Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal ran an article pointing out how Google is increasingly favoring its own properties, in search results over natural results to outside sites which previously commanded the top spots. This practice is especially noticeable with Google Places and local results, but there are other examples as well from product and mortgage search to health search. We’ve seen these spats before, particularly between Google and Yelp. Citysearch and Tripadvisor are also taking a traffic hit, it seems. Google responded yesterday with a post on its public policy blog titled “Local Search: It’s all about the best answers for users.”
Yeah, right. Don’t kid yourself. It’s all about what is best for Google. How else do you explain the preponderance of Google Places listings in local search results for queries such as “NY Chiropractor” (see screenshot) or “NYC spa”? In each case the top 7 links after the paid ads are businesses which just happen to have a Google Places page. → Read More
We’ve just gotten word that local online guide Citysearch has just laid off part of its editorial department in an continuing effort to reposition itself. The Citysearch business unit of IAC recently rebranded itself as CityGrid Media, which includes the Citysearch listings service, the CityGrid ad network, Urbanspoon and InsiderPages.
Kara Nortman, Senior Vice President of Publishing for CityGrid Media, tells TechCrunch that layoffs are an outgrowth of the philosophical restructuring of the group’s editorial component, “As part of our evolution to CityGrid, we’re moving to a more automated experience on Citysearch, migrating from full time staff into freelance staff.” → Read More
Ever since the launch of his CityGrid local advertising network at the beginning of the year, Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti has been putting most of his efforts into building out CityGrid as the largest network of local advertisers and local apps. Citysearch is now simply a flagship publisher on the CityGrid network. To reflect this shift in focus, the Citysearch business unit of IAC (which includes CityGrid, Citysearch, Urbanspoon, and Insider Pages) is changing its name to CityGrid Media
All of the local listings in Citysearch are available through CityGrid’s APIs so that anyone creating a mobile app or local Website can grab business listings, addresses, phone numbers, photos, reviews, and more and build their own apps around them. CityGrid also matches local advertisers with these local publishers. → Read More
Urbanspoon plans to continue its assault on OpenTable, and its weapon of choice is going to be the iPad. I am not talking about Urbanspoon’s slick iPad app which is already out and is aimed at consumers. I am talking about the RezBook, which is part of Urbanspoon Rez and is aimed at restaurant owners.
When it comes out in June, RezBook will be a full reservation system. Instead of writing down reservations in a paper book, restaurant owners will be able to enter them directly into the iPad, see bookings by time and by table. With a $500 iPad and RezBook, any restaurant will be able to afford a computerized reservation system. It won’t be free. RezBook will charge $1 per reservation, plus a low monthly fee. It will be much cheaper than a dedicated reservation system, and slightly cheaper than OpenTable, which is the company Urbanspoon is really going after. → Read More
Social recruiting is all the rage right now when it comes to finding new employees to hire. Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti recently told me about a simple but effective way his company is using Facebook ads to hire people. Facebook ads are highly targetable. Citysearch puts up an ad with a picture of the hiring manager and shows those ads only to that manager’s Facebook friends. For instance, the image of the ad at right is the one seen by friends of Citysearch senior VP Kara Nortman, who is introducing social features such as business Tweets into Citysearch.
Since each ad can be “liked,” and thus shared across the social network via the news feed, the ads become implicit referrals. If you know Kara and you see the ad, whether or not you are looking for a job, you might feel inclined to like it and share it with your friends. Or maybe you are looking for a job and since you know Kara or at least are connected to her on Facebook, you feel like you’ve got an in. The ads seem to be working. Kara’s inbox was flooded after the ad ran. → Read More
IAC’s Citysearch has brought on a new technology chief Christophe Louvion, to its executive team. Louvion will hold the role of Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Core Products.
Louvion most recently served as chief technology officer for online ad sales company Gorilla Nation Media. Prior to that, he held positions with BizRate.com and Shopzilla. In his new role, Louvion will be responsible for CityGrid’s ad and content engine, in addition to Citysearch’s search and data platform. → Read More
There’s no denying it. People love to shake their iPhones. It’s almost as if they want to see how much they can shake it before it breaks. But shaking it is half the fun, especially when apps take advantage of the built-in accelerometer to turn shaking into a feature. One of the earliest apps to make shaking a central element of its interface was Urbanspoon, the restaurant recommender. You shake the slot-machine inspired app to find nearby restaurants.
Since launching in the summer of 2008, Urbanspoon’s iPhone app has been shaken more than half a billion times. The app has been installed more than 9 million times, and continues to be popular (currently it is the No. 5 most popular free app in the Travel category, right after Yelp). → Read More
One of the most detailed 3-D mapping apps on the iPhone is UpNext, which lets you click on 3-D buildings and see a list of the businesses and offices inside. Up until now, however, it only covered New York City.
A new update adds three new cities: Boston, Washington, D.C., and Austin (just in time for SXSW, of course). The Austin map won’t be available until later tonight, where it will appear in the app’s city selection screen. UpNext lets you zoom around the city in a very Google Earth-like fashion, search for restaurants, bars, and stores. → Read More
Over the weekend, Citysearch pushed out an update to its iPhone app with a much smoother user interface, better local search, and maps are now the default view. I am happy to report that it no longer looks exactly like Yelp’s iPhone app. The improvements should help it close the gap (Yelp is currently the No. 4 free Travel app, while Citysearch is No. 36). In fact, it now does some things Yelp’s app cannot do, the most important of which is that Twitter is baked into it in a very smart way.
Just like on Citysearch’s website, an increasing number of the local listings are associated with what people are saying about those restaurants, bars, and stores on Twitter. In addition to Citysearch user reviews, you can also see recent Tweets about the listings. And the app acts as a limited Twitter client in that you can Tweet out a short review from each profile page. The app prompts you to sign into your Twitter account and autofills a tweet with a link to the Citysearch page of that business. It is still a work in progress though. Right now the Tweets are filled in with an @citysearch handle and thus don’t show up on the Citysearch’s page for that business. By the next update that will change to the @handle of the business, and it the Tweets will start showing up on the Website as well. → Read More
Twitter is becoming a serious marketing vehicle for local businesses. Everyone from your local baker to your favorite restaurant is getting on Twitter to talk to customers and draw in new ones. Just last weekend when I was driving to Vermont with my family, I sent out a Tweet asking for a good place to eat lunch. I got more than five responses, including one from a local innkeeper couple recommending two spots in town (not owned by them). That was in Brattleboro, Vermont.
But that was so random. How do you even find out which of your favorite local businesses have Twitter accounts or what their Twitter handles are? Well, CitySearch is doing it for you. The local business guide is starting to build out a definitive directory of Twitter accounts and Tweets about local restaurants, hotels, spas and stores. It is starting small, with about 5,000 business listings currently tied to their Twitter accounts (which businesses can add themselves when they claim their CitySearch page), but its aim is to add Tweets by and about any of the 15 million businesses in its listings. → Read More
The momentum around local online advertising is growing, especially with the expansion of the Web to mobile devices and flowering of Geo-mobile apps which need a way to make money. Today, Citysearch is throwing its hat into the local advertising ring with the launch of CityGrid, a set of APIs which makes all of Citysearch’s local listings content and advertising available to other Websites and mobile apps. The APIs include more than 15 million local business listings, 3 million user reviews, and access to 500,000 local advertisers looking to reach people near their places of business.
I sat down with Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti at IAC headquarters in Manhattan to get an overview of CityGrid (watch the video interview above). Citysearch itself is a 12-year-old site which Herratti has been updating, but it is not really growing much anymore and it is feeling considerable competitive pressure from Yelp and, even more so, from Google Local.
To counter that pressure, Citysearch already distributes its local listings content to about 100 sites and mobile apps with a collective reach of 100 million people (about a quarter of that is Citysearch.com). “I thought what if I took all the tools that we put together to build Citysearch and put it on a platter, an API and web services layer,” says Herratti. Specifically, he is referring to all the descriptions of local businesses, the reviews, photos, videos, hours of operation, offers, menus, metered phone numbers, merchant messages, and more. “What if I open that up to publishers big and small?” he asks. “I let them take it and enhance their experience, and get more pageviews.” → Read More
Hyperlocal business directory MerchantCircle has been steadily growing as an online network and business directory for merchants in smaller towns to advertise to consumers. MerchantCircle has long targeted its site’s features towards merchants versus catering towards the consumer, as sites like Yelp and CitySearch do. Today, the network has hit a milestone by signing up its one millionth merchant. Not too shabby for the business directory, considering there are an estimated 15 million local merchants in the U.S. today.
MerchantCircle provides small businesses with a web page listing, blogging and email newsletter application, and a local business social network that focuses on connecting local businesses with each other. Since launching in 2007, the startup has gained traction in small towns where the larger sites don’t have reach. For example, 50 percent of local businesses in Wasilla, Alaska are on MerchantCircle and actively engage with the site. MerchantCircle has also added features to make the site attractive with consumers, recently launching a question feature that allows consumers to enter a question to merchants about any topic on the platform. → Read More
Say what you will about the quality of the reviews on Yelp or the lengths it will go to get verboten features into its iPhone app, it has made the jump from Web 2.0 darling to a mainstream service. Over the past year, Yelp has nearly doubled its U.S. audience, while incumbent CitySearch has remained flat. In July, Yelp had 8.6 million unique U.S. visitors, up 80 percent from a year ago. Citysearch, on the other hand, literally had zero growth, staying at 15.4 million uniques, although it bottomed at 13 million in April and has come back up since then (comScore).
Yelp also has the No. 1 travel app on the iPhone (it is No. 26 overall). Whereas Citysearch’s similar iPhone app is not even in the top 20 travel apps.
Yelp’s pageviews and average time spent per user on the site are also up 150 percent and 22 percent, respectively. In fact, the 3.3 average minutes per visitor on Yelp is above Citysearch’s 2.3 minute average. But comScore shows a steep drop in both pageviews and average time spent starting in May, with a leveling off in July. Citysearch experienced similar drops. (See charts below). → Read More
It may be in the process of hiring a new CEO, but the MySpace machine keeps on rolling. Last month we got our first look at MySpace Local, the joint project between Citysearch and MySpace that combines the popular social network with Citysearch’s extensive database of business listings. The new property has quietly launched the public, and you can check it out here.
While MySpace is relying on Citysearch’s massive database of business listings (which includes hours, addresses, photos, menus, and videos), it’s starting from scratch on the review side of things. That might have handicapped a smaller site, but given MySpace’s audience, it shouldn’t take too long for the site to get populated: since it went live seven days ago, MySpace users have already written over 60,000 reviews. → Read More
Yelp’s version 2.0 of its iPhone app has officially hit Apple’s App store. We reported on Yelp’s focus on the mobile space and its importance here.
As we wrote recently, the new app gives consumers even more ease in automatically reviewing businesses via their iPhone and enhances its existing GPS capabilities. The updated version of the app now lets Yelpers write reviews directly from their iPhone through a Twitter-like “Quick Tips” feature that allows users to create 140 character tips. This was sorely lacking in the original version. The tips will be accessible on the iPhone app and the site itself (if popular) and will also be shown in a feed using GPS capabilities when users search businesses. → Read More
Local review sites like Yelp have irrevocably changed the way consumers find businesses in a particular area, and truly given power to the consumer in finding the best place to eat a meal, grab a drink, etc. And the potential of putting local reviews and listings on mobile devices is immense. Yelp’s existing iPhone app is less than a year old and it already accounts for 5% of Yelp’s overall traffic, which adds up to be around roughly 1 million monthly visitors.
In the next few days, Yelp will be launching a new version of its popular iPhone app which we’ve reviewed. The new app gives consumers even more ease in automatically reviewing businesses via their iPhone and enhances its exiting GPS capabilities. The updated version of the app now lets Yelpers write review directly from their iPhone through a Twitter-like “Quick Tips” feature that allows users to create 140 character tips. This was sorely lacking in the original version. The tips will be accessible on the iPhone app and the site itself (if popular) and will also be shown in a feed using GPS capabilities when users search businesses. Like before, the app leverages GPS in the iPhone to list reviews, tips, and photos written and taken around a users location. The app will also feature a Friend Feed feature that will pull in your friends activities. Users can also draft a full review of a restaurant, bar or business from their iPhone and then post it later to Yelp.com. Yelp is also upgrading the app to become more compatible in Canada and the UK. → Read More
MySpace and Citysearch are jointly announcing a new MySpace property this morning called MySpace Local. The site combines Citysearch business listings (including address, photos, menus, videos, maps and hours of location) from a thousand cities with the MySpace community. The site is launching into private beta this week, with a general U.S. launch next month.
The new site will eventually include listing information for all Citysearch businesses via small business listing pages. To start just restaurants, bars and “nightlife” listings are included. Users can rate and review businesses, which is shared via the MySpace activity feed.
Don’t just skip over that last sentence. This is good stuff – users will be able to see the restaurants, bars and other businesses that their friends are interested in, and how they rated those businesses. When you first visit MySpace Local, the first thing you see are reviews from friends.
Listings are grouped into city hubs for all major U.S. cities and include new local search functionality. And eventually, MySpace says, users will be able to make reservations and upload their own photos and videos. Features will also be built into MySpace mobile products. → Read More
Citysearch now has an iPhone app. It looks a lot like Yelp’s iPhone app, which came out two months ago looks and is currently the third most popular travel app (after Urbanspoon and Google Earth). Both tap into the iPhone’s GPS to let you find nearby restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels, and stores. Both let you rate and review the places you visit.
Both even share the exact same navigation buttons on the bottom: Nearby, Search, and Bookmarks. Only the first button on Citysearch is different. It shows Featured editorial content from Citysearch editors for the city you are in. Yelp opted for a Recent button instead, which Citysearch places on its Bookmarks page.
The two apps are really similar in look and feel (see screenshots above), but under the hood they are different because they are pulling from different databases. → Read More
Citysearch is finally coming around to replacing its creaking site design with something a little more contemporary. Today, it is launching in a major rethink of its entire site in beta that drills deeper into neighborhoods, uses Facebook Connect as an optional identity system, and lets users vote reviews up and down. The beta will quickly become the default Citysearch experience. During a demo at IAC headquarters yesterday, Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti told me:
We’ve been working on it for 10 months and built everything from ground up. In Q1 we will be turning off every system that operates Citysearch today, and running everything in the new environment.
Citysearch’s engineers stripped out the decade-old proprietary code that runs Citysearch and replaced it with open-source code. By replacing what’s under the hood, they were freed up to make some major improvements that are immediately apparent. The main changes are: → Read More
Los Angeles based law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP has filed a class action lawsuit against Citysearch, accusing it of promoting click fraud. The suit was filed on behalf of plaintiff Tom Lambotte, who has charged that Citysearch has failed to recognize or reimburse him for the clickfraud that took place on an ad he placed between December 11 and 31, 2007. The suit also applies to anyone who has used the click-based Citysearch ad program. The lawsuit says that Citysearch promotes click fraud by paying its salespeople a commission based on the number of clicks their customers’ ads generate. It also states the Citysearch fails to take any steps to prevent click fraud, and does nothing to help victims. The plaintiff’s claim is as follows: “Lambotte’s Citysearch ad received a total of 7 clicks (plus two more that he generated) between December 11 and 25, 2007. On December 26 he received a response from Citysearch to his December 22 request to cancel his ad. Suddenly, his ad began receiving 12 to 16 clicks a day, for a total of 69 clicks between December 26 and December 31, when his ad was finally canceled. He received in these five days 10 times as many clicks as he had received in the previous two weeks. Despite this, Citysearch refused his repeated requests to reverse these charges.” Basically there was an increase from less than one click per day to around 10 per day. The increase is significant percentage-wise, but the click rate was very low to begin with – any increase would represent a huge gain. On the other hand, if the plaintiff can identify a trend of neglect in Citysearch’s actions, then the class action suit could have some merit. Kabateck Brown Kellner recently won multi-million dollar settlements involving advertisements on Google and Yahoo, and has recently filed a class-action lawsuit against Google’s AdWords program. With that kind of history it’s clear that the firm knows what it’s doing, but the case might be perceived as just another cash grab. CrunchBase Information Citysearch Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
