News Ready Heads to Pinterest, Amazon Store Analytics, 100% Data Opt-in Google's Commerce Boss Heads to Pinterest Pinterest's co-founder and CEO, Ben Silbermann, is stepping down and will become executive chairman. Google Commerce boss Bill Ready will take over the reins
Analysis Digital Agencies Form Coalition to Support Reproductive Rights Doing the right thing is also good business.
News Dobbs Privacy Headache, ROI Decline, Voice Advances Dobbs Creates Personal-Data Minefield Following the demise of Roe, many companies announced they would pay for abortion-related employee travel: Apple, Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Yelp, Dicks Sporting Goods, Neflix and others.
News Post-Roe Privacy, Page Speed = Revenue, Quiet AR Revolution Post-Roe: Data Privacy Now More Urgent Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, data privacy becomes even more urgent for millions of women. Multiple states, perhaps even a majority,
News Google SEO Chum, Local Inventory Search, Open Metaverse Google Is Full of 'SEO Chum' There's a growing perception that Google is in decline or dying. This is happening even as its "back end" is becoming much more sophisticated.
News Two-Factor Reviews, Paid Links Work, Smart Speaker Growth Flat Two-Factor Fake Review Fix Review bombing is becoming a bigger problem. It shows up with games and, more often, movies and TV. Typically, it's a loosely organized effort driven by
News Local Keywords Redux, ReviewTrackers Bought, Service = Great Marketing 1K Keywords: 34% Are Local Earlier this week we discussed the top 1,000 search keywords (desktop). Two things jumped out: the list is dominated by brand and local queries.
News Top 1K Keywords, Wonder v. Webvan, Text You Must Brands, Local Dominate Top Searches Food near me and restaurants near me are the leading local queries in the top 1,000 keywords according to a recent analysis (using Ahrefs
News Facebook Outlook, Gen ZMB, Oliver's Tech Takedown Debating the Outlook for Facebook A number of speculative articles have recently appeared, some undoubtedly driven by schadenfreude, about whether Facebook/Meta is merely pivoting or foundering. For example, the
News Amazon Local Ads, H&M Smart Mirrors, Facebook Hardware Fail Amazon Eyeing 'Local Ads' Opportunity Earlier this week job listings for an Amazon Local Ads "startup business within Amazon Ads" appeared. One listing for a senior BD manager reads, "This
News Apple Highlights, Retailers ❤️ Search, Print Media Pain Apple's WWDC Highlights Apple's developer conference, WWDC, happened this week. With the exception of a new MacBook Air, the announcements focused on software. We were struck by Continuity Camera, which
News Yep It, Work Surveillance Creep, the Antitrust Race Yep It, Says Ahrefs Last week we discovered Yep, a new search engine from Ahrefs (that's right). It reportedly cost $60 million to build and has its own index (rather
News Sandberg Exits, Walmart's Last-Mile, AR Gets Social Sheryl Sandberg Leaves the Building In the roughly 48 hours since Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg said she was leaving the company, there's been an outpouring of commentary about her departure
News Apple Search Engine, Cookiepocalypse, Email Wins Again Rumor: Apple Search Engine Next Week Next week Apple hosts its annual developer conference WWDC. Among the announcements will be a preview of iOS 16, but apparently no VR/AR
News Ads 20% of GDP, CTR and Rankings (Again), Antitrust Reform Fading? Note: Monday is Memorial Day in the US; we're taking the day off. We'll be back next Wednesday. Have a great weekend. Report: Ads Drive ~20% of US Economy Advertising
News New Google Ads, AR Rising, What Tech Will Stick? New Google Ads: In-Store Goals, Video, AR Google I/O led with local and announced numerous changes, updates and improvements to search. Yesterday's Google Marketing Live was a kind of
News Local Ad Pack, SMB Pessimism, DIY Restaurants & Retail Google Shows 'Local Ad Pack' Because there can never be too many ads, Google appears to be testing a Local Pack consisting entirely of ads. It was discovered last week
News Marketing Privacy, CTR and Search Rankings, Ad-Free Social Media New Apple, DDG Ads Market Privacy Two effective new ad campaigns market privacy and take aim at online tracking. One, from DuckDuckGo [https://twitter.com/duckduckgo/status/1526555252236988419?s=12&
News Yelp Request a Call, OOH Drives Search, Pay with Face Yelp's 'Request Call' Leads Option Yelp continues to build out new non-advertising lead-gen capabilities for businesses. The latest is "Request a Call [https://blog.yelp.com/news/yelp-launches-request-a-call-to-help-consumers-connect-quickly-and-seamlessly-with-services-businesses/] ." It's an
News My Ad Center, Social vs. Search ROI, Sloppy M&A My Ad Center: Will People Use It? In Google's "100 things we announced at I/O" blog post [https://blog.google/technology/developers/io-2022-100-things/], My Ad Center is number 90.
News Google 'Ambient Search,' Coming Moderation Crisis, iOS Opt-ins 22% Google's 'Ambient Search' Vision When we collectively talk about "search," we typically focus on keywords entered in a search box (via typing or voice) and the corresponding SERP (desktop or
Analysis Local Visual Search Center Stage at Google I/O Among a flurry of announcements, Google Maps 'Immersive View,' Multisearch Near Me and Scene Explorer reflect the increasingly visual future of local search.
News Apple Ups Ads, TikTok Store Visits, CX Hope vs. Reality Apple Wants More Search Revenue Apple may stake much of its future growth on services and advertising rather than cool new devices. That’s according to a report from Business
News Traditional Ad Gains, Smaller Agency Travails, Roe Brand Nightmare Second Look at Traditional Media Traditional ads have been in decline for 20 years. However that may be changing somewhat, as a collection of digital challenges prompt a second look
News Cooling E-Commerce, Nextdoor Trust Factor, Slammed by Rent E-Commerce Was Hot – Now Not E-commerce saw triple-digit growth in 2020; however growth has dramatically slowed, as stores have rebounded. A slew of new earnings reports illustrate the recent weakness.
News Searching for SMBs, COVID Tech, Weaponizing Location Reaching SMBs: Search and Social A new survey [https://bredin.com/blog/2022/04/bredin-report-how-smbs-research-your-offerings-by-industry-and-age/] from Bredin asked 500 SMBs what "resources" they use to research products and services. The
News Revenge of IRL, SMB Weak, Localogy Buys StreetFight Instacart, Amazon and the Revenge of IRL Driven by consumer necessity during COVID, which isn't done, online shopping and food delivery grew massively in 2020 and for much of 2021.
News Snap Disses Facebook, Another Privacy Law, Paid-Search Prevails Dueling Metaverse Visions: Snap vs. Facebook Facebook parent Meta reported Q1 results [https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_news/Meta-Reports-First-Quarter-2022-Results-2022.pdf] Wednesday. Because they weren't a wipeout (like Q4
News Twitter Cesspool, Meta Retail Store, People Hate Online Meetings Twitter: The 'Cesspool' Cometh? There's a frenzy of speculation going on about Twitter's future. The right is elated; the left is dejected [https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/twitter-elon-musk-latest-news/card/republicans-cheer-musk-s-twitter-deal-while-democrats-see-perils-D33ENTKonJGOWghSjpio]
News EU Tech Defeat, Local eTail Pickup, Location Gone Wild Major Tech Defeat in New EU Law In a deal reached this weekend, European policymakers approved a sweeping piece of new legislation, the Digital Services Act (DSA) [https://ec.europa.
News Benchmarking Local, Amazon's BwP, Early Adopters vs. Stalwarts Report: Local Pack Winners 60X More Visible SOCi released [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/soci-analyzes-12-9-billion-data-points-to-rank-digital-marketing-performance-of-multi-location-brands-301529757.html] its fourth annual Localized Marketing Benchmarking Report this week. ( Disclosure: I helped create the
News Netflix Woes, Data-Scraping OK, UK Fines Fake Reviews What's Wrong with Netflix? The stock market was (briefly) shocked yesterday when Netflix announced [https://ir.netflix.net/financials/quarterly-earnings/default.aspx] that rather than adding 2.5 million subscribers,
News E-spending Dips, AI-Content Spam, 'Surveillance Capitalism' in FTC Sights Stores Come Roaring Back During 2020 and the phenomenal growth of e-commerce, the question arose: has consumer shopping forever changed? The answer it turns out is yes and no. According
News Twitter Fight, State of Local Search, Survey Say-Do Gap Who Should Control Twitter? As you already know, Elon Musk – the world's richest person – made a $43 billion all-cash offer for Twitter [https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-elon-musk-buy-twitter-11649949297?], after becoming
News Google Ads Domination, Local Listings Spam, GenZ Survey Search Dominates Digital Advertising According to the 2021 IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, [https://www.iab.com/news/digital-advertising-soared-35-to-189-billion-in-2021-according-to-the-iab-internet-advertising-revenue-report/] online ad revenue grew at the fastest pace since 2006, 35%
News Image Search Acceleration, Nextdoor DIY Ads, SMB Night Terrors Image, Local and Product Search Convergence It seems like an acceleration is happening in search. Google has been rolling out many of its AI/ML-driven gains in visual search and
News Google Astroturfing, Amazon Threatens SMBs, Privacy Not Personalization Google, Amazon Caught 'Astroturfing' Most of big tech companies use small businesses (SMBs) as a sword or a shield in advocating for or against regulations or public policies. That also
News Antitrust DOJ Boost, Google Shopping Scorecard, Local CX Fails US Antitrust Law Closer to Passing Last week the European Parliament completed work [https://www.nearmedia.co/google-dr-booking-eu-gatekeeper-smackdown-1-fraud-claim/] on its Digital Markets Act. The legislation targets major US tech "gatekeepers"
News Streaming Oscar Win, Google Duplex Expansion, Connected Car Commerce Streaming's Big Oscar Win Beyond "the slap" – actor Will Smith publicly smacked presenter Chris Rock on stage after Smith took umbrage at Rock's joke about his wife – the big story
News Google Dr. Booking, EU 'Gatekeeper' Smackdown, 1% Spam Claim Google's New 'Make a Dr. Appointment' Google's evolving mission is not simply to organize and present information but to make it actionable and drive transactions ("get things done [https://searchengineland.
News EYWTKA Snippets, Stuck with Google, Chat vs. SMS Response Times Take our 5-minute monetization survey. We'll love you for it. Start Survey [https://forms.gle/bEkdSQJZAnx9ESXS7] Snippets Not on Local Pack SERPs Moz has come out with a report [https:
News Amazon's In-Store Ads, Data Pragmatists, Social Media Addiction Bill Fresh: Amazon Taking Ads into Stores Last year we found out that Amazon's ad business is worth $31 billion [https://www.nearmedia.co/amazons-31b-ads-biz-review-theater-metas-downturn/]. For context, that's 8X larger than
News Snap's Local AR, Meta Sues Review Fraudster, DoorDash vs. Uber Eats Snap Takes Location-AR Global Snapchat is opening up AR experiences tied to places. In 2019, the company introduced Landmarkers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNs9kdSAOCA], enabling users to tie
News Amazon's 57%, Apple's Pandora's Box, FTC: Destroy the Algorithm Amazon Now Controls Nearly 60% of E-commerce Analysts have estimated Amazon's US e-commerce share at between [https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-clobbers-competition-us-retail-ecommerce-sales-2021] 40% and 44% of total online sales (2019
News Google 'Smaller Stores' Filter, Forced App Installs, SMBs Resist Sales Google: 'Smaller Stores' vs. 'Nearby' I don't use Google Shopping very often. I therefore missed the addition of a "smaller stores" filter. It may have been added last year but
News Instacart In-Store Nav, Uber's Fuel Dilemma, Local Vehicle Ads Instacart Launches in-Store Navigation Almost a decade ago, when Apple's iBeacon was a shiny new object, there was considerable anticipation of "search to shelf" experiences with in-store navigation. A number
News Restaurants Sue Google, Yext's Lerman Leaves, Kohl's Retail Concept Suit: Google 'Deceived' Consumers with Online Ordering As part of the effort to make search more transactional, Google added an "order online" button in the GBP for restaurants in May,
News Local Beats Amazon, Dueling SMB Surveys, Brands Taking Stands Local Inventory Can Beat Amazon I've argued local inventory (online) can help divert consumers away from Amazon. But it's not inventory alone; it's inventory + convenience. And that inventory must also
News Amazon Ends Bookstores, Review Trust Down, CX a Google Ranking Factor Amazon Kills Bookstores for Grocery Biz Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy has made the decision [https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/exclusive-amazon-close-all-its-physical-bookstores-4-star-shops-2022-03-02/] to shutter most of the company's brick and mortar
News Uber Yelp Explore, Macy's Omni-Strategy, Ukraine Brand Imperative Uber Hooks Up with Yelp for 'Explore' Uber launched a new feature [https://www.uber.com/newsroom/uber-explore/] in its flagship app that relies heavily on Yelp content and reviews:
News Tech in the X-Fire, E-Commerce Stabilizes, Location in the B.G. Ukraine: Tech in the Crossfire A major front in the war for Ukraine is online. Tech companies, especially social media, are being forced to choose sides. All the major US
News Ukraine, Core Web Vitals and Local Rankings, Local Inventory Ad Click Surge Ukraine and Perpetual Cyberwar The tragedy of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is still unfolding. Roughly 50,000 people have fled the country with more to follow. Russia will likely be
News Yelp Elites Bribed, SMBs Do SEO, What's After Google? Fake Reviews: Bribing Yelp Elites, Amazon Sues We've previously written about review fraud [https://www.nearmedia.co/meh-ta-moment-fake-reviews-gmb-a-big-lead-driver/] and the platforms' inconsistent takedown efforts. Yelp is probably the most consistent,
Reader Survey: Final Call Today is the US Presidents Day holiday; the newsletter will resume on Wednesday. In the meantime, check out our most recent podcast, Near Memo episode 52 [https://www.nearmedia.co/
News Trust Is a Must, Wix's 2.7%, QR Codes and the CueCat Trust: Consumers' Top CX Priority Most companies think they're doing a better job of delivering positive customer experiences (CX) than they actually are, according to the new CX IQ Index
News Android ID Going, Facebook Marketplace Origin Story, Nextdoor Mimics LinkedIn Google Follows Apple Privacy Lead on Android Google is brining its "privacy sandbox" to Android devices and, in the process, will effectively get rid of its IDFA-like advertising ID [https:
News Super Bowl Ads, Peak Voice Search, AR Mainstreaming Super Bowl Ads: But Are They Worth It? Last year a 30 second Super Bowl spot cost $5.5 million. This year it was up to $6.5 million (or
News Yelp's Progress, Cookie Denial, DoorDash Capitalizes on SMBs Yelp: 60% of Revenue from 10% of Views Yelp reported [https://www.yelp-ir.com/] Q4 and full year 2021 revenues this week, beating analyst estimates. Growth has come despite a
News Apple's Tap to Pay, Doctors without Reviews, SMB Staffing Struggles Apple Taps into Pay Apple just introduced [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/apple-unveils-contactless-payments-via-tap-to-pay-on-iphone/] a way to turn the iPhone into a point-of-sale (POS) terminal for merchants. Called Tap
News Angi's Leads, B2B Sales Inefficiency, Car Buying to Move Online Angi Hopes Walmart Delivers Cheaper Acquisition Seeking to further diversify its customer acquisition strategy, Angi (formerly Angie's List) partnered with Walmart. The deal, announced [https://ir.angi.com/news-releases/news-release-details/
News Amazon's $31B Ads Biz, Review Mod Theater, Meta's Q4 'Wipeout' Take Our Reader Survey [https://www.nearmedia.co/please-take-our-survey/] Facebook's Q4 'Wipeout': Dip or Beginning of the End? This week Meta reported [https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2022/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2021-Results/
News Google's Huge Q, Walmart's 'Interactive Store,' Can Local News Be Saved? Google Delivers Another Huge Q: $75B Google once again beat analyst expectations [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/01/alphabet-googl-q4-2021-earnings.html] (.pdf [https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q4_alphabet_
Near Media Reader Survey Near Media recently celebrated its first anniversary. We’re now seeking your input and ideas on how to improve and whether there’s a business model you would support. Our
News Spotify Stumbles, Frustrated with Search, Restaurants Ditch Landlines Spotify: Revenue vs. 'Responsibility' Controversial podcaster Joe Rogan has almost 4x the audience [https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/1478059547688374281] of right-wing pundit and vaccine disinformation purveyor Tucker Carlson. Spotify paid
News Yelp Sees Normalcy, Innovation Act Slam, Ads-Privacy Alignment? Yelp: Local Business Back to Normal – Almost US GDP increased at 6.9% percent in Q4, much better than expected. Yet inflation concerns have overshadowed the strong performance of the
News Death of Review Gating, Google Changes Topics, Amazon Goes to the 'Burbs Review Gating Is Dead Review gating is the practice of routing satisfied and dissatisfied customers down different pathways. The happy customer is asked to write a review, the grumpy customer
News Competition vs. CX, Metaverse Minority Report, More SMB SaaS Data Is Promoting Competition the Enemy of CX? The anti-tech lawsuits [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/24/google-sued-by-4-attorneys-general-over-location-tracking.html?] and legislation [https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2992/text]
News Amazon's New Style, Facebook ❤️ Android, Anti-Antitrust Lobbying Goes into Overdrive Amazon Style: The Future of the Store As you've heard, Amazon is opening a new retail store in LA [https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-reimagines-in-store-shopping-with-amazon-style] : [Amazon] Style. It's a
News PlaceIQ Exits, 'Surveillance-Ads' Ban, COVID Boosted SMB SaaS Adoption PlaceIQ Bought by PE-Backed Precisely Precisely, a company that calls itself "a global leader in data integrity software," has acquired [https://www.placeiq.com/2022/01/a-big-milestone-on-the-placeiq-journey/] the original location-intelligence
News Omnichannel Rules, Mobile Beats TV, Will Mr. Beast Burger Flame Out? Shopify: Omnichannel for the Win Shopify is out with another interesting (and massive) report, "The Future of Commerce in 2022 [https://www.shopify.com/research/future-of-commerce]." It's draws from customer
News Not-Google Engines Take Off, 'TLDR' ToS, Salesforce Holiday Post-Mortem DDG Crosses 1B Searches, Neeva Sets Pricing DuckDuckGo, which has seen meaningful growth over the past few years, said it has now exceeded 1 billion queries [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic]
News Metasuit Lives On, 'Gatekeepers' Beware EU, Aspiring to Shop Small Metasuit: FTC Lives to Fight Another Day When the FTC brought its antitrust suit against Facebook/Meta in June of last year, the court dismissed it [https://www.nearmedia.co/
Analysis Vendasta Buys MatchCraft to Accelerate Ad Offering The deal accelerates and rounds out Vendasta's "end-to-end" platform for its local channel partners.
News Happy Birthday iPhone, Social Leading Global Ad Growth, Privacy Theater Yes, the iPhone Is 15 Yesterday the iPhone officially had its 15th birthday. Does that make you feel old? In 2007, when it was introduced, Steve Jobs called it a
News DuckDuck Growth, Bolting to 4-Day Week, Metastasis at Facebook Privacy Driving DuckDuckGo and Brave Growth For the longest time it seemed like search engines and browsers built around privacy would have almost no impact, unable to wrest meaningful share
News Why Google Lost Product Search, Shopify vs. Amazon, Smart Speakers Flatline Why Google Lost the Product Search Battle For at least five years consumer surveys have repeatedly told us that Amazon dominates product search. Different surveys have different numbers: the range
News E-commerce 21%, H&M Enters the Metaverse, Winning Despite Mistrust Holiday Spending Grows, E-commerce 21% Despite a resurgent pandemic, US consumers still shopped a lot in the run up to Xmas. According to data [ https://www.mastercard.com/news/press/
News Keyword Stuffing Suffers, WordPress Is Really Big, Competing with Amazon Google's Local Algo Update Fallout Google recently confirmed [https://twitter.com/googlesearchc/status/1471546117125029889] that it completed a local algorithm update, between November 30 and December 8. Many local SEOs
News Local Guides Dominate Reviews, SMB Freemium Adoption, Airport Facial Rec Google Local Guides: More Volume, Shorter Reviews A new SOCi analysis [https://streetfightmag.com/2021/12/15/soci-study-finds-62-of-google-reviews-are-written-by-local-guides/] of nearly 170 million Google reviews across 1.1 million business locations
News COVID 800K, Google Trust Erosion, Retail Reputations Bleak Milestone: 800K Dead from COVID Later this week the US will hit 50M cases and 800,000 dead from COVID, likely an undercount of the real mortality figure. The
News Google Refreshes Local Pack, SMBs Socially Committed, 16% Gig in US Google's Local Pack Refresh During a previous Near Memo [https://www.nearmedia.co/squarespaces-everything-to-sell-anything-google-vs-lowe-and-has-the-local-pack-outlived-its-usefulness/] we discussed how Google's local results were in need of an upgrade. Google has now apparently
News Yelp: Reviews Not Ratings, Amazon Ads Deceive, Apple Weakens Privacy Yelp: 'Our Review Approach Is Best' Yelp released the results of an October consumer survey [https://blog.yelp.com/news/survey-finds-what-makes-reviews-trustworthy-consumers-want-more-than-ratings/] about reviews and consumer trust. Yelp's survey vendor asked
News Apple Glasses in 2022, Suffering SMBs, Amazon Logistics Empire Will Smart Glasses Replace the iPhone? Apple has an entire building and hundreds of employees dedicated to its forthcoming mixed-reality glasses. The expectation is that the first of perhaps multiple
News Don't Be Evil 'Contract', Google Starline, Has COVID Changed Shopping? Xooglers Sue Google for Abandoning 'Don't Be Evil' Google removed the phrase "Don't Be Evil [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil]" from its official code of conduct
News All Reviews Matter, Meta-Giphy Split, Cyber Monday $100M Short Cyber Monday Comes Up a Bit Short As with Black Friday, Cyber Monday's spending disappointed. Last year US consumers spent $10.8 billion on Cyber Monday. However this year sales
Analysis Local Search Ranking Factors 2021: What's New? The survey chronicles Google's evolving local ranking algorithm and captures local SEOs' changing tactics over time.
News Flat Black Friday, Stores Making Sense, Facebook WiFi Returns? Black Friday: Not Quite As Black Black Friday didn't quite deliver. With fewer in-store discounts, foot traffic was nearly 30% lower than 2019 [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/27/
News Macy's: Stores Juice Digital, Symbolic Saturday, Pawns in Antitrust Chess Game Macy's: Digital Commerce Better with Stores More than a decade ago I ran into Euclid Analytics [https://searchengineland.com/euclid-offers-google-analytics-for-the-real-world-99982] ' founder Brent Franson on a flight from San Francisco.
News Local Search at 50%, Amazon's War on Visa, Wall Street Retail Myopia Survey: 'At Least' Half of Search Is Local For years, I've been trying to get an accurate sense of what percentage of Google search volume is local. Google has offered
News SMB Optimism Levels, Yelp for Brands, Cookie Banner Fatigue Outlook: Small SMB Optimism Declines Earlier this year when the economy was on a tear, there were millions of jobs unfilled, especially among local businesses. Now the economic vigor may
News Wealthy Shoppers, Amazon Price Fixation, Ignoring Climate Change Who's Buying More Online? Affluent Consumers As we head into the holiday shopping season in earnest, there's lots of speculation about the mix of online and offline spending that will
News Alexa's 7 Now, 65% Don't CTR, Attack on Algorithms Amazon Alexa Is 7 Years Old On the heels of the failed Fire Phone, Amazon released the first generation Echo (feat. Alexa) in November 2014 [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/
News Yelp's Instagram-Like Feed, Search You, Google's Big Loss in Europe Will You Use You.com? On the heels of Neeva [https://neeva.com/], another search engine has launched: You.com [http://you.com/]. It appeared in public beta on Tuesday
News FTC Review Strategy, SMB Buying Triggers, Email Attention Declines FTC's Emerging Review Fraud Strategy In October, the FTC notified major US brands [https://www.nearmedia.co/fake-reviews-crackdown-amazons-toyland-shoppers-dont-care-about-voice-search/] that "misleading use of endorsements could lead to major financial penalties." Reviews,
News GMB to GBP, Back to the Gym, Nextdoor Public Soon GMB to GBP: So What? I know that you already saw: Google "rebranded" Google My Business as Google Business Profile [https://support.google.com/business/thread/133876833/introducing-new-updates-to-business-profile?hl=en]
News 92% of SMBs Sans Budgets, Don't Call Me, Amazon's Lock on E-commerce Amazon's Lock on E-commerce Amazon dominates [https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecommerce-though-its-market-share-varies-by-category] e-commerce. And it appears there's nothing on the horizon that will change that. A new report [https://fv.
News Omni-Commerce Here to Stay, Hooked on Social, Apple's $10 Billion Takeaway Going Back into Stores Most holiday shopping surveys say a version of the same thing: consumers plan to shop online but stores remain important to their overall experience. This hybrid/
News Facebook's Meta Moment, Fake Review Numbers, GMB a Big Lead Driver It's Meta Time or the End of Days We're late to the meta-party. I'm sure you've read 20 articles and 10x more tweets discussing or ridiculing Facebook's Google-emulating holding company
News Apple Q3 Privacy Impact, Tech Worker Burnout, It's Amazon's World Q3 Impact of Apple Privacy Rules 'Modest' Snap said it was hurt [https://www.nearmedia.co/amazon-goes-bopis-isp-surveillance-apple-bites-snap/]. But Twitter reported the revenue impact was "lower than expected [https://s22.q4cdn.
News Google's AMP 'Scam,' Review Volumes Boost Rankings, Facebook Again AGs: Google's AMP a Scheme to Drive Revenue The second amended antitrust complaint against Google (.pdf [https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903.152.
News Amazon Goes BOPIS, ISP Secret Surveillance, Apple Bites Snap Amazon Goes BOPIS with 'Local Selling' One of Google's strategies against Amazon is showing online and local product inventory in SERPs. Traditional retailers have sought to compete with Amazon by
News 85% of SMBs Return, Performance Ads Illusion, Facebook's NewBrand Yelp: 85% of Business Locations Have Re-Opened Though the Delta variant is still here, local economies are nearly back to normal, according to Yelp's Q3 economic impact report [https://www.
News Apple Search Revenues, Teen Brand Faves, Section 230 Reform Dangers Privacy Rules Juice Apple Search Revenue Is it just a coincidence? According to a Financial Times analysis [https://twitter.com/PatrickMcGee_/status/1449608262492459011], since the introduction of iOS 14.5,
News FTC's 700 Brands, Amazon in Toyland, Shoppers Don't Care about Voice Search FTC Begins Fake Review Crackdown Earlier this week, the FTC notified [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2021/10/latest-ftc-notice-penalty-offenses-tells-700-national] "more than 700 businesses [https://www.ftc.gov/system/
News Yelp Review Prompt, DoorDash Ads, Intention-Action Local Gap Yelp's New Services for Home Services Last month, Yelp integrated its restaurant tools into a "Guest Manager" SaaS suite [https://www.nearmedia.co/google-local-inventory-astro/]. Now it's introducing new services [https:
News SMB Social Insecurity, Gannett Hobbles Local, Holiday Uncertainty Some SMBs Questioning Dependance on Social Millions of small businesses (SMBs) consider social media – Facebook and Instagram in particular – their top marketing channel. But following two recent outages and a
News Local Welcome, Auto Dealer Decline, Les Solopreneurs Welcome: If Google and Instagram Got Together... There's a new local search app [https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/07/welcome-debuts-a-smarter-city-guide-app-on-ios-backed-by-3-5m-led-by-accel/] in town, called Welcome (iOS only [https://apps.apple.com/
News Facebook 230 Reform, Google Goes After Lowe, Digital Trust Crisis Haugen: The Algorithm Is the Evil It's only a couple of days since former Facebook PM Frances Haugen appeared on 60 Minutes [https://www.nearmedia.co/fb/]. (You're probably already
News FB Whistleblower, Stores Forever, Apple and Google As Internet Enforcers Facebook Whistleblower: 'Profits over People' You probably saw or read about the CBS 60 Minutes "Facebook Whistleblower" segment [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-misinformation-public-60-minutes-2021-10-03/] last night. The former employee who
News Reputation Beats Ads, Smartphone Workarounds, Interoperability: Monopoly Fix Marketers: Reputation Management Trumps Ads According to a new survey of multi-location marketers, "managing online reputation is now more important than advertising": 57% to 43%. The survey, which includes multiple
News Google Local Inventory, Surveillance Puppy, Yelp Gets More SaaSy Google's Refocused Lens and 'In-Stock' Filter Google is (re)introducing two shopping tools that have been around for awhile: Google Lens and local inventory. Google Lens is the visual-search capability
News Restaurants on the Vax Front, Sloppy Stats, Love-Hate Tech Relationship Local Restaurants on Front Lines of Vax Wars More than 180 million Americans have been fully vaccinated [https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total] and more than 210 million have
News Apple Opt-in Hurts Facebook, Voice Search Stalls, Stores = CX Apple's Opt-In Ad Rules Hurt Facebook There are many cynics [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/24/apples-ios-changes-hurt-facebooks-ad-business.html] who believe Apple's opt-in tracking rules [https://developer.apple.com/app-store/
News Apple Maps Arrives, Wix's Big Numbers, Radical FTC Privacy Change (Maybe) Apple Maps Has Finally Arrived After a botched original launch and years of playing catch-up to Google Maps, Apple Maps has finally become truly competitive. There are a wide range
News Lawyer-LSA Divorce, Amazon Boots 3K Fraudsters, Facebook = Philip Morris? LSAs and Lawyers: Heading for Divorce? While nobody knows how much Google is making on Local Services Ads (LSAs), they're popular and growing. LSAs were introduced for the legal vertical
News WhatsApp 'Yellow Pages,' Open-Source Surveillance, Amazon vs. Walmart What's My Business: WhatsApp's 'Yellow Pages' Earlier this week we wrote about Twitter's relatively new "About Module [https://www.nearmedia.co/twitters-gmb-profile-intuits-12b-strategy-transatlantic-privacy-fail/] " on its professional profiles for local businesses. David
News Twitter's GMB Profile, Intuit's $12B Strategy, Transatlantic Privacy Fail Twitter's 'About Module' for Local Businesses In April Twitter launched [https://twitter.com/TwitterBusiness/status/1384968745156755458] "Professional Profiles." They offer a verified and expanded presence on the site for businesses
News SMB CAC Benchmarks, Facebook's Cashflow Offer, FTC (Probably) Won't Win Shopify CAC, Marketing Benchmarks for SMBs Marketers are always looking for good benchmarking data. Shopify offers some [https://www.shopify.com/blog/customer-acquisition-cost] (based on a survey) that reflect SMB
News Chase Buys Zagat, Facebook's iPhone, Local Listings Suck Chase Buying Zagat and The Infatuation Banking giant JPMorgan Chase said [https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/jpmorgan-chase-acquire-leading-restaurant-171500485.html#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%2C%20September%2009%2C%202021,recommendations%20for%20where%
News Facebook Libel-Randos, Amazon JWO, Delta Destroys Biz Travel News Pubs Liable for Random Facebook Comments In a defamation case that may have broad implications, the Australian High Court ruled [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/08/high-court-rules-australian-media-companies-are-liable-for-defamatory-comments-posted-on-their-facebook-pages?
News Mailchimp's Big Payday, Goodcall Is CallJoy 2.0, Local Media Trust Win Report: Intuit to Buy Mailchimp for $10B Bloomberg reported [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-01/intuit-said-in-talks-to-buy-mailchimp-for-more-than-10-billion] this week that Intuit, maker of tax and accounting software, is seeking to
News SMBs Stuck in Time, Yahoo: Unbound or Moribund, Keyword Monopolies? SMB Survey: 55% Not Buying Digital Ads A new survey [https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/366360/small-businesses-increasing-digital-ad-spend-not.html] of 800 SMBs by social content platform Ripl [https://www.ripl.
News SMB Ad Spending, Google's Localism, Privacy Ambivalent Consumers Survey: Annual 'SMB' Ad Budgets $109K Borrell Associates published its annual local advertiser survey [http://www.insideradio.com/free/borrell-survey-points-to-strengthening-ad-market-radio-in-good-position-to-benefit-from-gains/article_ce63ca88-0631-11ec-ace2-df5cc2e20782.html] . Conducted in Q2, the sample was 2,
News Apple's $15B Search Deal, Competing SERP Analysis, Retail Sharks and Lampreys WTF: Google Paying $15B for iPhone Default Search There have been various informed estimates over the years about how much Google is paying Apple to be the Safari browser's default
News GoLocal Young Retailer, Leadferno Launch, SMB New Normal GoLocal: Walmart's Last-Mile Delivery Service Walmart is doing something that would have been unthinkable in a pre-Amazon world: offering its delivery infrastructure to other retailers. Announced earlier this week, the
News Prop 22 Goes Down, SMB-Social Disconnect, Mid-Funnel Queries Dominate Study: Most Search Queries Are 'Mid-Funnel' Marketers discuss the "purchase funnel [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_funnel]" all the time without really knowing what it means for their actual
News Amazon Dept. Stores, Workplace Metaverse, Antitrust Take Two Contrarian Move: Amazon Plans Department Stores At a time when e-commerce is driving retail growth [https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/quarterly-online-sales/?], Amazon is planning more physical stores. The Wall Street
News Amazon Passes Walmart, SMBs Cry for Help, Trip Rents the Runway 'Historic Moment': Amazon Passes Walmart Walmart reported [https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2021/08/17/walmart-releases-q2-fy22-earnings] quarterly earnings yesterday. The world's largest traditional retailer said that sales rose 5.2%
News Apple Search Upgrades, Trust in Marketing, Doing More with Less Money Apple Boosting Search with iOS 15 Apple has been slowly and incrementally improving its Spotlight Search feature on the iPhone over time. With iOS 15, there are new upgrades and
News Vaxports, Google Delists SafeGraph, Nextdoor Neighbor Referrals 'Vaxports' Coming to an SMB Near You As the seriousness of the Delta Variant sinks in, consumers are becoming more depressed [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/consumer-sentiment-measure-falls-to-pandemic-era-low-sees-one-of-largest-drops-on-record.html]
News 75% Want Consent, Delivery Winners & Losers, Apple Risks Privacy Reputation Google Picking Winners and Losers in Food Delivery Google is beset by antitrust critics on all sides. In its defense Google often argues its decisions are for the benefit of
News Scary Climate Report, Review Deletion Schemes, SMB Revenues Almost Back Climate Crisis: No More BAU You've probably read about [https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/09/world/ipcc-climate-key-takeaways/index.html] a massive new UN report [https://www.ipcc.ch/report/
News Yelp Vaccine Proof, SMBs Lack FTEs, Segmentation vs. Personalization Yelp Surprise Profit, Vaccination Attributes Yelp announced [https://www.yelp-ir.com/news-releases/news-release-details/2021/Yelp-Reports-Second-Quarter-2021-Financial-Results/] a surprise Q2 profit and 52% YoY revenue growth this week. The company saw gains
News Local SEO Value, Vaccine Passports Arrive, Only 22% 'Agnostic' Local and Organic Drive 73% of Page Views If you didn't already know, the two most effective digital channels are organic SEO and local (Google Local Pack), according to new
News New Data Ethics, More Efficient Shoppers, Delta's Events Impact The (New) Ethics of Targeting and Tracking For 20+ years, digital marketers essentially captured as much data as they could about consumer behavior and identities, as quietly as possible – so
News Snap My Places, Restaurateur DoorDash, SOCi Buys Brandify Snap Personalizes Map with 'My Places' It's "places week." On Wednesday Apple relaunched its Maps Connect listings portal, as Places on Maps [https://www.nearmedia.co/apples-new-places-retail-search-advertisers-paying-google-taxes/] . And now Snap
News Apple's New Places, Retail Site Search, Advertisers Paying Google Taxes Apple 'Places' Replaces Maps Connect Apple's self-service listings management portal Maps Connect, which launched in 2014 [https://searchengineland.com/apple-launches-maps-connect-self-service-local-listings-portal-206349] , is now "Places on Maps [https://register.apple.com/placesonmaps/
News Roofer Review Bombed, Amazon Success Surprise, Metaverse Master Roofer Sues Over 1-Star Reviews, Gets Bombed File this in the "will they never learn" column. A couple renting a house in Vancouver, Washington engaged with a roofer, Executive Roof
News Klobuchar vs. Facebook, Weaponizing Location, In SERP We Trust Section 230 Bill Takes Aim at Facebook One of the first concrete acts of "Section 230 reform" is Senator Amy Klobuchar’s proposed Health Misinformation Act of 2021 [https://www.
News Square's New Bank, Traditional Ad Growth, Deals and Review Details Square Bank Should Scare Traditionals Square has expanded its banking capabilities [https://squareup.com/us/en/press/introducing-square-banking] and is now offering full-service banking for small business customers. Formally called
News Olympic Failure, Apple Privacy Marketing, Delta Fear & Loathing Olympics Race to Avoid Financial Disaster In an ominous sign for the 2021 Olympics, Toyota said it will not air TV commercials [https://apnews.com/article/sports-2020-tokyo-olympics-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-5eb0e254b9a0cac7ad57005677eebe66] during the games.
News Apple Opt-ins, Cash Is Sinking, CPSC vs. Amazon What's Really Going on with IDFA? There's a lot of conflicting information about Apple's AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) and the number of opt-ins. According to Flurry Analytics [https://www.flurry.com/blog/
News Craigslist Revenue Way Down, Scan & Ship, Yelp Pushes Ad Boundaries Craigslist Revenue Off Almost 50% Since 2018 Haven't used Craigslist lately? You aren't alone. According to a report [https://aimgroup.com/2021/02/11/craigslist-traffic-revenue-fell-radically-in-2020/] from AIM Group earlier this
News Competition Order, NYC Biometrics, Black Widow Streaming Haul Biden's Sweeping Competition Order Faces Challenges On Friday President Biden signed an expansive executive order [https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/07/09/executive-order-on-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/] "promoting competition in the American
News Google Not Playing, Restaurant Money Gone, Podcasts and WOM Regulating Google Play: Would It Matter? Earlier this week Attorneys general from 36 states and Washington DC filed an antitrust suit [https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/07/36-states-dc-sue-google-for-alleged-antitrust-violations-in-its-android-app-store-498622]
News Nextdoor SPAC, Amazon Makeover, Stores Claim 72% $4.3 billion: Nextdoor Finally Going Public Current CEO Sarah Friar replaced founding CEO Nirav Tolia in late 2018, roughly a decade after the company that became Nextdoor was founded
News Local Intelligence Adolescence, Nextdoor's Opportunity, Delta's Danger Location Intelligence Enters a Challenging New Phase Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley said he's "stepping back" from his current role [https://streetfightmag.com/2021/06/29/where-location-intelligence-stands-as-foursquare-founder-steps-back/#.YNzKsRNKiCc] at the company
News Facebook Beats FTC, Ugly Ads, the 4-Day Work Week FTC Humiliated, Facebook Antitrust Case Dismissed Earlier today, a federal court judge dismissed [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/28/judge-dismisses-ftc-antitrust-complaint-against-facebook.html] state and FTC antitrust lawsuits against Facebook. Like
News Google Cookie Reprieve, DuckDuckMo, Shopper Fragmentation Google Gives Cookies a Temporary Reprieve Google said [https://blog.google/products/chrome/updated-timeline-privacy-sandbox-milestones/] this week that it's going to push back the Chrome deprecation of third party cookies to
News E-com's $152B Problem, YouTube for SMBs, Worker Shortage = Automation E-commerce Review Fraud a $152B Problem Nearly 90% of global e-commerce spending (eMarketer: $4.3 trillion) is influenced by reviews. That means product reviews on Amazon and other marketplaces are
News Prime Day Billions, Value of Stores, Disabling Location Amazon Prime Day Sales May Reach $11B Last year Amazon Prime Day generated almost $10.5 billion in sales. This year should beat that, although Prime Day won't benefit from
News Google's Local Data Push, SMB-SaaS Trust Gap, Restaurants Return Google Building Search to Sale Local Experiences Google is making it easier [https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/show-what-your-business-offers/] for local business owners to input their content directly from SERPs and
News UberFeed, Neeva Opens Up, Google Core Update Winners (and Losers) Uberall Raises $115M, Buys MomentFeed Given that I work for Uberall we debated whether to cover this. But it is a big story; so here's the news [https://techcrunch.com/
News SMB Digital Gains, End of Reviews, If Yahoo Had Bought Facebook Digital Boosted SMBs, Can They Keep It Up? Many small businesses pivoted during COVID to offer more digital capabilities: better websites, chatbots, online appointments, ordering and food delivery. Half of
News Antitrust Bill Barrage, Local Father's Day Shopping, Conference Weirdness Antitrust Bills 'Package' Takes Aim at Big Tech A bipartisan group of House lawmakers today introduced [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/amazon-apple-facebook-and-google-targeted-in-bipartisan-antitrust-reform-bills.html] five separate reform bills aiming
News Apple Maps Upgrades, Privacy Walled Garden, Ohio Sees Google As 'Utility' Apple Goes All Google Maps Apple made a ton of OS and feature announcements during its WWDC developer keynote [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/101/] on Monday. The
News Newspaper Ads Villain, Amazon's SMB Shield, Android's Apple Move Google: Newspaper Ad Losses Not Our Fault Newspaper publishers often blame Google for the decline of ad revenues. In the US, Craigslist took lots of blame early on. More recently,
News Nextdoor Finds, GMB Enlists Google Assistant, No End for Review Fraud? Nextdoor Revamps Classifieds – Now Called 'Finds' Nextdoor announced [https://blog.nextdoor.com/2021/06/03/introducing-free-finds-a-new-experience-to-find-free-items-nearby/] a new section in its classifieds marketplace, for free items: Free Finds [http://nextdoor.
News Store Bulls, Antitrust Prime, Privacy Hide the Ball To the Winners Go the Stores Even as many retailers struggle [https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2020/bankrupt-retail-chain-store-list-is-growing.html] and pundits pronounce stores endangered, we're entering a new era
News Content for Data Dead, Google's Local-SMB Strategy, E-Commerce 20% Google: 'Content for Data' Is Over Google held its annual Google Marketing Live event this week. There were many ads- and analytics- related announcements [https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/gml-2021-innovations/
News Google's Fake Reviews, Travel Is Back, Digital Ads' Trust Gap Fake Review Economy Is Booming Google is the dominant local reviews platform [https://www.nearmedia.co/when-google-came-to-dominate-reviews/]. It also dominates the world of fake reviews. A new investigation [https://www.
News Food Delivery Fight, Invoca-DialogTech, Upbeat SMBs Food Fight: DoorDash vs. UberEats Food delivery in the US is estimated to be worth nearly $30 billion according to estimates [https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/eservices/online-food-delivery/united-states#
News Google Store, No Data for Profit, Snap AR Spectacles 20 Years After Apple, Google Opens a Retail Store It's 20 years since the first Apple Store opened in Tyson's Corner VA. And it's hard to overstate the importance of
News Google I/O: AI Everywhere, AR Maps, Shopping Graph AI Making 'Search' More Conversational AI was center stage at Google's I/O developer event. During a 2+ hour long keynote [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xLgXIhebxA] yesterday, Google
News Masking Confusion, In-Car Ads, Change the Channel Mask Confusion Hits States, Retailers Last week the CDC changed its mask guidance [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.html]. The agency proclaimed that fully vaccinated people didn't
News Commerce Future, In-Store Goes Online, WFH-WTF The Future of (Local) Commerce Shopify's new Future of Commerce report [https://www.shopify.com/future-of-commerce/2021] builds on surveys as well as customer data. It's a kind of soup-to-nuts
News Neighbors Like SMBs, Section 230, Yelp Tools Push Self-Service Nextdoor: Preference for SMBs Growing Nextdoor released [https://business.nextdoor.com/enterprise/blog/nextdoor-insights-series-5-our-changing-spending-habits] a new report, showcasing attitudes and behaviors of its audience ("consumers 16-64 who have used the
News Review Fraud, K-Recovery, Context Is King for Mobile Leak Shows Massive Scale of Review Fraud The scale of the review fraud problem online is not precisely known, except that it's big. This is especially true for destinations like
News Only 4% Opting-in, FB's Nextdoor Clone, Online Impulse Buyers IDFA: Consumers Saying "No" to Tracking According to a new report from Flurry Analytics [https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-restricted-app-tracking-transparency-worldwide-us-daily-latest-update/] (Verizon Media), based on roughly 10 days of data, the
News Facebook Shuns Trump, Subs vs. Ads, Peak Social? Facebook's Trump Ban: Who Gets to Speak Online? The world's most important political debates are now happening on social media. Over the past several weeks, for example, Indian Prime Minister
News VZ Sells Yahol, Amazon Liability, No Herd Immunity Yahoo's Death By 1000 Cuts Continues with PE Sale Verizon is selling its media and ad-tech assets, AOL and Yahoo, to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. The company paid
News SMB Commerce, Hybrid Shoppers, Yelp Comeback? SMB Websites and Commerce Now Inseparable Mailchimp started as an email platform and moved into "marketing automation." It has now become an all-inclusive SMB SaaS platform for digital marketing. The
News Earnings Blowouts, Google Owns Local Reviews, No Bribes for IDFA Tracking Apple TrackingEarnings: MSFT, Shopify, Facebook, Apple & Google Beat It's a big earnings week. Microsoft and Shopify reported strong revenue growth [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/microsoft-msft-earnings-q3-2021.html]. Shopify
News Google Food Disruption, Track or Pay Up, Lord & Taylor Back Online Only Google Poised to Disrupt the $27B Food Delivery Business Google has become a potentially disruptive player in the multi-billion dollar food delivery business. One estimate of the market's current value
News Apple Maps Reviews, FTC Kneecapped by SCOTUS, Near-Me Getaways Native Apple Maps Ratings Coming Soon to US In September 2020 [https://searchengineland.com/apple-ratings-are-coming-to-ios-14-how-disruptive-will-it-be-340068] , it became clear that Apple Maps was going to start collecting its own user photos
News Zagat Reborn, Apple Opt-in Date, Amazon UK Salon Zagat Relaunches with New Scoring, Emphasis on Photos The Zagat restaurant guide was first published in 1979 by Nina and Tim Zagat. After many years as a print publication, its
News Most Brands' Local Fail, WP FLoC Blocking, Amazon Local Services Most Franchise Brands Local Marketing Laggards SOCi's recently published "Localized Marketing Benchmark Report" (reg. req'd [https://www.meetsoci.com/insight/lmbr-report-2021/]) scores 275 franchise brands on local marketing maturity and
News Booming Retail, Amazon's Prime Moat, Substack Local Stim-Driven Retail Booming, Online and Off March retail sales grew by almost 10% [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/us-retail-sales-march-2021.html], driven by government stimulus checks, vaccinations and increasing
Analysis Travel and Eating Out Are What Americans Have Been Missing Most Survey findings tell us consumers are more eager to resume some pre-COVID activities than others.
News Facebook SMB Survey, Amazon Aplenty, House of Sport Experience FB Survey: SMBs Remain Fragile As Economy Reopens A recent report (.pdf [https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/US_SSMB_Full_Report.pdf]) from Facebook chronicles the challenges
News Microsoft's Nuance, Apple's iFrankenstein Box, Rep to CX MSFT Buys Speech Pioneer Nuance for $16 billion. Announced today, the Nuance acquisition [https://www.reuters.com/article/nuance-commns-ma-microsoft/update-1-microsoft-to-buy-ai-firm-nuance-communications-in-197-bln-deal-in-healthcare-push-idUSL4N2M536I] becomes Microsoft's second largest after LinkedIn ($27 billion) in 2016.
News Swyft Cribs Prime, Uneven SMB Recovery, Apple vs. Google for Gen Z Love Swyft Wants to 'Democratize' Same-Day Delivery Swyft has created a "B2B managed-marketplace solving for affordability in last-mile logistics." Its objective is to bring Amazon-like same-day delivery to more retailers – to
News Let's Get 'Phygital,' Opt-in Coming, Yahoo Says Goodbye Answers Google: Local and Digital Now Joined at the Hip In a blog post [https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/local-shopping-trends/] Google confirms what nearly everyone in local has known for years:
News Verizon's In-Store CPG Play, Abertsons Deeper Google Deal, 'It's Over' Momentum Verizon Inks Catalina Deal to Track Ad Impact In-Store Last week Verizon announced [https://www.verizonmedia.com/insights/catalina-real-time-decisioning-partnership] a partnership with Catalina [https://www.catalina.com/] to connect digital
News Squarespace Buys Tock, Trust Crisis, NZ's Stuff Quits Facebook Habit Squarespace Buying Restaurant Startup Tock for $400M Bloomberg is reporting [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-31/squarespace-buys-restaurant-tech-startup-tock-for-400-million] that restaurant reservations and delivery startup Tock was acquired by SMB site
News Post-Vaccine Spending, GroundTruth Addy Dreams, Hiding Behind SMBs Vaccines Unlocking Pent-up Consumer Demand There's pent-up consumer demand for a return to normalcy. Evidence of new optimism, massive consumer savings [https://www.nearmedia.co/local-revenge-spending/] and stimulus-driven retail spending
Analysis Google Announces Curbside Pickup, Indoor Live View for Maps Using its many technical and content assets, Google Maps is positioning itself as the digital UI for the real world and at the center of the online-to-offline economy.
News Amazon Is to Google, Local 1st Party Ad Market, Coke and Brandactivism Amazon Is to Google As Google Is to Bing Years ago, then Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Amazon was the company's biggest competitor. He wasn't wrong. Consumer surveys [https://www.
News Section 230 Reform, Omni-commerce Leaders, Local Finder vs. Maps Big Tech Hearings: Likely 230 Reform but How Much? The CEOs of Google, Facebook and Twitter testified before Congress yesterday [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/technology/facebook-twitter-google-capitol-riots-hearing.html]
News Local Revenge Spending, 4B GMB Connections, Verizon's Future: Yahoo Coming 'Revenge Spending Binge' Will Boost Local We all know the e-commerce growth story [https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2021/02/15/ecommerce-during-coronavirus-pandemic-in-charts/] . That, combined with closures from major store chains,
News Local Zero-Click, 1-Star Speech, Antitrust Guerilla Does Local Dominate 'Zero-Click' Search? According to SimilarWeb data, analyzed by Rand Fishkin [https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-searches-ended-without-a-click/] , nearly two-thirds (65%) of Google searches "ended in the search results without
News The 6.5% Economy, 'Excessive' Ads, Localization Creeps Us Out Economy Poised for Comeback but for Whom? The US Federal Reserve is projecting [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-economy-analysis/analysis-europe-must-play-catch-up-as-u-s-economy-readies-for-take-off-idUSKBN2BB14C] white-hot economic growth in 2021: 6.5%. As vaccinations roll
News IDFA Opt-out, Local Packs 36%, Walmart As a Service Survey: 73% Say Unlikely to Opt-in to IDFA Tracking As we wait for the rollout of Apple's IDFA opt-in rules, there's ongoing speculation about how consumers will respond. A new
News Amazon Cares, Places Data War, Privacy = Better UXs? Amazon Cares About the Future of Healthcare Healthcare spending in the US is nearly $4 trillion annually, more than $11,500 per person. It's an evolving market and poised for
News Near-Me Search Spike, CCPA 'Dark Patterns,' Tech Workers Concerns Near-Me Search Hits 'All Time High' in 2020, Says Google Near-Me search hit an all-time high in 2020 according to Google. That's one of several trends the company discusses in
News SMBs or Amazon, HomePod Is Dead, iOS Privacy Screens People Want to Support SMBs but Buy from Amazon Amazon technically lost share as e-commerce expanded in 2020 but it was the big winner during COVID lockdowns. Despite its anti-union
News COVID CX Lesson, Cashiers Be Gone, Podcast Profiles The Marketing Lesson of COVID: CX A year later, there are many answers to the question, "what did we learn from COVID-19?" We could discuss policy, social or economic impacts.
News Mobile Traffic 66%, DTC Is the Future, Texting Olé Study: 66% of Traffic in 2020 from Mobile A new data analysis [https://www.semrush.com/blog/mobile-vs-desktop/] looks at 2020 search trends. Many desktop apologists touted the return of
News Neeva Outlook, Stores Driving E-tail, 'Roaring 20s' Looking More Likely Does Google Challenger Neeva Have a Chance? I was given early access to Neeva [https://neeva.co/], the new search engine created by former Google ad boss Sridhar Ramaswamy, who