OpenTable, the secretive eight-year-old restaurant reservation service, was slow to take off, with some of its local media and directory affiliates reporting little traffic in its early days (and a competing service, Foodline, basically dropping off the map). But in…
Today I had the chance to speak with Nagaraju Bandaru, Cofounder and CTO of "meta reviews" site BooRah. The site has developed some clever algorithms that scrape, aggregate, structure and serve up third-party reviews for local search. It currently focuses…
Earlier in the week, I had the chance to catch up with Vehix.com CEO Derek Mattsson, who had some interesting things to say related to Monday's post about Starbucks taking mobile local search into its own hands. Vehix is interested…
In a recent news release, B2BYellowPages.com, Syosset, NY, announced it would begin offering free business listings on its site. B2BYellowPages.com is a vertical site focused solely on the business-to-business marketplace with ownership of additional vertical sites (b2bAutos.com, b2bCosmetics.com, b2bTravel.com, etc.).…
Following up on the previous introductory post on Monster Worldwide's partnership with The New York Times, there is a lot more that can be said about the deal and the quickly changing newspaper environment it both represents and contributes to.…
AP reports (via WSJ Online) that The New York Times Co. and Monster.com are partnering to sell recruitment ads. This will bring the Monster brand to 19 of the publisher's sites (including NYTimes.com and Boston.com). There is little information given,…
The newspaper consortium ("the amigos") that teamed up with Yahoo! for Hot Jobs is planning to invade used autos next, according to a post by newspaper insider Ken Doctor. If it pans out, such an alliance would probably signal that…
In a move that resembles MySpace's partnership with SimplyHired (to create MySpace Jobs), fast moving social network Facebook has partnered with career site Jobster. CareerBuilder and Monster were in the running for this deal, according to GigaOm, but Jobster won…
There is a marketing guy who is trying to build his business by telling people that the best way to get more golden eggs is to kill the goose that laid them. Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog recommends that lawyers do…
Following up on last week's post, here is an in-depth Search Engine Watch article that echoes some of the benefits of vertical search. Search Engine Land meanwhile profiles online travel site SideStep, which puts some of these benefits into action.…
PaidContent reports that Jupitermedia has acquired online tech job Web site JustTechJobs.com, signifying a possible move into online classified verticals. It's not completely clear whether this is a strategic acquisition or a financially driven one (paidContent suggests the latter), although…
Following up on the post earlier this week about vertical search, here is a breakdown of the rise in usage of real estate Web sites from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (via eMarketer).
I read an interesting blog post last week at Bill Slawski's SEO by the Sea. He takes a step back to reaffirm that search and local are a great fit for each other, especially for finding things offline to buy…
Bill Slawski today examines how a vertical strategy can be important in local search. This was a significant theme at ILM:06, and we're beginning to see a shift toward vertical segmentation. Take a look. It's an interesting read, and I'll…
Online recruitment spending has surpassed print recruitment spending for the first time, according to my friends and former colleagues at Borrell Associates. The line was crossed in 4Q 2006 (now), and online now accounts for US$5.9 billion, while print accounts…
The Australian directory publisher Sensis is continuing its efforts to build online destinations for key verticals. Sensis recently unveiled a beta version of CarShowroom.com.au, a site that allows comparative shopping of new cars sold in Australia, according to this report…
As we reported last week, Zillow has taken a significant step by offering free listings in its real estate maps. Zillow has since provided a counter on its home page that currently lists just over 9,000 sale listings so far…
Newspapers have always been a pied piper kind of industry, where everyone follows the lead of a few influential players. Right now, the pied pipers are whistling for the recruitment partnerships offered by Yahoo! HotJobs or Monster. There are definite…
Comments came into my personal site last week suggesting that AutoTrader CEO Chip Perry, in his keynote at Kelsey's ILM conference in Philadelphia, may have hyped up his company's considerable lead over Cars.com and other auto portals. "Based on my…
Zillow announced today that it will allow users and agents to post homes for sale for free. Zillow has gained a great deal of traction and has become the poster child of vertical search in the 10 months since its…
