Healthy Blog Reviews

Did you know that WhitePages.com regularly ranks among the Top 50 web sites in the US for traffic? I didn’t but I guess that just shows that I don’t need to find many phone numbers. That kind of traffic though is a valuable asset and WhitePages.com is looking to take advantage of the push in local business information that has been led by Google’s Place Pages and other specific local business directories. paidContent.org tells us more WhitePages.com has given visitors the option to search for local businesses for almost a decade, although it has historically sent those queries to third-party sites. Starting Thursday, it’s taking those listings in-house and adding several features, including a “store locator,” which lets people find branches of national chains in their area. Since the beta has launched there has been some reason to believe that this is a good thing moving forward In an interview, Jason Milstead, WhitePage.com’s director of business search, said that the number of business searches on WhitePages.com has risen from about 13 to 14 million a month to more than 16 million a month since WhitePages.com launched a beta of the product in April. Ok, so you roll out a new internal product and magically your numbers shoot up just because of the sheer awesomeness of the product? Not likely. Being a bit of a usability nut I went to the site to see just what they are doing that might entice a visitor to take this service for a spin. Based on the graphics below that are prominently displayed on the business locator side of the page, I suspect that increase in traffic for the service is more about a lesson in site usability and promotion vs. an incredible new product that visitors decided they just have to use. WhitePages.com admits that revenue is off from its best days but is trying to see how it can capitalize on the interest in local business listings. It is introducing service to do this and aiming at some big players as competitors. [Services like] DealPop, which will be able to leverage the traffic that the listings bring to WhitePages.com—giving it an advantage over other daily deal services that have had to spend heavily on advertising in order to bring in users. “Groupon, LivingSocial had to build up that traffic from day one,” (Milstead) says. “They don’t have a business search product they’re integrating with.” While this is interesting it seems like WhitePages.com is waking up to the fact that while they have a lot of traffic they are not monetizing it as they could. As a result, they are taking an existing feature, bringing it in-house, and looking to capitalize. This is not unlike a lot of web properties who have watched competitors erode once dominant positions by providing more than just information. It’s hard to say just how much call there is for the many different deliveries of local business information that are all over the web. Consumers usually want a trusted source that doesn’t require a lot of hunting. Gee, sounds a lot like a company out of Mountain View, doesn’t it?

Tags: Business, daily, graphics, Jason Milstead, local-business, Local/Mobile, mountain, mountain-view, numbers, pages-com-logo, product, traffic, web-sites, White
Posted June 24, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Google’s bringing back the goats. Yes, lawn-care companies around the country are officially panicking that Google has taken what appeared to be an isolated incident–a publicity stunt–and turned it into a tradition : More than 200 goats from California Grazing have once again arrived at our Mountain View headquarters where they’ll stay for over a week chomping away on grassy goodness. The cost of bringing in the goats is comparable to hiring lawn mowers for the same job and the green benefits are clear: the goats eliminate mower emissions, reduce noise pollution, restore plant species and fertilize while grazing. We’ve herd rumors that Microsoft is already trying to hire some of the goats and is exploring using its own goats and outsourcing them to Yahoo.

Tags: again-arrived, country, eliminate-mower, green, Microsoft, mountain, mountain-view, publicity stunt
Posted April 16, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

It sounds like a cross between Tomorrowland and a college dorm: Google wants on- (or near-) campus housing for their employees . Yes, the free on-campus laundry, free on-campus eateries, on-campus childcare (I’m just assuming that’s not free, but you never know) and free on-campus exercise facilities (making them 75% more free than where I went to college, but anyway) are just not enough to keep their employees at the Googleplex enough hours of the day. I don’t think the housing will be free, but you never know. This doesn’t necessarily mean Google has any plans to get into real estate development . Remember their wireless spectrum bluff ? Google may be appealing to make the change, hoping if you “rezone it, they will come.” It’s not a terrible theory—potential builders would have a built-in set of potential renters/buyers for the residential properties, which would make office retail space desirable there, too. So Google probably isn’t trying to take over every aspect of their employees’ lives (despite what it seems like with the on-campus oil changes, doctors, masseuses and dry cleaning drop off—which are not free, I assume). In fact, it started as the exact opposite—housing and services convenient to the Googleplex are virtually nonexistent. No, they’re not just coddling their employees so they can attract those recent college grads who’ve had Mom do their laundry for the last 20+ years . In fact, Google may be trying to save money with this move: some employees live so far away (and the Googleplex doesn’t have a lot of public transit access) that Google provides luxury buses with Wi-Fi for employees commuting from San Francisco. So what’s a multi-billion dollar corporation to do? Well, first, they start off with the proper legal channels. Last week, they wrote a letter to Mountain View, preparing to ask for zoning changes to allow housing in the nearby area. Naturally, they’re also being careful to plan sustainable development: Our goals for Google’s HQ are to provide a future redevelopment that is nurturing and regenerative to the environment provide a vibrant community and worklife balance [I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry there] for all and efficiently manage transportation and pedestrian access needs. This must include mixed uses office retail and residential along with the kind of land use development described in the Final Report by the Mountain View Environmental Sustainability Task Force. So their plans aren’t just to build apartment buildings—they want strip malls, too. Ah, yes, then life will be complete . The current zoning is for commercial use only. The city is preparing to discuss zoning changes, but don’t expect to move into your Google-themed housing too soon. TechCrunch also has the full memo from the Mountain View City Planner to the City Council, preparing to discuss the zoning changes: What do you think? Will Google get its real estate dreams? Will they be building, or will they step back and let others do the heavy lifting? Photo by Joe Penniston Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Tags: city, council, employees, environment, googleplex, make-the-change, marketing, mountain, mountain-view, plans, real-estate, residential, Search, zoning-changes
Posted February 19, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media