21 percent of consumers search for a coupon on their mobile device while in a store (Source:Mobile Audience Insights Report from JiWire, 2012) 80 percent of mobile users prefer locally relevant advertising and 75 percent are more likely to take an action after seeing a location-specific message (Source: Mobile Audience Insights Report from JiWire, 2012) 52% of adult cell phone owners use their devices while in a store to get help with purchasing decisions (Source: Pew American & Internet Life Project, 2012) 1.2 billion apps were downloaded during the holiday week between December 25-31 (Source: Flurry, 2011) On Cyber Monday, 10.8% of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 3.9% in 2010. Additionally, mobile sales grew dramatically, reaching 6.6% on Cyber Monday versus 2.3% in 2010 (Source: IBM’s fourth annual Cyber Monday Benchmark, 2011) Sixty-five percent of mobile users said they used their mobile device to find a business to make an in-store purchase (Source: Google, 2011) Forty-three percent of mobile shoppers have downloaded a retail app (Source: Retrevo, 2011) Approximately 52 percent of smartphone users will use their device to research products, redeem coupons and use apps to assist in their holiday gift purchase (Source: Acquity Group, 2011) Sixty-seven percent of consumers plan to make a purchase via mobile this holiday season (Source: PayPal, 2011)

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Google: 1 Billion People Will Use Mobile As Primary Internet Access Point In 2012

Google Search Engine, Mobile Advertising, Mobile for Lawyers /

Former AdMob executive Jason Spero, who is now Google’s head of mobile sales, took the stage earlier today at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona to offer up some new,global smartphone user survey data and 2012 predictions. The Google-sponsored survey had a sample size of roughly 1,000 respondents in each of the represented countries: US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. The data reflect that mobile search usage has nearly 100 percent penetration among smartphone owners, most of whom search at least once a week. Though it’s not made clear in the data released I assume this is browser-based search and does not include search via mobile apps. Google’s browser-based mobile-search share is 97 percent globally, according to StatCounter. In addition Google’s Spero offered mobile predictions for 2012: More than 1 billion people will use mobile devices as their primary internet access point. There will be 10 days where >50% of trending search terms will be on mobile Mobile’s role in driving people into stores will be proven and it will blow us away “Mobile driven spend” will emerge as a big category Smartphones will prove exceptional at driving a new consumer behavior Tablets will take their place as the 4th screen New industry standards will make mobile display easy to run 5 new, mobile first companies will reach the Angry Birds level of success The ROI on mobile and tablet advertising will increase as a result of the unmatched relevance of proximity The intersection of mobile and social will spark a dramatic new form of engaging consumers 80% of the largest 2,000 websites globally will have an HTML5 site One million small businesses globally will build a mobile website This is all amazing information and it shows that mobile is just taking over. So its time to think about your mobile presence.  Can people find your site when they are on a mobile device and if so, is it setup for mobile users?

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How Serious Is Facebook About Search?

Facebook, General Search Engine News /

An article in BusinessWeek suggests that Facebook is planning a deeper push into search. Will that be limited to improving search for the site — or will it be something more comprehensive? It’s clear that Facebook needs better internal search. Right now the search function at the top of the page is not very useful. Improving Facebook site search seems to be the first objective of an internal team, led by former Googler Lars Rasmussen, according to BusinessWeek; Searching the social network could get a lot better in the near future. About two dozen Facebook engineers, led by a former Google engineer named Lars Rasmussen, are working on an improved search engine, say two people familiar with the project who did not want to be named because the company is in a quiet period ahead of its IPO. The goal, they say, is to help users better sift through the volume of content that members create on the site, such as status updates, and the articles, videos, and other information across the Web that people “like” using Facebook’s omnipresent thumbs-up button. Better Site Search Would Increase Query Volumes There’s no question that an improved search capability would benefit Facebook in several ways. It would encourage more search activity among users, who would be rewarded with a better experience, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. It would also create a PPC ad opportunity that is probably too lucrative for Facebook to ignore. Facebook could sell contextual or keyword-based PPC ads in search results. There’s probably pent-up demand for such a program. It’s a natural for the site and a monetization opportunity that Facebook will be compelled to adopt. Facebook Not Likely to Directly Challenge Google It’s unlikely in the near term that Facebook would seek to challenge Google directly in web search. The first reason is the company’s relationship with Bing, which prevents the move in the near term at least. The second reason is that it would take a huge resource commitment from Facebook. There’s enormous exposure there; consider how much Microsoft has been losing over a period of years in trying to catch Google. Yet Facebook doesn’t need to challenge Google directly in web search. Improving search on the Facebook site — including a better layout and presentation of results — wouldn’t be anywhere as difficult as general web search. It would also be welcomed by users — and certainly by advertisers, provided there were PPC opportunities. And I would almost guarantee some version of paid-search advertising on Facebook is “on the roadmap.” Hundreds of Millions in Revenue “on the Table” According to the BusinessWeek article (using comScore data) Facebook users performed 336 million search queries in February.  If Facebook fixed search that number would immediately go up and could translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in new annual revenue for the company. Institutional investors will all but demand such a move after the IPO. In the recently released Local Search Usage Study from comScore, Localeze and agency 15 Miles, the data reflect that “use of social networking sites for local business searches has increased 67 percent since 2010.” With better Facebook site search those numbers would likely only get bigger. Source   

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Google Eliminates Another Link Network

General Search Engine News, Google Search Engine, Link Building /

The battle between Google and those trying to artificially manipulate its search results is an ongoing battle. Google on March 19th took down one of those blog/link networks named BuildMyRank.com. BuildMyRank.com confirmed Google has deindexed an “overwhelming majority” of their network as of March 19, 2012. The management of BuildMyRank.com has decided to immediately shut down their service and provide refunds to customers. BuildMyRank.com thought that Google would allow their network since they felt they provided “better quality service,” which was a “bit different from other networks.” But as they admitted on their blog, “this was not the case. The bottom line is that Google has been cracking down for awhile now and its a new era of SEO.  You need to create good content, include videos and work harder to obtain links then in the past. Jennifer Ledbetter at PotPieGirl has a lot more on this network being hit by Google on her blog. It might also just be one of several networks hit.  

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Make Sure Your Legal Site Loads Fast

Legal Internet Marketing, Web Site Tips, Website Speed /

Making sure that your legal web site loads fast is important for a number of reasons.  The obvious is that you want to make sure the site loads quickly for any visitor that comes to your site, if the site doesn’t load right away or takes over a few seconds, then that potential client may just leave your site. Another reason is that your site may not rank as high at the search engines if its not loading fast. Sometimes you might not even know that your site is loading slowly and at times it could be that your web host has issues with its web server or database server.  It can happen at times where your site just doesnt come up at all for a few minutes. Its important to check your site out and test the site load time.  You can access this tool in the Google webmaster account to see how fast your site loads. EXAMPLE OF A WEB HOST CAUSING ISSUES I had noticed a few sites of a clients loading very slowing at times and I checked with their web host and got the usual excuses and run around.  Yet the more I looked at the site and examined why it was not loading faster, I came to the conclusion it was the web hosts database server causing load time issues. SO what I did was move the site to another web host and almost instantly I could tell the site loaded much faster. I also checked with the Google site speed and it went from like an outrageous load time of 9 seconds to 2.2, which was much better.  Also a week later, I noticed a sharp increase in organic SEO rankings.  SO make sure your web site is loading fast! GOOGLE ENJOYS SITES THAT LOAD FAST! Google has talked a lot recently about how its important for your website to load fast and how that’s now related to your organic SEO rankings.  So if your site loads slowly, that might be a reason your sites not better ranked at Google.  Also important is that if your site is loading slow, it might be turning visitors who are potential clients off and having them leave the site out of frustration. FROM GOOGLE BLOG ABOUT IMPORTANCE OF SITE SPEED At Google, we are passionate about speed and making the web faster, and we are glad to see that many website owners share the same idea. A faster web is better for both users and businesses. A slow loading landing page not only impacts your conversion rate, but can also impact AdWords Landing Page Quality and ranking in Google search. To improve the performance of your pages, you first need to measure and diagnose the speed of a page, which can be a difficult task. Furthermore, even with page speed measurements, it’s critical to look at page speed in context of other web analytics data. Therefore, we are thrilled to announce the availability of the Site Speed report in the new Google Analytics platform. With the Site Speed report you can measure the page load time across your site. Uses for the Site Speed Report Content: Which landing pages are slowest? Traffic sources: Which campaigns correspond to faster page loads overall? Visitor: How does page load time vary across geographies? Technology: Does your site load faster or slower for different browsers? WORDPRESS PLUGIN – W3 CACHE W3 Total Cache IS A WORDPRESS PLUGIN for Lawyers that improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. – DOWNLOAD HERE

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WordPress Plugins for Lawyers: W3 Total Cache

Wordpress Plugins /

There are many different plugins for wordpress but one of the more important ones is W3 Total Cache and its basically a plugin designed to make your wordpress site or blog load faster. GOOGLE LIKES SITES THAT LOAD FAST Google has talked a lot recently about how its important for your website to load fast and how that’s now related to your organic SEO rankings.  So if your site loads slowly, that might be a reason your sites not better ranked at Google.  Also important is that if your site is loading slow, it might be turning visitors who are potential clients off and having them leave the site out of frustration. Your site can be loading slow for multiple reasons. Either you have a lot of big graphics on your site, or possibly your web server or database server are slow. Whatever the reason, this plugin can help your site load faster. W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. – DOWNLOAD HERE W 3 TOTAL CACHE BENEFITS  & FEATURES Benefits: At least 10x improvement in overall site performance (Grade A in YSlow or significant Google Page Speed improvements) when fully configured Improved conversion rates and “site performance” which affect your site’s rank on Google.com “Instant” subsequent page views: browser caching Optimized progressive render: pages start rendering quickly Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site; visitors view more pages Improved web server performance; sustain high traffic periods Up to 80% bandwidth savings via minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and feeds Features: Compatible with shared hosting, virtual private / dedicated servers and dedicated servers / clusters Transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration with Media Library, theme files and WordPress itself Mobile support: respective caching of pages by referrer or groups of user agents including theme switching for groups of referrers or user agents Caching of (minified and compressed) pages and posts in memory or on disk or on CDN (mirror only) Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript in memory, on disk or on CDN Caching of feeds (site, categories, tags, comments, search results) in memory or on disk or on CDN (mirror only) Caching of search results pages (i.e. URIs with query string variables) in memory or on disk Caching of database objects in memory or on disk Caching of objects in memory or on disk Minification of posts and pages and feeds Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party JavaScript (with automated updates) Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party CSS (with automated updates) Browser caching using cache-control, future expire headers and entity tags (ETag) with “cache-busting” JavaScript grouping by template (home page, post page etc) with embed location control Non-blocking JavaScript embedding Import post attachments directly into the Media Library (and CDN) DOWNLOAD HERE

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