ionadas local Blog

Online marketing can be a confusing game for the local business. Mike Blumenthal has a great infographic showing how one might split up one’s efforts to impact search and social.

Web Equity by Mike Blumenthal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.blumenthals.com.

WebProNews interviews ionadas local CEO Brian Combs, and asks, Is Groupon Helping or Hurting Businesses?

Update: Here’s your coupon for PubCon South 2013 in New Orleans.

On March 8th and 9th, a Can’t-Miss online marketing conference, is coming to town. PubCon Austin 2011 will have dozens of top speakers over its two days.

The thing I like about PubCon is its focus on real world problems and solutions, rather than the vague theories you hear discussed at many conference.

And, best of all, I’ve negotiated a 15% discount for you. When you sign up, use the discount code “bc-8430915”. It is valid through February 2011.

Hope to see you there!

WebProNews interviewed Brian Combs at PubCon Vegas 2010 at the beginning of November. The discussion primarily focused on the changes recently made to Google Places.

More WebProNews Videos

For the last few months, ionadas local and Sentient Services have been engaged in research in the local SEO space. The survey uses heat mapping to reveal how the reader’s eye typically tracks geographically-based search result content, giving web developers and advertisers valuable insights into creating page layouts optimized to attract and retain viewers’ attention.

It was to be the first published survey of eye tracking patterns as applied to local search techniques. We planned to publish the research under a Creative Common Attribution 3.0 license.

Twelve days ago, however, Google released Google Place Search, and completely changed the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for local queries. One could argue that this invalidates our hard work.

“No so fast!” I retort in my best Lee Korso voice.

There are currently multiple page types for local queries. One of them draws much of its structure from the old 7-pack. It’s reasonable to assume that many of our findings apply to this new SERP as well.

And our most surprising finding certainly still applies. The conventional wisdom has been that the map itself should be one of the greatest draws on the page. Our research found that the map actually receives very little attention. Most people hardly notice its presence at all.

If anything, this should be even more the case with the new SERPs. Google has moved the map to the right, where paid advertising usually languishes. Most users have spent the last fifteen years learning to ignore that part of the page. I believe it is unlikely to be noticed now.

So, even with the changes, we’re publishing our research report and the heatmaps:

• Research Paper (.pdf, 11.1MB)
• Heatmap One (.jpg, 147KB)
• Heatmap Two (.jpg, 152KB)
• Heatmap Three (.jpg, 135KB)
• Heatmap Four (.jpg, 127KB)

This research and this report are © 2010, ionadas local LLC and Sentient Services, LP.

They are being published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, allowing businesses, organizations and individuals to download, use and reproduce the data in their own promotional and research efforts providing proper attribution is made.

Proper attribution means listing the above copyright statement and including links to www.ionadas.com and www.sentientservices.com for web usage. For other uses, the copyright statement, www.ionadas.com and www.sentientservices.com must be listed.

Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from ionadas local LLC.