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Does Close Enough Really Count?

Monday, November 19th, 2007

IP targeting of local sites has always been a hotly debated topic, and some of the recent posts around the Web about the SEO challenges around it have just added fuel to the fire. As such, lately I’ve been thinking about what the best approach truly is, and when is close enough, good enough, […]

My Name is Roget’s

Monday, November 12th, 2007

On my mind this week - in my never ending quest to make the world an easier place - keywords vs. categories. I won’t go so far as to say I hate keywords, but man, the level of complexities that they introduce is frankly overwhelming. Before I started in this business, I had absolutely no […]

Facebook goes Local?

Monday, November 5th, 2007

In the beginning, there was Facebook. In many ways it was the ultimate hyper-local site. Primarily focused on schools and colleges, it provided a great way for people to stay in touch with folks in their “community” (not to mention to meet new people). However, fast forward a few years and now that […]

Ah, the Good Old Days

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

Son, I remember the old days, when I would walk barefoot five miles in the snow to school, and “online” meant that you had someone available to answer the phone…
I don’t envy the challenges of the local business right now when it comes to advertising. In the old days, it was pretty easy - […]

Where can I get a…?

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

I love to shop. It is definitely right up there in the top five ways I like to spend my time. Just yesterday, with an hour to kill I went to the local record shop and bought three albums (yes, vinyl - Hot Rocks, Houses of the Holy, and a DJ-Kicks […]

My name is URL

Monday, October 15th, 2007

One of the things that delights me about the Internet is when I come across a site that does a great job with URLs. Unfortunately, as the Web gets more and more diverse, and complicated this gets harder and harder to do. And the URLs go from being hard to remember, to impossible […]

It’s Getting Deeper

Monday, October 8th, 2007

One of the things I love about the local space is just how deep you can get with information. As a locally focused Internet company we are constantly faced with this challenge: How much should we focus on breadth of information, vs depth? As we grapple with this ourselves, it’s fun to look […]

Beside the Fold

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

I’ve been struggling a lot with maps lately. It’s just one more example in a long list of how putting things online makes them both more and less convenient at the same time. Case in point. I spent the weekend in Boulder, CO, and I needed a map. I needed the […]

If a Business isn’t in a Search Engine?

Monday, September 24th, 2007

…..Does it really exist? From my perspective, the single hardest problem in local search is knowing what businesses actually exist. There are lots of second-order problems: location, fuzzy search, what data to display, how to moderate user comments, scale - and I’ll touch on a bunch of those in future […]

Where Am I? The Challenge of Geo-Targeting

Monday, September 17th, 2007

As I’m in the process of selling my house, I’m reminded that real estate is all about location, location, location. And when it comes to local, obviously, location is a key part of everything we do. And yet, location is in fact one of the most difficult things to get right, from […]

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