TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap

Here is a recap of posts from the last week in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.

Cobalt, Marchex Take Pay-Per-Call to Auto Dealers
We thought there must be a reason why VoiceStar, Marchex‘s pay-per-call unit, had such a prominent presence at the North American Dealer Association show in February. Now we know: The company has just formed a reseller partnership with The Cobalt Group, which provides services to 40 percent of U.S. auto dealers. (read more…)

Kodak and Craigslist: A Tale of Two Blogs
There has been lots of talk at search marketing conferences about social media marketing (SMM) and social media optimization (SMO). This involves everything from starting a blog to optimizing your content with link bait and other hooks to get exposure on Digg, StumbleUpon and other socially driven news sites and discovery engines. SEOmoz is a leading voice in this area, as is frequent SMO panelist Neil Patel. (read more…)

Zillow Extends to Mortgage
Zillow continues its march up the real estate value chain with a new feature that allows house buyers to apply for mortgages. The mortgage service, like everything else on Zillow, is ad-supported and free to both buyers and lenders. It is a direct strike against companies like IAC’s LendingTree.com that sell leads. (read more…)

Idearc Taps Former Citysearch CEO Ferguson to Lead Online Effort
Idearc Media announced yesterday that it has named Briggs Ferguson president – Internet, replacing Eric Chandler, who departed in January to accept a position in another industry. Ferguson spent five years at IAC Citysearch. He left in March 2007, replaced by current Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti. (read more…)

More on Voice Search: Yahoo! Enters the Ring
Yahoo! announced today at CTIA that it will integrate voice search capability into its OneSearch mobile search application. The new “OneSearch 2.0″ will be powered by Vlingo, a speech recognition technology company that also received a $20 million B round today (led by Yahoo!). This all comes the day after human-powered search engine ChaCha did the same thing with its mobile product. (read more…)

ChaCha Launches Voice Search: A Conversation With Brad Bostic
“Human-powered” mobile search engine ChaCha announced today that it has integrated voice search capability. The company started in late 2005 as an online search engine that tapped human operators to return results, with the thought that directly answering natural language queries differentiated it from the machine-powered search engines that rule the world. (read more…)

ANA’s Open Letter to Publishers Cites Research, Audit Concerns
The Association of National Advertisers Directory Committee has used a very public method to challenge North American Yellow Pages publishers to do more on research and transparency. The committee issued an “open letter” today urging directory publishers to expand syndicated usage research, commit to audit circulation, end directory extensions, and stop the “forced bundling” of primary and companion directories. (read more…)

Vertical Case Study: SpaBoom Web Enables Local Spas
Spas have always been a leading advertising category for city guides and other local sites. In many cases, they are virtually the only breakthrough for “services.” The rest may be dominated by restaurants and bars. But the spas themselves have more upside to explore from online marketing. Gift certificates are especially hot. Spa Web site development and targeted e-mail management are compelling add-ons. (read more…)

Local Matters Goes Mobile
Local search platform provider Local Matters has announced it will acquire mobile search platform provider mobilePeople for a combination of cash and stock. In a nutshell, this will extend Local Matters’ publisher partners’ ability to sell mobile and DA-delivered voice advertising in addition to print, IYP and a growing media bundle. (read more…)

R.H. Donnelley Opts Out of Chicago Residential White Pages
The current distribution of the AT&T’s Real Yellow Pages produced by Dex (R.H. Donnelley) will no longer include the Chicago Metro Residential White Pages. While this strategy has been in practice with Canada’s Yellow Pages Group in select major cities, this is the first such instance where a major U.S. publisher has opted not to deliver a residential White Pages edition while offering consumers and businesses the option of requesting a copy. (read more…)