We’re getting some great coverage:  Greg Sterling was the first to cover the chatmeter here.

Kelsey just wrote about us on their blog as well:

Here is a short company description:

chatmeter’s goal is to provide local business owners with the tools and education to manage their online reputation and marketing. Our tools will help business owners understand what people are saying about their business online (reviews, blogs, social media) in a single place saving time and frustration.  The service will allow them to track and manage their content and listings, improve their rankings to drive new business, and even discover new places to reach prospective customers.  The chatmeter will measure their overall online performance, provide personalized analysis and recommendations for improvement, and benchmark their performance against local competitors. As big fans of the small-business entrepreneur and their do-it-yourself attitude, we want to provide the tools and resources to help them take their business to the next level.

Google Buzz available in multiple ways:  You can buzz about anything online since it will be integrated with your Gmail account.  It did not roll out to everyone so check your account regularly.  This is another option to share Youtube videos, Flickr photos, websites/pages, etc. just as many do today on Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter today. Therefore, it’s hard to say if this will take off, especially with the younger generation who is already using these other sites frequently.

What becomes really interesting is the mobile local implementation.  You can access Google buzz through your browser (buzz.google.com) or right on your Google Maps mobile app, (by adding the Buzz layer).  Users can post comments and have them geotagged to say what they’re up to and show friends where they are.  This is very similar to Twitter’s ability to Geotag your Tweets with your location.  But it’s certainly more interesting with the GoogleMaps integration.  In addition, users can post voice comments, which is not only very easy, but it can be more intriguing content as well.  This new feature can also function as a “FriendFinder” application that is built right in (similar to the Google Latitude layer).  The most interesting tie-in is the ability to post comments about a business and integrate them right to the business’s Place Pages.  I have yet to see this integrated on a place page, but I assume it will be in the user content.  I just finished a post about the frenzy of activity on Google Place Pages.  Since comments are often social related and “off the cuff”, the effect on a Business’s Place Page could be very interesting.  (Imagine:  “Hey everybody, I just ate the world’s largest burrito at Juanberto’s and now I feel like I’m gonna puke!”)  With reviews today, the owner has no ability to filter out reviews, what about comments…

Google Buzz is the latest in social mobile features.  Check out my other post on Yelp to learn about their “checkin” feature that is similar to Foursquare’s.  These features allow you to show your loyalty to a business and earn status, for both bragging rights, and hopefully deals at your favorite joints.  I am sure Google will be adding similar functionality soon, so keep your eyes posted.  This will be an interesting battle.  I am guessing that will lead to the continued fragmentation of content and the local search market and provide greater foundation for online reviews and comments.

Another interesting battle is for the trademark Buzz.  AT&T has recently announced they’re upcoming launch of buzz.com which will encourage customers to Buzz about a certain business.  This could potentially lead to a big trademark issue.   However, the current Trademark owner is Sony, for their Playstation Quiz Game, Buzz!  .  This game is like a home edition of the quiz games you’ve seen at your local bar/tavern.  In fact, Sony is currently in a lawsuit over the name with Buzztime Entertainment who runs these quiz games.   Will AT&T and Google jump in the game.  And don’t forget about Yahoo! buzz.  Will Sony care?  Do they have a case?  After all, they are different services…perhaps the Patent attorneys have all figured out that buzz is too common of a word, but Apple did it…why not buzz.

Has anyone seen any of the Google Buzz comments on a Google Place Page, if so, please add a link in the comments.  I’d love to see it.

Yelp has had a very busy couple months.  Here are some of the key points:

1. New Capital. January was an exciting month for Yelp.  Rumors at Techcrunch were of a new Google acquisition for around $550 million, but it sounded like the deal quickly fell apart.  And now Business Week has reported they passed on Microsoft for $700 million!  Wow.  Apparently, Yelp had already lined up a new investor as part of their backup plan and they were able to announce a new investment of $25 million cash to start with Elevation Partners and willingness to invest up to $100 million if needed.   Yelp is saying they will use this additional capital to:

• Double their sales staff from 200 to 400 and add more cities (currently 35 cities with community managers.)
• Mobile Product Development:  Yelp knows the value of mobile local and will continue to add enhancements to compete to get broad usage on consumer’s phones.  Read below for some of the mobile enhancements.
• Cash out for many vested employees.

2.  New Mobile Features: Here are the new features that Yelp has just added to their iPhone app.  This is from the Yelp blog:

• Yelp Profile: Not only are you able to log into your Yelp.com profile (v.3), but now you will also be able to see and interact with your Yelp profile as you would on Yelp.com.
• Yelp Friend Finder: You can now see and invite friends from your iPhone’s address book to join you on Yelp. If you’ve connected with Facebook, we’ll also let you know if any of your FB friends are yelping, too.
• Yelp Check-ins: We’ve now added the ability for yelpers to “Check-in” to businesses. This includes being able to broadcast your whereabouts and send Quick Tips to your friends on Yelp, Facebook and Twitter who, if they opt-in to these updates, will be able to see your location both via “Push” alerts, as well as on a map. Active users of this feature may receive “Regular” status of highly-frequented businesses. This means they are part of an active group of people who patronize a business and this moniker will appear next to reviews and tips and on business pages in the app, as well as on the business listing on Yelp.com.
• Sharing via Facebook Connect and Twitter: We’ve taken another online feature, offline. Yelpers now have the ability to share their check-ins and Quick Tips via Facebook Connect and Twitter while on the go.
• Updates to Monocle: In addition to seeing reviews nearby in Monocle, Yelp’s Augmented Reality feature, you can also see which businesses your friend’s have “checked-in” to as well as a new “map” in Monocle view that will move with you.

Certainly, the most interesting in my opinion are the check-ins and the social media integration with FB and Twitter.  The checkin features is certainly a defensive play that competes directly with Foursquare’s mobile app, which provides a competitive game for customers to “check-in” to their favorite places and earn points (and hopefully discounts) at some point.  Foursquare has grown to over half a million users, but Yelp’s addition of this feature may cause them to lose ground and may leave them in the dust due to Yelp’s popularity.  The tie-in to social media allows Yelpers to quickly brag about their social status as well, using word-of-mouth to create even greater awareness.  It will depend on the customer experiences of each, but with Yelp’s salesforce, they will more likely be able to get businesses to offer discounts and prove the real value of becoming a “regular” after all.  You should definitely keep your eye on this feature.

Yelp has grown to over 29 million unique users per month (that’s over 60% growth in the last year) and has over 9 million total reviews.  Yelp may have proven success in their model so far, but how will it go as they start to expand into smaller cities and less tech-savvy markets.  What do you think?  Were they crazy to pass up $700 million from Microsoft?  Is it possible they can become the next great Internet Brand as big as Facebook or Twitter?

Who’s going to win the local battle between Foursquare and Yelp?  How long until the same feature is added to Google Maps???  What do you think?

• Enhanced Listings
• Reviews added from local media, bloggers, and unconventional review sources
• Special Announcements/Event Messages

ENHANCED LISTINGS (FEBRUARY 2):

Google Maps launches a new testing ad platform for local businesses.  It’s called “Enhanced Listings” and it allows you to enhance the appearance of your listing to stand out from others.   The cost is a flat fee of $25 per month.  The content pieces/links that you can call out in your ad include one-click access to your profile content (photos, videos, directions, coupons), or your own content (website, menu, reservations page). At this point, the enhanced listings are not supposed to affect your ranking at all.  At least that what Google is telling the experts so far.  Mike Blumenthal has provided some great examples on his blog and I stole one of them below (thanks Mike!), Understanding Google Maps & Local Search.  At this point, if you have time to read this blog, then you are likely actively marketing your listing.  If that’s the case, then I would suggest giving it a shot for $25!  See how it does.  If you have a video to promote, I would highly recommend that as your first option to get you to stand out and drive traffic.

The test started in just a few cities, however, Becky from www.onlinetrafficdivas.com was kind enough to post a video describing how to unlock this in any city.  Here is a video demonstrating how you may able to unlock access to the enhanced listing in any city.  Stay tuned to find out if the results of these tests.  Note:  You have to add a coupon to get started.

UNCONVENTIONAL REVIEWS ADDED:  (JANUARY 18):

The reviews section of your Google Place Page will be changing.  Until now, Google has been aggregating reviews for your from third party review sites like Citysearch, Tripadvisor, Urbanspoon, etc (Notice Yelp omitted from the list.  Yelp has intentionally prevented Google from crawling their review content).  However, they have announced that they are beginning to identify articles, blogs, etc as “reviews” and will integrate them into that section.  Currently, those articles have been tagged in the section “More about this place”.  They are now using sentiment analysis tools to establish an article as a review.  It’s hard to tell if this will focus on both positive and negative reviews, but it does change the landscape of reviews.

This update will also provide greater exposure to the local bloggers and could continue the evolution of the local landscape and publishing of local content.  Managing your reviews is crucial to reputation management for the small business, however, this integration may make it more difficult to control the content on their Google Place Page. To date, owners have not control over the content in this section.  The order of reviews in this section has no logic since it does not seem to be chronological. This integration of article based reviews may be experimental and it will be interesting to discover if this is what consumers want.  The other interesting impact is that these references may reduce the number of citations that a listing has an increase the number of reviews.  Since reviews have less impact than citations in terms of Local SEO for Google Maps, then this could actually have a negative effect on your rankings, we’ll just have to wait and see.  Has anyone seen this on their listings yet?

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND OWNER-VERIFIED BADGES (JANUARY 14TH)

Another recent update to Google Place Pages is the ability to add messages, event information, specials, and other timely information to your listing.  This allows the small business owner to reach out to current and potential customers with new information about the business, products, or services.  At this point, users must log into their Local Business Center dashboard to create updates.  I would assume that some sort of mobile interface similar to Twitter will be coming in the future since many small businesses (cafés/restaurants/bars) may not be online during the day.  At this point, the messages seem to be pretty buried for the end user, so it’s not likely to have much impact until it’s called out more on the page and especially on the mobile service.

Owner-Verified Badges:  In addition, in the screen below, you can see the badge that identifies if a business owner has claimed and been verified by Google’s automated system.  This badge is supposed to indicate to consumers that this listing has been updated by the business owner, so the information provided is accurate.   Of course, that is the information they have control over (business details).  The information that Google has scraped from the web may or may not be accurate and certainly not verified by the owner.

Refer to the screen below to see the implementation of these 2 features.  For more information on either of these announcements, click HERE .

I will say that one positive thing that happened in 2009 is the year of mobile.  The iPhone became the definition of a game changer, changing the entire landscape of mobile services from handset development, data usage, application adoption, and smartphone purchases.  It’s been long overdue and I’m glad to finally see it arrive.  Look for continued growth and adoption and interesting developments from Google’s phone and the Android platform, especially its effect on the entire GPS industry.  Their free offerings could end up being a game changer in that space.

Anyway, I’d like to thank Courtney Mills, who put together a great list that I just finished reading from industry experts about there predictions for 2010.  This is a comprehensive list on a various aspects of Digital Marketing (SEO, Advertising, Social Media, Mobile, SEM, etc). Here are my thoughts on a few on them that relate to Mobile and Local.

GREG STERLING: Increased Reputation Management

In addition to greater adoption for mobile and local social, Greg touched on an intriguing area that I’ve been particularly interested in for SMBs, which is Reputation Management.  He’s predicting a rise in reputation management for small business that encompasses:

• Reputation management: adding services that help simplify and expose where SMB data and reviews exist online (see Marchex, GetListed, ClickFuel)

To an extent, this is a result of the Web 2.0 world in which content is created by someone and then picked up by crawlers and published in many other places.  The same is even true for business listings and the complexity of managing this (and even fixing it) becomes more difficult.  Small business don’t have the time or knowledge to find out where they are listed, make sure it’s correct, or even know where they should be listed and how to get there.  Furthermore, as reviews and social media continue adoption (especially while mobile in your local town), SMB owners will need tools to listen and become part of the conversation.  Kelsey has a great webinar on this space to check out as well.

SEOMOZ:   #1 – This Real-Time Search Thing is Outta Here

Real Time Search has been the buzz word for 2009 and we’ll see how it develops in 2010.  As businesses start/continue to really adopt and utilize social media, this will be an important tool to become part of the conversation.   Tools are still early in development so look for 2010 to be the year of improvements and adoption if the tools are user-friendly and effective.  Those that have already adopted Social Media will really start to try to determine the ROI and if not effective, reduce their focus in this area.

SEOMOZ:   #6 – SEO Spending Will Rise Dramatically

Many businesses are still just maturing in digital marketing, especially in the small, local business sector.   As these businesses experiment with SEM, many have found that competition has driven the cost per click beyond a reasonable ROI.  This will lead to a greater focus on SEO as an effective marketing strategy.  As marketing budgets slowly return in 2010, look for a greater percentage to move from traditional media to online as well.  Also, Local SEO will become more competitive in 2010 and an increase in optimization for Google Maps specifically.  This could lead to a much bigger level of map spam with multiple listings, increased categorization, variety of call tracking numbers, and more as businesses try to “game the system.”

MATT GRANFIELD:  Prediction #6: Companies will start exploiting GPS to a much greater extent.

Matt Granfield had some interesting thoughts (and very in your face style) for 2010.  Specifically, If 2009 was the year of mobile, then 2010 may be the year of GPS.  This may be largely due to both the iPhone and smartphone adoption and the free GPS service that Google has launched on the Droid.  If they keep a free service (very likely), then look for others in the space to follow.  Currently, most point to point applications are around $10 per month and have had limited adoption, but at a free pricepoint, adoption could go through the roof.

Forrester: 2010 – The Year Marketing Dies

Finally, Forrester had a great article on the evolution of the marketer.  I moved recently and came across my graduate school Marketing Book from just a few years ago.  While insightful back then, the marketing landscape has changed completely.  Good for a few laughs, but off to the recycle bin for that one.  Check out the article here.

Here is the full article and full list that Courtney has graciously aggregated:

SEOmoz: 8 Predictions for SEO in 2010

Top Rank Blog: 12 Digital Marketing Predictions for 2010

Clickz: Seven Ways to Get Your Marketing Back on Track in 2010

Search Engine Land: 5 Things on My B2B Wishlist for 2010

Marketing Mag: 2010 Marketing Predictions

ZDNet: 2010 Predictions: Will Social Media Reach Ubiquity?

Search Engine Guide: Will 2010 be the Year for Engagement?

Greg Stirling: Quick Thoughts about Next Year

Search Insider: Advertising 2010: Release the Hounds

Read Write Web: 2010 Predictions

Search Engine Land: 6 New Years Resolutions for In-House SEMs

Forrester: 2010: The Year Marketing Dies

Search Insider: The Shape of Marketing: 2010 & Beyond

Read Write Web: 10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2010

The Search Engine Journal has created a great checklist for small businesses to start managing their online reputation and local search SEO.   A few of the highlights include:

• Contact Information should be easy for both customers and crawlers to find and reference.   Consistency is important as well, so claim all your listings on the major local search sites (Gmaps, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, Yellowpages.com, etc)
• Update your website’s Title and Description metatags.  These should have your local area (San Fran) and service (carpet cleaner) within the Title.
• Do your homework!  There are tons of great resources of information out there.    Sign up and follow blogs from David Mihm, Greg Sterling, and Mike Blumenthal.  You can find great articles from them and others on Search Engine Land.

I would also reiterate the value of reviews, which are important not only for improving GoogleMaps rankings, but also for Online Reputation Management for Small Businesses.  Check out the whole article from the Search Engine Journal and if you’d like help getting to that valuable Google 7 pack, contact myself or any of the very competent Consultants listed above.

I referred to the recent WebVisible release to determine the categories who are spending the most in local online advertising.  Greg Sterling posted a great overview of this report last week. It seems that most of the advertisers in higher volume categories have learned a wide array of keywords that are profitable for their business, so it is unlikely they would ditch all these keywords for 1 Local Listing Ad.  However, they may quit buying their category keywords (San Diego Attorney), which is likely the highest volume and most profitable for Google.   I took this list and compared the LLA Rate with the PPC rate and then calculated the ratio for each category.  The average cost seems to be comparable for all the categories that were made available ($75 for high volume to $73 for lower volume), but since the PPC is much higher for the heavier advertisers due to the higher level of competition, the ratio is actually much lower for the more competitive categories.  I find this very strange since you would have expected it to be set up the other way around.  The goal of the LLA advertising is to get less those SMBs and/or categories that do not participate in Adwords today.   From this data, I’ve had trouble figuring out how Google has determined the rate for the LLA for a specific category.  Any ideas?

There are some real outliers like Movie Theatres and Night Clubs which typically don’t do much advertising at all so it’s strange that the price for the LLA was so high for this trial.  Perhaps that is why they ended up making these ads free during the trial??  Was anyone ever billed for these ads?

At V-Enable, we began building mobile local applications for carriers in 2006, despite challenges in device user interfaces, poor marketing of data services and applications, and expensive data plans.   Now that many of these issues have been addressed, along with the impact of the iPhone (true definition of a game changer), mobile local is finally getting its due respect.  Check out this great comparison below from Kelsey’s mobile user surveys since 2007.   With Google’s recent push into powering a free GPS Navigation service on its Android Platform (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/technology/companies/29gps.html), adoption in this category will continue to grow significantly.  At $10/per month, GPS was a little hard to swallow for most consumers since they may only use it on a limited basis, but with a free service, this may become your dominant local search application.   However, to compete with other local search providers, many GPS providers will need to update the user interface, search results, and relevance of local ads.  Many GPS search interfaces are great at searching what’s around me, but difficult to quickly search in other areas/cities.  Furthermore, most will still need to integrate an ad based model if they want to compete/offer a free solution.   Look for many of them to roll out tiered services in the next year or two with perhaps limited functionality on a free service.

There are a few key players trying to make mobile couponing takeoff, but the challenge was that they never had the relationship with a large number of businesses and (more importantly), exposure to a large number of consumers and search activity. Obviously Google fits this requirement well. They are a little behind the features that competitors have (better storage and accessibility options, but those will certainly come with a little work. They’ve been in the online coupon business for years, but only recently have they started their push to get businesses actively using Google Maps to claim and update their listings. Rumors are that around 10% of businesses have done so. Obviously, mobile coupons only really apply to services that people really need and want while on the go (Restaurants, Shopping, Bars, Movie Theaters) not the traditional online searches such as Dentists, Doctors, Plumbers, Carpet Cleaners. While it certainly doesn’t hurt to extend those businesses coupons to mobile, I wouldn’t expect much to come of it from a mobile interface.

To get started, you must first claim your listing at the Local Business Center (Google.com/LocalBusinessCenter) and when setting up your coupon, extend it to mobile. NOTE: If you already have an active coupon and want it accessible via mobile, then you must login and update your coupon. Get it done just in time to reach those holiday shoppers!

All of these changes are in part a continuing strategy for Google to provide added value for end users, while at the same time, (in my opinion) keep SEOs on their toes.    This is a strategy that Google uses just like on their web search results to prevent companies from beating (and/or spamming) the system.  A recent article by  Growmap on backlinks also presents a similar situation.   Their findings present that Google’s documented backlinks are much fewer than Yahoo and Bing.  http://www.growmap.com/backlinks/.  They may actually document more and just report less.  Who knows.

Furthermore, the guidelines for Google Maps continue to evolve.   It is now up to 34 pages.  Google continues to try to reduce spamming from their map site, but as their usage and market share continues to grow, spamming will only continue.   It will also continue to be a challenge while they offer up the capability for anyone to create a listing without any verification.   If you go back just a few years, listing data was limited to content provided by business databases with information that was verified and controlled, but this new world of user generated content will continue to create challenges for businesses and consumers trying to find businesses.   The more content added, it can become very hard to find what you’re looking for.  In addition, user generated content is rarely removed or deleted, which continues to make things challenging for finding accurate information.   There is some verification required to claim a listing, but not little to add a listing (can use any cell phone number).  Do you think Google Maps should have more verification of additions to the database?  If so, what?