Driving Traffic with MapQuest and its New Search Engine
Local business search is becoming more of an area of great focus by search providers as time goes on. Google, especially, has been working overtime on providing new features that can help users find local businesses of interest. AOL’s MapQuest has been working on improving its own business search functionality, which we talked to the company a little about.
What kind of traffic do you get from MapQuest? Comment here.
MapQuest recently launched a new geosearch engine to power location search, and plans to do more with business listings before the year is over. Businesses should pay attention, as this is another place where users look for information about businesses related to specific places.
“Many of our users search for specific businesses or business categories in order to obtain maps and directions,” a spokesperson for MapQuest tells WebProNews. “In addition, many of our users search for types of businesses nearby another location. For example, if a user obtains a map of the hotel where they are staying for a meeting, the user may then search for restaurants nearby. MapQuest’s extensive database of business listings provides consumers with relevant business listings based upon the user’s search query.”
“MapQuest also provides consumers with the business name, address, phone, website as well as additional details such as hours of operation, user ratings and reviews, photos and more,” she continues. “As a result, businesses benefit from leads several different ways, including people driving to and visiting the physical location, making a phone call or visiting the website.”
MapQuest might not be the first thing businesses think of in terms of driving traffic, but it is an option that should perhaps not be ignored. According to the latest data from Compete, MapQuest.com gets nearly 40 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. By comparison, Bing only gets over 50 million according to the same data set.
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Benefits of the new MapQuest search engine include more accurate, relevant results based upon the user’s query, according to the company. A feedback link is also provided, where users may submit comments and feedback related to their search experience.
“We also have nearly 1 million City Search listings that provide a wealth of information and has the ability to drive traffic to the business web site,” the spokesperon says. “Businesses can offer very helpful information including menus, coupons, and more on their CitySearch listing. Businesses should contact CitySearch to become part of the information feed.”
MapQuest obtains business listing information from multiple data sources. Businesses may report business listing changes such as additions, edits and deletions. They can change phone and FAX, business name, location address, city, state, and ZIP code, contact information, primary line of business and web site information.
MapQuest has 16+ million “Points of Interest”, with the majority being businesses through its InfoUSA database.”At MapQuest, we’re consistently looking at ways to enhance our data for users,” she says. “We will be offering ways to work directly with us for a business listing later this year.”
The company would not get specific about what its plans are, but regardless of the rise in popularity of Maps from places like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, MapQuest is still worth recognizing, and may provide additional traffic.
Do you consider MapQuest an important part of your strategy? Let us know.
Apple Holds iTunes Contest Marking 10 Billionth Download
Apple is holding a contest on iTunes called “Countdown to 10 Billion Song Downloads.”
The user who downloads the 10 billionth song from iTunes will receive a $10,000 gift card from Apple.
“iTunes changed the way you buy music, making songs and albums available for download, day or night,” Apple said.
“Seven years later, we’re about to celebrate our biggest milestone for music, yet – 10 billion songs downloaded. Buy a song, and if it’s the 10 billionth download, you could win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. It’s our way of saying thanks.”
Users will be automatically entered in the contest by downloading a song from iTunes Store or they have an option to enter the contest for free by filling out an online form. Apple says the promotion is limited to 25 entries per day, per user.
Some Ways to Enjoy the 2010 Winter Olympics Online
As the Olympics get underway, fans have a lot of options to engage online. Many popular sites on the web are involved in a variety of ways.
Google
Google allows you to take a virtual tour of the Olympics in 3D. They recently released updates in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer, which showcase Olympic venues (54 buildings). Models range from downtown event centers to ski lifts and spectator bleachers. The Official site for the Olympics uses the models itself.
Vectoral Elevation has “an interactive artwork” that allows users to direct light beams and transform Vancouver’s skyline until the end of the month using a custom interface built on Google Earth and Map APIs. It lets users design big light sculptures by directing 20 robotic searchlights located around English Bay.
Google has also taken Street View to Olympics country:
Bing
Microsoft launched a new Bing Maps application that pulls photos from Flickr, associates them with Bing Maps Streetside photos, and overlays them stretching the photo to form fit where in the world it belongs. The app is currently available in Vancouver (among several other places).
Bing actually has a Winter Olympics-specific Maps app as well. “In coordination with NBCOlympics.com, get up to the minute information about the 2010 Winter Olympics in everything from venues to news,” says Bing’s Chris Pendleton. “Click the Venues bar on the left to see the different venues where the events are taking place. Click the Medal Count bar to see every country mapped out with the number of bronze, silver and gold medals awarded to the respective country. Click the Winter Games News and Blogs to get the latest information about the Winter Olympic Games from news sources and bloggers on site. Finally, check out the Winter Games Tweets which filters information from our Twitter Maps application specific to the Olympics.” Bing talks about more Vancouver apps that feature Bing Maps here.
Bing is also giving its home page some Olympics love. It will be updating it with various photos from the events. “And while we’ll show some winners, this won’t be the standard parade of medalists,” says Bing’s Stephanie Horstmanshof. “We’re out to show the great moments from the games: the alpine skier from Ghana, the debut of Ski Cross as an Olympic event, anything to do with curling—all with the stunning imagery that you’ve come to expect on the Bing homepage.”
More ways that Bing and MSN are involved in the Olympics are discussed here.
Yahoo/Flickr
Yahoo has a games-dedicated site, as well as a new Olympic mobile site at m.yahoo.com/olympics. This will provide coverage with live results, upcoming events, medal counts, photos, news, commentary, etc.
Yahoo also has a Yahoo Sports Olympics Coverage app for My Yahoo, that gives you more such information.
On Yahoo’s Flickr, the IOC, the official governing body of the Olympics, has set up their official Olympic photo group for people to share their photos of the events and of Vancouver.
The IOC also has an official Olympic Games Page on Facebook. “Through the page, you can stay updated on activities and events at the Games, while sharing your own stories about what the Olympics mean to you,” says Alex Huot, head of social media for the IOC. “You’ll even be able to stay updated on future games even after this year’s Winter Olympics end.”
Alex also encourages people to use Facebook to become a fan of athletes and Olympics teams, play the Vancouver 2010 Official Minigame, and share photos.
Twitter has a list of verified athletes from the Olympics who will be tweeting. Fans will of course be tweeting non-stop about things that happen at the Olympics throughout the events.
These are just a few of many ways fans of the Olympics can engage with the events on the web. How are you planning on staying connected?
Google: "Buzz Will Be Just Another Node"
When Google announced Google Buzz earlier this week, the company made it abundantly clear that it was interested in Buzz being as open as possible. Looking at the Google Buzz API page, you’ll see that support for Activity Streams, AtomPub, OAuth, PubSubHubbub, Salmon and WebFinger are things that are “coming soon.”
What all of this means is that Google is working to make Buzz content something that can be used in as many services as possible, while letting as many services as possible come into Buzz.
“The idea is that someday, any host on the web should be able to implement these open protocols and send messages back and forth in real time with users from any network, without any one company in the middle,” says Google software engineer DeWitt Clinton. “The web contains the social graph, the protocols are standard web protocols, the messages can contain whatever crazy stuff people think to put in them. Google Buzz will be just another node (a very good node, I hope) among many peers. Users of any two systems should be able to send updates back and forth, federate comments, share photos, send @replies, etc., without needing Google in the middle and without using a Google-specific protocol or format.”
Google has most recently turned on WebFinger in Gmail (via RRW). WebFinger is described as being about making email addresses more valuable, by letting people attach metadata to them. According to the WebFinger page at Google Code, that can include things like:
- public profile data
- pointer to identity provider (e.g. OpenID server)
- a public key
- other services used by that email address (e.g. Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, Twitter, Facebook, and usernames for each)
- a URL to an avatar
- profile data (nickname, full name, etc)
- whether the email address is also a JID, or explicitly declare that it’s NOT an email, and ONLY a JID, or any combination to disambiguate all the addresses that look like something@somewhere.com
- or even a public declaration that the email address doesn’t have public metadata, but has a pointer to an endpoint that, provided authentication, will tell you some protected metadata, depending on who you authenticate as.
WebFinger is enabled for all Gmail/Google Profiles with public profiles. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick discusses more technical details about it here.
LinkedIn Greets 60 Millionth Member
LinkedIn is getting rather large. Yesterday evening, the network’s vice president of marketing announced on Twitter that it had hit a milestone in terms of users, attracting its 60 millionth member.
LinkedIn had just 55 million members as of December 17th, so this new declaration means it’s grown by a little more than nine percent in less than two months (which translates to a rate of at least 109 percent per year). That increase in size is, it should be needless to say, impressive.
Patrick Crane’s announcement had some positive implications regarding LinkedIn’s reach, too. Consider that the 60 millionth member doesn’t live in Silicon Valley or some other part of California. Instead, he (or she) is located several thousand miles away in the Netherlands.
Of course, for the sake of putting things in perspective, we should note that Facebook passed the 400 million user mark this month. Also, about 70 percent of Facebook’s members live outside the U.S. So it’s not like LinkedIn has captured the global social/professional networking crown.
Just the same, LinkedIn has made some impressive strides, and within its niche, is certainly putting some space between itself and its competitors. Hat tip goes to Leena Rao.