Bad Signal for Yell on Rate Cap

This article appeared today in the Guardian Newspaper in the U.K., regarding the ongoing review of the rate cap imposed on Yell in the United Kingdom. The Competition Commission has issued a report indicating it may extend or expand the…

Read More

Shareholders OK RHD-Dex

It's official. The RHD-Dex Media merger has been approved by shareholders. Here is the release. The deal, which combines two of the top five U.S. incumbent publishers, is expected to formally close at the end of this month. Here is…

Read More

March Madness: the Next Live 8?

PaidContent reports today that CBS Digital president Larry Kramer announced the network will offer all of its NCAA March Madness coverage online for free. The coverage will be ad supported, and Kramer likened it to AOLs Live 8 coverage which…

Read More

eBay Building Pan-Media Platform?

It would appear so, according to this article in MediaPost (reg. req'd): On Tuesday, some of the nation's biggest advertisers got a pitch from a surprise media buying "solutions provider:" online auction service eBay. Details of the presentation, and the…

Read More

Yahoo! Search Not ’Giving Up’

Here's the Yahoo! Search response to the "controversy" created yesterday by the Bloomberg article in which Yahoo! CFO Susan Decker seemed to be saying Yahoo! was perfectly happy being No. 2 (to Google) in search: [W]e thought it made sense…

Read More

What is News 2.0?

Om Malik has an interesting take on what constitutes the term "News 2.0" (the latest phrase within the Internet buzzword parlance that started with "Web 2.0"). There are many high-traffic news sites out there, he contends, that don't create any…

Read More

Google Has Public Support — For Now

According to this AFP story: A survey from the Michigan-based Ponemon Institute, released Tuesday, indicated that approximately 56 percent of respondents believed Google shouldn't hand over the information demanded by the Department of Justice. Nearly 90 percent of those polled…

Read More

Google: Improved Local Imagery

Seeking to match some of the very impressive high-resolution "birdseye" photography now available through Windows Live Local, Google has improved the resolution on some of its aerial coverage. Here's the latest from the Official Google Blog: We're always trying to…

Read More

Yahoo! Content to Be No. 2 in Search?

This is a very interesting piece from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoting Yahoo!'s CFO Susan Decker on the implied unliklihood that Yahoo! will gain any significant search share from Google in the immediate future. Recall, however, that overall Yahoo! is number…

Read More

Social Search Review

BusinessWeek Reporter Ben Elgin provides a nice overview of Yahoo!'s "differentiation strategy" (vs. Google) using community and "social search." (I believe JudysBook has tried to TM the term "social search.") We wrote about Yahoo!'s broader social strategy and how it…

Read More

Jeeves’ New Image Search

This doesn't have anything to do with local per se, but Ask.com is supposed to being helping make IAC a local powerhouse (together with Citysearch). I'm reminded by this that I need to catch up with them on a range…

Read More

The Earnings Guessing Game

SiliconBeat and John Battelle raise the question (citing Yahoo! employee Amr Awadallah's reasoned speculation) of whether Google will hit or fall short of estimates. I think the company will hit its targets (but it still may loose if it doesn't…

Read More

ReachLocal Deal with FTD

Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal reports on a large-scale deal between ReachLocal and FTD local florists: ReachLocal and FTD Florists are working together on a customized local search campaign in which 20,000 FTD merchants will be advertising on Google…

Read More

Real Estate Roundup

Gary Price has a link-intensive piece today at Search Engine Watch discussing the proliferating tools in real estate search. It's quite thorough and worth a read definitely. Real estate is one of the most interesting verticals since it's map-intensive, involves…

Read More

Elusive Millenials

Here's a very very long article in the NY Times (reg. req'd) from Sunday about the elusive "millenials" (people born between 1980 and 2000). If anyone believes that the consumer behavior model and the media landscape isn't fragmenting and radically…

Read More