Social Search Gaining Ground Quickly

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Boost Local Business


Local search marketing represents major commerce to search engines, hence all the attention and infrastructure invested in making Google Places a much better user experience when searching for local businesses.

Well, social search is quickly gaining ground and can have a major impact on local search depending on user settings. For example,  if a user is logged into their Google account while conducting a search, their search engine results may contain links from popular social sites revealing reviews or things their friends may have “Liked” and much more.

Facebook is building a new online currency with their “Like” feature for both consumers and marketer’s. Last Fall Facebook and Bing announced a partnership that would make search results more social. Other search engines such a Blekko.com also began moving in the same direction.

Today B2C published a great article on this very subject titled “Social Search Surges Ahead…[Read more]


Posted in Boost Local Business, Facebook, Local Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Search | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Are Pay Per Click Ads Being Ignored?

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Boost Local Business

I’ve been telling clients and colleagues alike since 2009 that pay per click advertising is becoming less and less effective. Using sophisticated eye-tracking equipment and “heat maps” (which can tell us where people are looking when they land on any web page), several studies now prove that users spend more time looking at the organic search results versus the pay per click advertising usually found in the right margin and at the top of most search engines.

Emarketer.com just rolled out another revealing study indicating that while paid search was viewed less than 30% of the time depending on the search engine, organic search results were viewed 100% of the time.

This is overwhelming evidence that makes search engine optimization (SEO) more important than ever. [Read more]


Posted in Boost Local Business, Local Internet Marketing, Local Search Marketing Orange County, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

A New Facebook Privacy Setting

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Boost Local Business

A new Facebook privacy setting called “Instant Personalization” has been rolled out.

In other words, Facebook will be sharing your personal information with external websites under the auspices of an enhanced user experience. What’s worse is this new setting is rolled out as “Enabled” automatically.

If that works for you, then no need to change anything. However, if it’s not agreeable with you to have Facebook share your data with non-Facebook sites then go to your account now and walk through these quick steps below before your personal information is shared with the universe.

Go to:

Account >

Privacy Settings >

Apps & Websites >

Instant Personalization >

Edit settings and uncheck “Enable instant personalisation on partner websites”

Warning – If your friends don’t do this, they will be sharing info about you as well, so make sure you give everyone you know a heads up.

If you want to understand more about this new setting, I found a great article on the subject. [Read more]

It’s unfortunate these settings are not rolled out as “Disabled” with an invitation from Facebook for those who want a richer and more enhanced user experience while visiting other sites. Maybe I’ll save that idea for that imaginary website my mom keeps referring to as BookSpace.


Posted in Boost Local Business, Facebook, Local Internet Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Security, Social Media Marketing | Leave a comment