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Tag: yelp

  • Yelp Adds Videos — But Not Necessarily For Reviews

    A couple of weeks ago, Yelp leaked to Business Insider that they will soon allow users to add 3-12 second videos to their reviews. When I initially heard this, I was thrilled, because I have been waiting for this feature for some time now.

    However, when I learned that these videos are intended to simply to add more media to the reviews (in the photos section) and not actually stand as reviews themselves, my excitement waned.

    YelpReviewVideos

    Rather than video reviews, what we are getting is a way for Yelpers to capture the atmosphere of a venue or more likely, selfie videos of them stuffing their faces at their favorite eatery. Yelp’s mobile product manager Madhu Prabaker explained the purpose of adding the video as “a reward for businesses that go to great lengths to achieve a certain ambiance, whether by having a certain lighting or the music at just the right level.”

    Was anyone else as let down as I was when they heard this? I feel as if this new platform change is being wasted on the business aesthetics such as atmosphere and showcasing products, where pictures were doing just fine. The photo capability has been around for years—nothing new there.

    What I see as the future is a full video review platform where consumers can turn the camera on themselves and tell us how they feel about the businesses they interact with. There are plenty of platforms out there to help SMB’s solicit reviews such as DemandForce and Customer Lobby, but there are no pure play platforms dedicated to helping users generate video testimonials. However, this functionality could ultimately rid business owners of the demon that is the Yelp review filter. (Business owners with less than stellar Yelp reviews, you know what I am talking about.)

    What’s With The Filter Anyway?

    Yelp’s justification for not showing certain reviews has always been that they appeared to be less than trustworthy. What could legitimize a review better than a video of the person posting it?!  No more having your real user reviews taken down and your competitors’ employee-generated or otherwise fake reviews staying up. Real live video testimonials from your customers would become the gold standard for authenticity on Yelp.

    While this version of Yelp videos may help to drive new business by showing a scrumptious plate of food or even a clean car that just went through a car wash, I believe that Yelp is missing out on a huge opportunity. According to SO Media, Video has 400% higher engagement rate than static content. That means that a video testimonial will most likely bring on an action, whether that is a like, comment, or share leading to more significant actions like phone calls and getting directions.

    So, How will Adding Video Effect The Yelp Review Filter?

    One can only hope that allowing customers to add videos to their reviews will serve as positive reinforcement that their opinion of your establishment is a credible one. One can only hope…

    If Yelp factors the use of rich media (namely photos and videos) into review filtering, it hasn’t publicized this. Will they start giving these media reviews priority?

    Industry experts have consistently pointed to the importance of users having a profile picture, connections, and several reviews as the keys to success in building an optimized Yelp profile.

    I personally believe that video will soon become an important part of this conversation of what a truly optimized Yelp user profile is. While I understand that photos might not have been a large piece of the puzzle in the past, I would contend that the rich content in user videos will be of much greater influence in helping build authority and the perception of local business leadership.

    Why Are Your Reviews So Important?

    We’ve long known the importance of having a Yelp business profile. It’s so important, in fact, that according to the Boston Consulting Group in 2013, a business who even has a basic and free Yelp profile will make on average $8,000 more in annual revenue than a business without a Yelp profile. And this is where Yelp gets its leverage. It’s also a great reason to be so selective about which reviews they show.

    As the video feature rolls out only to Yelp Elite users this June, we will have to wait until it makes its way to new users to really see how it effects the review filter. The reason being, Yelp Elite user reviews always show up when posted. The filter’s most negative impact comes to those newer users, without perceived authority on Yelp.

  • 5 For Friday – Facebook Privacy, Google With Your Voice, and Yelp Videos!

    5-sand1. Facebook Defaults Posts From “Public” to “Friends” & Introduces Comprehensive Privacy Checkup
    – Marketing Land

    Facebook has finally launched a major change that may have an impact on their real-time efforts. With the privacy updates, users’ posts will now default to only be visible by friends, and all users will be encouraged to check on their privacy settings if they have not been updated recently. Greg Finn says he expects that this update may cause hashtags and real-time conversations to continue on their decline.

    2.Yelp Will Allow 12-Second Video Reviews Starting Next Month
    – Marketing Land

    Beginning in June, “Elite” users will be allowed to share their review of local businesses via a short video. These videos will first appear inline with the photos, but will eventually also appear along with the reviews like photos currently do.

    3.Google+ Introduces New Features That Automatically Generate Movies and Travelogues
    – Search Engine Journal

    Google+ launches Stories and Movies that will bring together your photos and videos to highlight your favorite moments from your travel or an event. Google’s Story will arrive within 24 hours after you return from your vacation. After you receive your story, you will be able to customize it and share it. Google+ Movies will include related photos and videos along with a soundtrack and special effects.

    4. Google Adds “Okay Google” Voice Search For All Chrome Users
    – Tech Crunch

    Users will first need to give Chrome permission to use the mic on their computer. Then you can simply go to Google.com and say “Okay Google” to trigger the voice search followed by your search request.

    GoogleChromeVoiceSearch

    5. Google Paid “Dealers Nearby” Appears To Have Gone Live
    – Mike Blumenthal

    Mike Blumenthal noticed that Google’s new paid ads (now appearing within the knowledge graph) are live. This seems to be only the case in the US according to the comments thread on Dr. Pete’s tweet regarding this update. Mike Blumenthal suggests that we may one day see Google selling competitors space in branded knowledge panels.

  • In The Game Of Maps, You Either Get There, Or You’re Using Apple Maps

    NotSureIfWhen you think of Apple Maps, you probably think of the disaster that was the iOS 6 Apple Maps update.

    Apple Maps is infamous for directional errors like having turn-by-turn directions that instruct users to drive across an airport runway to get to an airport. We’ve also experienced client business issues with Apple Maps.

    For example, Apple Maps users were being taken to a location 50 miles away from our client’s actual listed business location when using turn-by-turn navigation in the app. We had to then figure out how to edit business information in Apple Maps, as there is no desktop way to access Apple Maps, and you can only access it through the mobile app.

    The data in Apple Maps is mostly powered by data from Yelp, TomTom, Factual, Localeze, and Acxiom as you can see in Moz’s local search ecosystem. By making sure your business information is as accurate as possible on these sources, you could help avoid errors on the sites that they feed to. Often, however, when it comes to issues with Apple Maps, it’s best to figure out how to fix them at the source.

    YeahItUsesAppleMaps

    So here I’m going to walk you through how to edit information in Apple Maps via your mobile device.

    Step 1:

    Search for the business that you’re looking to update.

    Step 2:

    If you’re looking to add a business that is not appearing in search or to update directions that aren’t appearing properly, click on the ‘i’ (for information) icon in the bottom righthand corner. If you’re trying to edit particular business information like name or address, skip to Step 5.

    Step1

    Step 3:

    From this popup dialog you will choose “Report a Problem”.

    Step2

    Step 4:

    This “Report a Problem” page will allow you to choose to report that

    • Search results are incorrect
    • Street or other label is incorrect
    • Location is missing
    • Problem with directions
    • My problem isn’t listed

    Select your issue (in our client’s case, we chose “Problem with directions” to indicate that the map was taking people somewhere it shouldn’t in turn-by-turn directions) and submit your problem!

    Step3

    Step 5:

    To make more specific Apple Maps updates about a particular business, click on the business name in the search results.

    Step4

    Step 6:

    Then scroll down “Report a Problem” on the “Location” dialog box, and CLICK IT!

    Step5

    Step6

    Step 7:

    Choose from the list of issues (most likely you’ll want to report that “Information is incorrect”) and click “Next” in the top right corner.

    Step7

    Step 8:

    Edit whatever details you need (obviously this page will differ depending on what problem you’re reporting) and click “Send” to send the report.

    Step8

    1O7UpdateApple maps has been gaining momentum in user numbers as it is the default app on all iPhones. Apple crushes all. It is known.

    With this in mind, one can only hope that Apple Maps’ future will have a formal business portal for claiming and managing your business information, but until then, we’ll have to live with this limited access process.

  • 8 Tips for Handling Bad (and Good!) Online Reviews

    Have you ever had a bad experience at a business? How did it affect your opinions of that company? More often than not, one bad experience will hinder how someone views a business, even if the experience was handled in the best way possible by the business owner/manager. This can affect the online reputation of a business greatly if people decide to write an online review about you.

    Reviews

    While the thought of negative reviews may scare you, do not let these reviews discourage you! Remember that a dissatisfied customer is more likely to write a review after a bad experience than a satisfied customer writing about a positive experience. Negative reviews can even help you learn how to improve your business. Here are some tips for actively handling these reviews:

    1. Actively check your reviews on various platforms across the web.

    A good way to keep up is to assign one day per month (or bi-weekly) to check your online reputation on the different platforms. The list can be endless, but these are some important ones to consider:

    **Note that you will most likely have to create an account and verify that you are the owner / manager to be able to respond to the reviews as the business owner.

    2. Always be transparent with your customers. This includes:

    • NEVER posting (or having your staff post) fake reviews.

    • NEVER deleting reviews that are negative. This will just anger the person that posted the review, in turn causing a downward spiral effect. Most likely, the angry reviewer will continue to post reviews until they are acknowledged by the business. Instead, take the time to listen to your customer and their concerns.

    3. Make an effort to respond to every review – positive and negative.

    • For positive reviews: A quick, “Thank you for your feedback, NAME! We appreciate your business. We hope you continue to be a BUSINESS NAME supporter!” is sufficient for a positive review. Responding to positive reviews can reinforce the already positive opinion that the reviewer has of your business, and reinforce brand loyalty with that person (because who doesn’t like being responded to by a business?).

    • For negative reviews: The dissatisfied customer will appreciate being heard, and outsiders will appreciate that the business takes the time to respond when something isn’t right.

    4. Be personal in your responses.

    Use the customer’s name if provided, and bring in information from their original review. This will keep the customer from thinking you just have a generic response to all reviews.

    • For example, if a person leaves a bad review on a spa page and you notice in their review they had a massage that day, you could say something along the lines of: “Hi NAME, I’m sorry your massage was not up to par….”

    • Another example comes from our blog! Check out how Tracy Stoller responded to a comment about an error in a code we provided in a previous blog.

    response

    5. Provide a business email that the reviewer can contact you on.

    Don’t try to make it all perfect on the review. You will be able to go more in depth with the customer through an email, depending on the severity of the review/situation. It’s up to you to decide when to try to go into more depth to resolve the issue.

    • You could say something along the lines of, “I truly apologize for XYZ. Please contact [email protected] to help us resolve this issue for you.”

    6. Remember that sometimes people have unrealistic expectations of a business.

    yelp-meme

    If something happened that is completely out of your control, explain yourself in the reply. However, do not have a negative tone toward the customer – simply explain the situation to the best of your ability.

    • For example, a customer leaves a horribly negative review after coming to your restaurant and you are all out of their favorite beer. You can apologize for the inconvenience, but explain that things like this happen occasionally. Explain when the product would be restocked and invite them back. This would be an example of when to NOT provide a contact email, because the situation is not that extreme.

    7. Do not offer gift cards or other repayment for a negative experience on the review site.

    If something is serious enough that you feel the need to refund the customer, provide your contact email and do so through email. Offering repayment or gift cards publicly can be seen as bribery by an outsider reading reviews.

    8. Invite your customers to leave reviews!

    Post a link to your Yelp! page (or other review site) to your social media accounts and invite your followers to talk about their experiences. This could lead to people leaving positive reviews that would not have normally done that on their own.

    It’s important to remember that you can’t please everyone, but continuously having timely responses to your reviews can only benefit your business.

  • Found: Yelp Reviews Copied and Published as Google Reviews

    In the last week, one very alert client saw saw some very recent reviews on his Google Plus Local listing that looked pretty suspicious.  All 4 of these reviews were published within the week:

    Google reviews are copies of Yelp reviews

    The client immediately flagged “Oscar” as a spam review on Friday, November 29th.  By Tuesday, December 3rd, we saw that the review was gone.  Removed from the client’s G+ Local.  That was super fast response by Google, which was a pleasant surprise.

    When we looked at the Google+ profiles for Paul, Suzanne, and Mike,

    • none of the 3 had information on their G+ Profiles except where they lived.  No posts.  No videos.
    • none of the 3 lived within 1,200 miles of our client.
    • 2 of the 3 had 100-200 people in their Circle, despite having no account activity.

    With the fast success of the first spam review removal, we immediately flagged the other 3 as spam reviews. Within 1 day, 2 of the 3 remaining spam reviews were removed.   The only one that’s left is “Paul.”  We’re watching Paul, and hopefully, that one will come down fast too.

    Plagiarizing Yelp Reviews

    These Google reviewers were pretty easy to mark as spam based on their Google+ profiles being so bare and their slim reviews profiles — only 1 review each — but I think the real reason they were taken down was because they are not original review text. They are all copy and pasted from Yelp reviews.

    And stating the obvious, the copied reviews are for different businesses and from different reviewers, so there is nothing legitimate about the Google reviews published on our client’s Google listing.

    Suzanne’s Google review…

    Yelp review copied for Google review

    appears to be a close copy of “Cecile Mighty Mouse M.” May 2013 review on Yelp.

    Plagiarized Yelp review used on Google

    Mike’s Google review:

    Google eview copied from Yelp review

    appears to be a close copy of “Ben S.” July 2013 review on Yelp.

    Yelp review plagiarized for use by Google reviewer

    Paul whose review is still on our client’s G+ Local as of this moment,

    Google review copied and used by Google reviewer

    is a close copy of  “Grainne sounds like Grawn-ya…not Grainy M” May 2012 review on Yelp

    plagiarized reviews on Google

    If you’re curious to see if a review is spam, try dropping a chunk of it into Google to see if a Yelp review shows up as a close copy. If so, then definitely flag as spam to Google. Has this happened to you? Share your tips and stories of spam comments below.

  • Online Reviews and Reviewers: Using Yelp’s Messaging Features

    I discussed the value of online reviews in my previous blog post — check it out here: The Importance of Online Reviews: What Your Customers Really Think.

    I’d like to delve more deeply into the subject to discuss the ways in which a business owner can use reviews in a proactive manner. Since you’re obviously already following the best practices I described in my last post, I won’t go into depth about them here.

    If you are actively involved in your online presence, it’s likely you have heard of Yelp! If not, see below for an introduction to the variety of tools that are available to business owners. It’s brief and very informative!

    Now that you have been formally introduced to the wonderful world of Yelp! I’d like to talk about using the messaging feature discussed in the video.

    We will dive a bit deeper into the advantages briefly discussed in step 3 & 4 and 7 & 8.

    Take some time to read all of the reviews that are on your Yelp! business page. When reading comments:
    • Be patient and diplomatic
    • Do not take complaints personally
    • Treat each review as a valuable source of feedback and a way to improve your businesses success

    Once you have taken the time to read the comments, decide which Yelpers you wish to reach out to. If there is a trend that you are able to pick up on while reading the reviews, you can bet potential customers will do the same. For example, examining a restaurant’s page with multiple reviews commenting that the ambiance is loud or the service is slow, readers might come to the (quite reasonable) conclusion that your restaurant is, in fact, noisy and badly-staffed. Now you know what you need to address and get to work.

    There are two different types of messaging options; Send a Private Message or Post a Public Comment.

    Yelp Online Reviews

    Yelp! allows Biz.Yelp Accounts to contact up to 5 people per day. Use these to either post public comment responding to reviews or send private messages to individual reviewers. Below are the top 3 things you can do on Yelp!

    1. Respond Publicly to Negative Reviews – For reviews that speak to issues that may have existed and been corrected since the review was placed. Thank the reviewer for their feedback and inform them of the changes that you or your staff took to address and fix the problem mentioned. Invite the guest back to experience the positive changes first hand. Do this publicly so that everyone that reads the reviews sees an active business owner that is concerned about customers’ experience with them.

    2. Respond Privately to Individual Guest Issues – For those reviewers that had issues associated with their individual experience respond via private message. If a guest complained that their meal was cold, send a private message apologizing for the cold food and invite them to come back to have a free sample of your wares. Be mindful that you are not allowed to solicit reviews on Yelp!, though. Obviously you can hope the reviewer has a better second experience and updates their original review; however, you can not directly request that they do so. I recommend that you use the private message feature for this type of complaint. You do not want to give the impression that everyone that goes to your business and makes a complaint will get something for free.

    3. Be active – Offer promotions, sales, or information on your Yelp! business page to encourage people to come back on a regular basis. An active business owner will go a long way to create engagement and interaction with their reviewers.

    These are just some of the main ways to reach out to Yelp! users. The simplest way to think about how to interact with these reviews is how you would respond if they had directed the review in person. How would you respond? What would you say? What would you do? Think about it and respond in the manner you deem appropriate; keep it professional and positive. The tools are free, so why not?

  • The Most Impactful Restaurant Review Directories (According to Google Data)

    Entrance to a restaurant in France

    We all know that online reviews are important because more and more potential customers are consulting them before they make a purchase decision; simultaneously, reviews are all over the place and popping up in web search results. Sometimes, even when someone searches for your business name, a review site is the first result. It makes sense, then, that you would need to manage your presence on these sites — but where to start?

    For those with limited resources who can’t find the time to manage all your listings (or if you’re just curious like me) I gathered a list of the most impactful restaurant review sites based on real data that I stole from Google observed in Google search results, rather than arbitrarily deeming one more important than the other.

    I decided the most impactful sites would be the ones that rank the highest on average, and show up the most often, in restaurant-related searches. To figure this out, I gathered a list of 583 keywords composed of [restaurant + city name] like [antoine’s new orleans] and [del fina san francisco] for restaurants in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco. Then I used Advanced Web Ranking to run searches of these keywords in Google and record the information.

    In the chart below, the Average Rank column indicates how a particular domain was ranked, on average, for the 583 restaurant searches. (To see the full list of keywords and stats, check out the Google doc here). As you can see, Yelp is far and away the highest ranking, and therefore the most impactful.

    Domain Average Rank
    yelp.com 3.3
    opentable.com 5.3
    urbanspoon.com 7.1
    menupages.com 7.2
    tripadvisor.com 8.1
    citysearch.com 8.3
    zagat 9.7
    chow.com 11.4
    local.yahoo.com 12.4
    allmenus.com 13.3
    yellowpages.com 13.7
    gayot.com 13.9

     

    Yelp’s dominance isn’t only revealed in how high it ranks in the SERPs for these queries, but also in its share of the searches. A Yelp link was present in the top 20 results for 97% of these searches! The closest competitors are Urban Spoon (87%), Trip Advisor (77%), and City Search (73%). After Zagat at 66%, there is a huge drop off. See the chart below.

    Domain % Share of Searches
    yelp.com 97
    urbanspoon.com 87
    tripadvisor.com 77
    cityseearch.com 73
    zagat.com 66
    opentable.com 43
    local.yahoo.com 38
    menupages.com 36
    chow.com 26
    gayot.com 25
    allmenus.com 18
    yellowpages.com 18

     

    What all of this really means is that if you don’t know where to start, you should probably just start with Yelp, Open Table and Urban Spoon. Or, if you have a chain of restaurants that need immediate attention, start with Yelp, Urban Spoon and Trip Advisor, since those sites seem to have a presence on most SERPs.

    How high a review site ranks matters because it has the power to reach your customers before you do. I’ve blogged about this in the past: you need to tell your story in your words so that others don’t end up doing it for you because that can get ugly. Of course, the best way to do this is by having such a great product that no one can complain, but there’s always going to be the guy who gets really, really pissed when you don’t have black napkins.

    About the Data

    Please note that this is an extremely small set of keywords, and these are probably not statistically significant figures, since our sample is extremely small compared to all of the possible local restaurant searches in the United States (although, I still think the findings are meaningful, since the difference between Yelp and most of the other sites is consistently large). Also, as you can see on the Google doc, those aren’t live calculations, I did them in Excel and didn’t have time to convert them to doc formulas. Lastly, know that, of course there can be some bad data in here (perhaps a certain keyword didn’t turn up restaurant results, and therefore skewed the results). Feel free to point out any mistakes with my assumptions, data and calculations. Most of all, please chip in if you have a list of restaurant names and let me know which city they’re in, and I’ll update the information accordingly, as it was a lot more difficult to find a raw list of restaurant names than I thought it would be. Don’t forget to share you comments below!

  • The Yelp Review Filter is Broken

    A few months ago I came upon an EpicFail image that I found amusing. The image was of a supposed Google review. The review was actually a positive review, but it was the content that really grabs one’s attention:

    “Wendy’s SoNnNnNnN This place is BAWLIN’ yo. Chicken nuggitz be crispy like you never SEEN. I tried one and I was like ‘WHAAAAT! Are you serious Wendy?’ Mean girls workin’ the frier tho. This one chick wouldn’t let me holla. I was like ‘please you ugly anyway.’”

    I was intrigued. As the marketing guy for a pest control service, I love positive customer reviews. I love using them in marketing. Makes the job of marketing really easy. So I decided to hunt down this fantastic review and find out if Wendy’s was using it.

    Lo and behold, the review was actually found on Yelp… odd, since the original image was of a Google review. It is possible the reviewer was so ecstatic about his crispy chicken nuggets that he left the review on both Yelp and Google. It happens on rare occasions. Well to my astonishment this Yelper was an ELITE! Yes sir, Mr. Joseph W. is an Elite Yelper. No wonder the review was so fantastic!

    I decided to find where else in the Internet review world Joseph may have dropped this hyped up review. So I went back to the search engine and searched “Wendy’s SoNnNnNnN”. Most of the sites found were sites about this particular review, but were not the review. And then I stumbled upon a 2nd yelp page in the search. This 2nd page was not the same Yelp reviewer. Mr. Joseph? …Digging a little deeper, I found the following:

    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hamburgers-saint-paul-3
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-sunnyvale
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hamburgers-gainesville-5
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-new-york-5
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-waltham
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hamburgers-lawrenceville-2
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashion-hamburgers-oceanside
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-restaurant-la-mirada
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-portland-4
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-sunnyvale
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hambergers-restaurant-joliet (Note the spelling)

    11 duplicate reviews on Yelp. Different users. Different Wendy’s locations. All of these are showing and not being filtered. I was shocked. I was appalled.

    It’s a funny review. What’s the big deal?

    Yelp prides itself on their review filter. “We try to showcase the most helpful and reliable reviews… Not all reviews make the cut, and those that don’t are posted to a separate “Filtered Review” page. Filtered reviews don’t factor into a business’s overall star rating…”

    Why does this bug me? I understand that Yelp wants legit reviews. I do too. I think the world would be a better place if everyone were honest. But at times, this filter is dishonest. It cuts honest reviews. While some of these review filters are easy to spot and the rules easy to understand, there still seems to be this oddity about what reviews actually show up and what reviews don’t. I struggle with this because I’ve got some competing pest control companies with a higher Yelp review count and rating showing than Bulwark because of this review filter. If all reviews were to be counted I’d have both the highest rating and the highest number of reviews. And despite their statement of “Businesses cannot pay for favorable treatment,” the fact that a competing exterminator is a Yelp Advertiser leaves suspicion that the filter favors advertisers. But back to the matter at hand.

    Yelp is publishing all 11 of these fake reviews! Their filter is broken! Further more, they have deemed Joseph an “Elite Reviewer.” In my opinion, Joseph can no longer be trusted. Nor can the rest of these reviewers. It seems to me that if Yelp truly took this higher standard for reviews serious that all of these reviewers would be removed. Is calling for a removal of the users a little extreme? For those of us that must sit back and simply have faith in the Yelp review filter, this is a huge slap in the face.

    Thomas Ballantyne is the Director of Marketing for Bulwark Exterminating, although he prefers the title of “Pest Control Guy.” He frequents Online Marketing Conferences and on occasions speaks at events about small business marketing. His career at Bulwark has put him in the trenches of Local SEO, Reputation Management, Paid Search, Conversion Optimization, and Online Review Strategies. Outside of bug life, he enjoys family time with his lovely wife and five children. And he’s an avid “Board Gamer” ready for a game of Settlers anytime, anywhere. Find him on Twitter: @Thos003

  • Reviewing the Yelp Review Filter

    Image: People Hate Us on YelpI’ve just published a longer article on the Yelp Review Filter, what it is, how to manage it and, of course, how to spam it.

    Since I wanted to make it a page rather than a post it doesn’t have comments so I’m putting up this post to collect comments.

    Are you a business who is stinging from being Yelped? Tell us about it and we’ll do a follow up blog post with the best stories.

    And even if you’re not a business owner I’d love to hear your opinion of the Yelp Review Filter in the comments.

  • Top 10 for the Weekend

    Once again we’ve collected some handy links that we thought you’d find enjoyable and useful. Have a look and maybe you’ll get some ideas for what to do on Monday when the clients and customers start calling…

    1. GoogleSpeak – “We currently do not support the location” = Banished?

    As much as we love Google Maps… it’s got a long way to go until it’s a fully reliable business tool. It works perfectly for many, but some businesses end up with a problem-laden listing or market and just can’t seem to get it straightened out. If you’re a small business struggling to get your business details out there, you are not alone! Stay tuned for future posts on how to manage it!

    2. ComScore: Now 30% Browsing Mobile Web

    ComScore’s finding that approximately 75 million people are surfing the web on their mobile phones proves the importance of the tool mentioned in the link above. With the Maps application available for all Andriod, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, and Windows Mobile, that means it’s available to 97% of smartphone users as of February 2010.

    3. Facebook Posied to Enter the LBS Game

    From the company who only first turned a profit just over 6 months ago, comes another reason why their long-awaited IPO is going to have investors running to Wall Street when it finally comes up. If you haven’t heard of LBS, or “location based service,” you certainly will soon, and you’re probably already using one: Google Maps, Foursquare, and soon 400 million people will be using one: Facebook. It seems they’ll be integrating advertising like no other into their location-based status updates that will roll out later this month.

    4. Three for Thursday

    Mobile seems to be the hot topic this week… Tom Martin details three mobile services or overall ideas that will help some daily tasks just a bit easier: ordering and paying for your lunch via your mobile, the location-based app answer to Craigslist’s “Missed Connections,” (too bad I’m not single), and a possible solution to trying to schedule a call with a potential client on your boss’s jam-packed schedule, which has proven itself a challenge lately.

    5. Buying Yelp Reviews is BAD for Business

    There’s been a lot of talk about proper social media use these days. Yelp seems to usually be at the center of such discussions. This blog by fellow Search Influencer Amy Arnold shows the varying degrees of small businesses’ attempts to “buy” reviews and if you should or shouldn’t do it.

    6. How to Use Facebook for Business and Marketing

    What would a collection of internet marketing posts be without a mention of how to create a fabulous Facebook Page that everyone will want to visit?? Tamar Weinberg explains here how while the typical Facebook user really is on there only for personal use, it is possible to sneak a little marketing in here and there.

    7. Linkbait: The Most Linked to Articles

    Trying to get links back to your site or blog? Often even the most well constructed posts don’t get all the linking attention they deserve. The SEO Doctor shares some research he found about some of the most linked-to blogs AND shares the golden resources and tools he used to conduct it.

    8. Is your blog chasing numbers or dollars?

    Your blog may be attracting readers, but is it attracting them in such a way that they want to buy your product of service? Mack Collier points out something we’ve probably all committed as SEOs. Sorry, potential customers, we’ll be sure to dial down the use of the search lingo!

    We’re not the only ones who love to share the knowledge we come across. See below for Matt McGee’s round up of the best posts in April, and Search Engine Land’s SearchCap, a daily collection of posts.

    9. Matt McGee’s April ’10: Best Search/Marketing Posts

    10. Search Engine Land’s SearchCap for May 6, 2010