Verizon's announcement today that it will buy AOL for $4.4 billion is a bid to get beyond dumb pipes and airwaves to get deeply into mobile and video. By doing so, Verizon, a $200 Billion company, hopes to play on…
Apple finally made some moves into the local mapping wars last week with the purchase of Locationary, which helps find business locations, and HopStop, which provides transit maps and travel suggestions. We'll go out on a limb and predict that…
Hurricane Sandy forced millions of North-easterners out of their travel routines, closing down regular transit routes and services. It also spurred a boomlet in online and mobile searches for alternative transit, as well as weather. HopStop, a 20 person, four-year-old…
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…
Amazon has reportedly purchased UpNext, the five-year-old, 3-D mapping and directory service that now provides "clickable building"-oriented maps for more than 50 cities, including 23 that are enhanced in depth. The service has experimented with a number of features, including…
A few years ago, the location of businesses became a big question mark, as well as a strategic issue, as people wanted to shop or dine nearby. These “geo-fencing” issues were especially important for Yellow Pages companies. Since then, search…
HopStop, a directions portal that competes in the segment against an ever-building Google Maps, today announced its plans to fight the Big G, including new markets, content partners and features. The 20-person site, which gets about one-third of its traffic…
It's hard work distilling 20,000 people, hundreds of sessions, droves of start-ups, seemingly endless parties and even a Mike Tyson cameo into a cliffs notes recap of SxSW Interactive. Not that anyone is shedding any tears for me. America loves lists…
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…
Google today announced a rather significant change to its local search results and ranking algorithms. Dubbed Place Search, this provides more detailed information about places that match your search query and location (inferred or explicit). This means a few things. First, it's the official…
Sorting content by neighborhoods and ZIP codes can boost usage considerably, as HelloMetro recently discovered. The 10-year-old city guide gets more than 6 million monthly unique visitors and has 1,500 local sites. In a case study published today, it said…
As the demand for dependable call-tracking tools intensifies in the SMB marketplace, WebVisible -- the Irvine, California-based local online marketing provider -- has unveiled upgrades to its portfolio of services to enable more focused ad geotargeting and greater call-tracking capabilities for businesses.…
U.K. directory publisher Yell is launching an overall redesign to its online directory today that follows the trend of building an immersive online Yellow Pages experience. The new site includes 3-D maps and street cam. Working with partners C3 and…
Jon Brod, executive vice president of AOL Ventures, Local & Mapping, gave attendees at Marketplaces 2010 a glimpse into the direction that AOL is moving in its local strategy, specifically with Patch.com, MapQuest, its content management system Seed, its LocalFund…
EveryScape, a Massachusetts-based company that offers an immersive local search experience, has secured a new $6 million funding round. We see this as a sign of confidence that the model EveryScape is pursuing -- creating a virtual local search experience…
Yell.com has decided to forgo partnering on maps with Google, Microsoft or other potential competitors in favor of building its own propriety map product. The U.K.'s largest directory publisher unveiled a beta version of the Yell Maps product this week.…
Mapping has become less about radius of where you are and more about what people define as local, how far people are willing to travel and the importance of certain events or locations in their community. While the advertising paradigm…
Selling advertising on customized Google Maps is becoming increasingly common, with agencies such as LAT49 showing the way. Ads have been sold on maps for hiking, jogging trails, local transit and other categories. Now Wedding Mapper is taking the same…
MapQuest launched a feature that lets those celebrating Easter find the closest Easter egg hunts. These include formal hunts for the general public (search technology hasn't reached the point of indexing private backyard events). It's an interesting integration of local…
Local SEO guru Andrew Shotland just alerted me to the fact that Google is now serving the local "10 pack" in searches that don't include geographic modifiers (original discovery by Google Maps expert Mike Blumenthal). For those unfamiliar, the 10…
