Google Adwords API Blog - where's the p*rn filters?

Saw some interesting results whilst looking at the Google Adwords API blog - you'd expect Google to have some filters in place for this sort of pornographic content!

Google Street View Live in Australia

Google Street View is now Live in Australia. There's enough that has been said on the blogosphere already - but see how much time you can kill checking out your neighbourhood.




yeh - doesn't get more cliche than that ;)

Australian Local Search Debate

V.short post on developments in local search.Over at Micksup, there's some interesting theories on why local search in Australia is stuck in a rut, with particular reference to Yelp. Good to get some input from some of the more prominent business directories in the industry.

Also, Vishal Sharma's updated his list on local search players in Australia - up to 26 now!

Docoloco Releases iPhone app

Melbourne-based local search & review site, Docoloco, released an iPhone app a few weeks ago.I dont have an iPhone, so I cant give an accurate review of the app, but the layout in my browser looks pretty functional - dont think a screenshot is going to do it any justice either, but here's one anyway :)











Good to see some progressive local search tech coming from outside of the usual media/IYP circle - Melbourne is certainly well represented in the local search/review space - you guys must be more community driven than us Sydney-siders ;)

Vishal Sharma interviewed Chris Mander & Johnny Cussen from Docoloco a few months back - worth a read

Microsoft Live Search Australia - Less Choice Please

It is little wonder that Microsoft are struggling to compete with Google in local search in Australia. There are actually 3 different ways to search for local services in Australia using Microsoft's online services, and each return a different set of results & features.

Searching for " Mechanic in Parramatta ", I got the following results

1. Live Search Maps (Global)
No results.

2. Live Search Maps Australia


Some results (through Yellow Pages)

3. Live.com

Results are driven by Multimap (which Microsoft acquired last year). No business listings are given, but a range of other sources are presented to the user, including Wikipedia articles, WiFi locations and Nightlife destinations.
Interesting, Live.com presents Australian users, search options for the 'United Kingdom' - good use of Geo-IP there :)

Local search is a market that Microsoft is desperate to hang onto and amidst all the redesigns of Live.com and the new features that have been introduced, at least locally, the experience is not consistent. With Google Maps in Australia, the user views the same set of local results, be it through a mashup, Google Maps search or even through the embedded map results in Google organic searches.

Update: Found this amusing article - Microsoft are offering iPods to users as lucky prizes for using Live Search in Australia!

Truelocal launches iPhone app

News Digital Media gave a press release detailing a launch of a Truelocal iPhone app.

"...Truelocal.com.au will have a Location Based Service function enabling users to conduct on the spot searches for businesses within a specific radius of where they are standing..."

There's an interesting article here on Location enabled iPhone apps - I suspect that some companies will be thinking that that the manic app development ended with the Facebook app :)

Telstra already offer GPS/mobile integration with WhereIS Navigator through a range of devices, just not the iPhone.

With Google Maps tightly integrated with the GPS receiver in the iPhone, would Telstra still go ahead and launch a iPhone app with WhereIs/GPS integration - I don't see the point given the native Google Maps support. Based on current headlines, Telstra are already selling the iPhone - can anyone confirm whether any Sensis content is on there?

Update:

I was fortunate to get confirmation from Danielle Horan from Sensis:

"...Hi there. Regarding your question about the availability of Sensis' mobile applications on the iPhone, the answer is yes. To mark the release of the iPhone, Telstra launched an iPhone BigPond portal featuring key Sensis mobile products like Yellow, Sensis Search, Citysearch and Whereis.

However anyone with an internet enabled phone, including the iPhone, can access Sensis’ mobile applications. For example, all you need to do it type in mobile.yellow.com.au to access the Yellow Mobile site. It can then be saved as a ‘bookmark’ to enable easy access.

So together with Telstra’s super-fast and nationwide NextG network, the release of the iPhone means great sites like Yellow and Whereis Mobile are more widely available, and easier to use than ever- and can be accessed across all carrier 3G networks..."

Wintermute, has an amusing comment about Sensis not being able to get pre-loaded content on the iPhone in time for launch:

"...And then there was Telstra, who were a little late to the iPhone party because of their insistence, in negotiations with Apple, that their Sensis properties be loaded by default on the iPhone (ie, replacing Google). Eventually Telstra caved — they offer all that through their web portal anyway. But it was fascinating to see a carrier used to controlling everything have to give in..."

It will take a while before users are happy about iPhone download quotas - personally I know I can use around 1mb just searching an panning around Google Maps on my mobile.
Glad I didn't stay up until midnight in 8 degree weather to get one from the Apple Store in Sydney!

Australian Yellow Pages Listings Now Indexed by Google

It was only 4 months ago that I mentioned that:

"Sensis have chosen to keep the content of Yellow Pages out of the reach of all Search Engines, in order to maintain control over their IP..."

It seems now that has all changed - not sure how long this has been going on, but just noticed that the Australian Yellow Pages® is now being indexed by Google with 1,030,000 pages in the index to date.
It has been commented by quite a few people interested in the local search space (Bitemark , VS Consulting , Clickfind, LivePages), that (at the time) this was a necessary move for Sensis as

a) More Australians are using Google as a first destination for searching local businesses than they are Yellow Pages
b) It represents better value for businesses advertising in Yellow Pages because their listing can now be reached through a second means - search engines

It was commented by the SMH that when Google Maps was being launched, that Sensis refused to give Google Maps access to Yellow Pages listings. It still may be a way off before Google Maps has access to Yellow Pages data, because from an SEO perspective they are only half way there.

Edit: 11/07 - As has been pointed out by a few people, Google is in fact spidering individual business listings, but it seems that this will be done by crawling through paginated search results - they may speed up the process by looking at listing individual businesses a la Hotfrog

It was commented several years ago that if you pay for your listing to appear on the first page of search results in Yellow Pages, then in theory it should be spidered first - of course an effective linking strategy would increase the chance of a search engine spider seeing beneath the first page of results to the free listings, though this would not be guaranteed.

What I mean by this is that they are only letting Google index lists of sub-categories, rather than individual business listings themselves. For example, there are only 31 pages in the index that have the word 'mechanic' in them, however Yellow Pages would have tens of thousands of mechanics in their directory. In fact this is exactly the same approach that the UK Yellow Pages took

Given that prior to SEO efforts, Yellow Pages attracted 2.5 million uniques a month as a 'destination site', the additional traffic that they get through SEO will only be a blip on the radar at this stage. Interestingly, Yellow Pages-powered Mylocal is still advertising heavily using Google Adwords - work that one out..

My guess is that this recent change in the Yellow Pages philosophy is in response to truelocal's growth and recent site revamp - but that topic requires a post of its own :)

Brownbook With Australian Business Listings

I noticed that Brownbook, the open business directory "we can all update", now has Australian business listings. They're even hiring locally too. Kelsey Group blogged about Brownbook at the beginning of the year. The concept is great, however from the business point of view, I'm a little unsure of the 'pay to claim your business' concept. Time will tell whether the businesses that claim their listing do see the value in paying the nominal 5 pounds to claim their listing.

Funding-wise, they received an undisclosed amount from UK-based Friday Holdings
Otherwise, very clean interface & great search functionality. I like the fact that the one site can span several countries - however they may have some SEO issues with that though..

Quotify.com.au & Magnify.net..seeing double

Read an interesting article on Techcrunch about social video site, Magnify.net and thought " hmm..I've seen this magnifying-glass theme somewhere else on an Aussie local search startup before.."

v.s

Google Maps Australia Now Showing User-Created Photos from Panoramio

Recently noticed that Google Maps Australia is now displaying user generated photos alongside map search results. Some of these photos are sourced from photo searching/geo-tagging tool Panoramio, which Google acquired last year. Cool feature - see below

And with Australian geocoded photos overlaid over a Google Map:

There's a fair amount of Australian user content that Google Maps Australia could index from government and user generated content - weather, videos, audio etc