Legal Marketing & SEO Blog

Yesterday, Google released two new services for mobile phone and wireless device users: Google Local and Google SMS Driving Directions.

Google first released Google Local last year to enable users to find relevant local information with neighborhood business listings, maps, directions, and useful web pages. Now, Google has extended this service to XHTML-enabled mobile phones, but with a cleaner interface. So, whether you are looking for pizza or Pintas in Chicago, Google will show you the way.

The search results for Google Local comes from a combination of Google's index of web pages and Yellow Pages data. If you cannot find your business in Google Local or your information is incorrect, the Google Local Business Center lets you list your law firm or update information about it on Google Local for free.

From the Google Local Business Center you can add a law firm description, they types of payment you take (cash, credit cards, check...), your hours of operation, your contact email and Web site address and the category Services-Attorneys

Once you sign up for updating your listing, Google will send a letter to the address you provided with a personal identification number and activation instructions, activate and Google will add your updated listing to the Google Local database to go live with the next update.

Posted In Google , Online Yellow Pages

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Hi Friends,

Google added satellite images to their Google Maps. Now you can see where you are going from above, anywhere from a Space Shuttle View to a Helicopter view. Personally I find the Amazon A9 street view more useful, but the space-sky view is pretty neat. All of this work is about getting into the local advertising - online yellow pages market.

My puppy, Sheba the Hug Pug, and I took walking trip to see where the first commercially viable integrated circuit was invented by Bob Noyce and his team at Fairchild Semiconductor. But before we took our walk, we decided we would like to see what the building looked like... from above (an especially kewl view point for a Pug :).

Here is what 844 E. Charleston Rd. looks like from above on Google Maps.

Posted In Google , Online Yellow Pages

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Hi Friends,

According to a Forester Research report (see article on ClickZ), Internet Yellow Pages providers have fallen behind in the battle for the local search audience and will need to partner to remain competitive in 2005. The report by Charlene Li (Charlene's blog) gave four suggestions for the Internet Yellow Pages.

1. offer better local content, such as more detailed business profiles
2. partner for both local search technology and content
3. develop new products and services for local businesses to brand themselves as a local search engine marketing provider
4. dominate local sales by creating an advertising network that would allow for national buys and partnering with search engines, as seen in Bell South's partnership with Google

Read the ClickZ Article for more information...

Of course the 5th step, for independent Internet Yellow Page providers, is to sell your Internet Yellow Pages to one of the remaining RBOCs, or two of them, like YellowPages.com (Dane Madsen et al) sold to SBC and BellSouth late last year :)

For information on Internet Yellow Pages from the Yellow Pages Association, visit their LocalSearchGuide.org, which was launched in December of 2004.

Q. What is the Local Search Guide?

A. The Local Search Guide is an Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) and Search Engine Who's Who. Updated frequently, this objective resource profiles IYP, Search Engine and Search Tool companies' Local Search capabilities. (from the Yellow Pages Association's Local Search Guide's About Page).

The Local Search Guide has profiles on the following companies:

In any case as I continue my law firm Internet marketing "how to" posts over the next few months, I will run through the products offered to law firms from each of these Internet Yellow Pages, as well as the search engines and portals. And hopefully at the end of all this, we will be able to give a simple plan for spending your marketing dollars. And of course I will cover your free options as well :)

Peace - Tim

:: The Ties That Bind, The River by Bruce Springsteen

Posted In Online Yellow Pages

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Hi Friends,

As Google continues to focus on the local advertising market, it has now released Google Maps. The maps (which on the Macintosh work with Firefox, but not Safari) allows one to scroll along a given area, placing additional graphical elements onto the screen as one scrolls, rather than redrawing the whole screen to show the map.

Little Sheba the Hug Pug's Backyard Dog Park - Hoover Park

You can also get directions or do a local search (for lawyers or restaurants or auto body shops...) on the location shown in the map screen.

Overall the interface is clean. I am sure they will add some features to compete (defeat?) Yahoo!'s and MapQuest's maps. Maybe Google will combine the scrollable interface with an Amazon/A9 like street pictures and/or with Google's Keyhole technology. And then make it work with a Treo that has GPS and then... Competition and programming will eventually make this all happen :)

Here are some links:

Google Maps
Google Maps FAQ
Google Maps Tour

And here are usability comments from Gary Price (of ResourceShelf.com fame) on the Search Engine Watch blog.

Or just do a Google search on "Google Maps".

Peace - Tim

Posted In Google , Online Yellow Pages

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Hi Friends,

I thought I would do a quick post on a few Google Resources. Not that there is really anything new here, just that Justia's blog is new, and we felt should have some posts of and links to the basics.

So here are some Google resources...

First is the Google Blog. It is used by Google to introduce new features of and changes to their site, such as today's post about Google adding the "Local" link to the Google home page for Google's Local Search.

The Google-Friends announcement list has (finally) moved to Google Groups from Yahoo! Groups*. In what can only be considered a blatant rip-off of the Google-friends list, Justia has also set up Justia-Friends at Google Groups as well. So please join the Justia list when you sign up for the Google list.

Google Guy - is an engineer at Google who posts on the various search engine discussion boards about Google's results and rankings among other things. Google Guy is really Matt Cutts [ pic ] a programmer at Google, but that may change, since he chose the moniker GoogleGuy rather than his own name so the person behind the name could be switched out with another programmer (maybe even a female programmer) at any time.

Read a summary of some of the things the Google Guy has stated on the discussion boards here.

Here are some non-Google Google resources, starting with two message boards worth checking out. The WebmasterWorld.com Google Forum and the SearchEngineWatch.com Google Forum

And here is Google Rankings, a tool to check your ranking in Google, which apparently has been okayed for doing such checks by Google's legal department. They have many other nice tools and scripts there that can be used in search engine optimizing your Web site (keyword density tools, Yahoo! Rankings... ). The site is certainly worth checking out.

And here is a paper on the Google prototype for historical purposes.

Well, the new news of this post is Google putting the Local search link on their home page. And since you read this far, then I will give you the key to doing well with Google's local search...have your full street address on all of your Web site pages.

Peace - Tim

And finally, visit Google Labs for the interesting public betas that have been released. The one I like is Google Site Flavored Search. Here is a law flavored search.
 

* Yahoo! Groups is the former eGroups (and OneList), which was originally Scott Hassan's FindMail before it was a commerical enterprise. Larry's brother Carl Page was one of the co-founders, along with multi-company co-founder (including FindLaw) Martin Roscheisen and, of course, the man with the original plan Scott.

Posted In Google , Online Yellow Pages , Search Engine Optimization

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Hi Friends,

Amazon's A9 group, here in Palo Alto, has released a beta of their new online yellow pages. The key differential they are marketing is showing photos of over 20 million business locations.

More exciting is the ability of A9/Amazon users to review local business or services. The Amazon user ratings and reviews of these businesses and services are likely to be the key long term added value to Amazon's yellow pages, similar to the value added from user reviews of books or dvds on Amazon today. It should give all of the other online yellow pages some real competition.

I look forward to seeing the reviews for professional service companies, such as law firms. Amazon has the critical mass of registered users to make this a very valuable system to those seeking an attorney. Although Amazon has in the past had some problems with both fake negative and fake positive reviews of books and other products, Amazon has made moves to be more responsive in the last few years, including one-click off topic reporting (not sure if they have patented this or not) and the encouragement of reviewer validation (by way of credit cards) and use of reviewer's real names in reviews. In my "extensive" use of Amazon, I have seen more fake positive reviews than negative ones, and relatively few off topic reviews.

Legal services should be interesting, as some consumer reviewers may not be in a position to accurately rate the lawyers services. And a negative review could lead to a lawsuit, by a lawyer who felt he or she lost work because of the review. But consumer reviews should lead to an increased level of customer service and responsiveness, as those are attributes consumers generally can judge more easily.

And nothing keeps attorneys from reviewing other attorneys on Amazon, so there may be some minor competition for Martindale on the professional rating side. In fact, this would be a good time for you lawyers out there to get your attorney friends to start reviewing you. Nothing leads to a prolonged higher rating than a good start :)

More importantly, Amazon is not reliant on any individual business or service type for its revenues, and in particular Amazon is not reliant on lawyers for a significant part of their revenue. Thus Amazon can allow negative reviews of lawyers to be posted, without worrying about significant losses of revenues by way of canceled Westlaw contracts of Martindale listings.

Over time it will be the honesty, transparency and narrative elements of the Amazon's reviews that will lead to their directory being used more and more by consumers.

Amazon's A9 service still has a lot of work to do with the usability of the site especially for lawyers and attorneys. Amazon needs to greatly improve their data to allow for practice area searches and fuller profiles (at least include a link to the law firm's Web site). This is not Martindale/Lawyers.com quality data, not even close. And a search for "lawyer", "attorney" and "law firm" should not return different result sets, and should give the same listing of browsable categories to select from.

You can also get an A9 tool bar if you are using Firefox. Sometimes you will even get an extra 3.14159/2% off Amazon books, cds, dvds and products.

You can find more on the Amazon A9 Yellow Pages on the A9 site here or read more on CNET or the Wall Street Journal. Or just do a Google News or Google Web search on A9 Yellow Pages.

Peace - Tim

Posted In Online Yellow Pages

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Hi Friends,

Welcome to Justia's Legal SEO Blog. On this blog we will comment on the Internet and legal marketing industries, as well as introduce new Justia features and services.

We would like to thank Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog for helping us set up our own Marketing Blog.

Have a great day!

Peace,

Tim

Posted In Google , Justia News , Lawyer Directories , MSN Search , Offline Legal Marketing , Online Yellow Pages , Search Engine Marketing , Search Engine Optimization , Web Directories , Web Site Design , Yahoo! Search

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