Marketing Pilgrim

Did you know that WhitePages.com regularly ranks among the Top 50 web sites in the US for traffic? I didn’t but I guess that just shows that I don’t need to find many phone numbers. That kind of traffic though is a valuable asset and WhitePages.com is looking to take advantage of the push in local business information that has been led by Google’s Place Pages and other specific local business directories.

paidContent.org tells us more

WhitePages.com has given visitors the option to search for local businesses for almost a decade, although it has historically sent those queries to third-party sites. Starting Thursday, it’s taking those listings in-house and adding several features, including a “store locator,” which lets people find branches of national chains in their area.

While everyone is trying to figure out just how big mobile commerce will get, eBay is just out doing something about it. That’s kind of refreshing in this day and age of hype replacing action. So what has lit the mobile fire under eBay? Simple market principles like survival and competition (you remember those, right?). Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that this sector of eBay’s business is growing and they are doing what they can to keep it that way.

After losing ground to Amazon.com (AMZN) for years in online retailing, eBay has emerged as a leader in a new market: mobile commerce. As consumers increasingly shop with their BlackBerrys, iPhones, and handsets powered by Google’s (GOOG) Android software, such as the Motorola (MOT) Droid, eBay has become the top mobile retailer in the U.S., say analysts.

YouTube has chalked one up for the distribution channel of videos. The Google Blog says it best so I’m going to let them say it:

Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.

The key to this entire argument and result is that YouTube worked cooperatively. They didn’t pirate anything, per se. Copyrighted material that was on YouTube was taken down as pointed out by the Judge in the case. The Washington Post reports

From time to time I address the current situation of the SMB (small and medium business) as it relates to Internet marketing as a whole. It’s an interesting study because while the vast majority of the companies in the US fall into this category (some estimates place it as high as 95%) they are the least understood of all businesses as it relates to Internet marketing.

An article from eMarketer (hat tip to Mike Moran) takes a look at just how this group is trying to catch up with big business tactics as it relates to their use of e-mail and social media to help their businesses grow. From the looks of things there may be some traction this year but it has been slow in coming.

Bing’s announcements annoy me. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

Why do they annoy me?

Because if something can be said in 50 words, Bing will figure out how to say it in 5000. A common theme among Bing’s announcements is too much explanation of the features they’re rolling it. It’s like they’re trying to convince us that we’ll like the features. Look, we’ll either like them or not, so just tell us what they are!

So, I’ve decided to cut and past Bing’s latest announcement and highlight the actual news….all in good fun, of course!

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There are three ways to look at this announcement:

“Yahoo started its week with layoffs in Sunnyvale,” an employee tells us. “Seems to be affecting the editorial team that does search relevance testing.”

1. Yahoo is preparing for Bing. You don’t need search relevance teams when you’re handing over your search results to Microsoft.
2. Yahoo is admitting that their search results have never been that relevant and so why even have an editorial team.
3. Yahoo’s just as tired of crappy results as we are, and is hiring better people.

Personally, I like Option 2, but according to an official statement from Yahoo, Option 3 might be closer to the truth: