Image, Local and Product Search Convergence It seems like an acceleration is happening in search. Google has been rolling out many of its AI/ML-driven gains in visual search and

Google, Amazon Caught 'Astroturfing' Most of big tech companies use small businesses (SMBs) as a sword or a shield in advocating for or against regulations or public policies.

US Antitrust Law Closer to Passing Last week the European Parliament completed work [https://www.nearmedia.co/google-dr-booking-eu-gatekeeper-smackdown-1-fraud-claim/] on its Digital Markets Act. The legislation targets major US tech "

Streaming's Big Oscar Win Beyond "the slap" – actor Will Smith publicly smacked presenter Chris Rock on stage after Smith took umbrage at Rock's joke

Google's New 'Make a Dr. Appointment' Google's evolving mission is not simply to organize and present information but to make it actionable and drive

Take our 5-minute monetization survey. We'll love you for it. Start Survey [https://forms.gle/bEkdSQJZAnx9ESXS7] Snippets Not on Local Pack SERPs Moz has come out with a

Fresh: Amazon Taking Ads into Stores Last year we found out that Amazon's ad business is worth $31 billion [https://www.nearmedia.co/amazons-31b-ads-biz-review-theater-metas-downturn/]. For context, that'

Snap Takes Location-AR Global Snapchat is opening up AR experiences tied to places. In 2019, the company introduced Landmarkers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNs9kdSAOCA], enabling users to tie

Amazon Now Controls Nearly 60% of E-commerce Analysts have estimated Amazon's US e-commerce share at between [https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-clobbers-competition-us-retail-ecommerce-sales-2021] 40% and 44% of total online

Google: 'Smaller Stores' vs. 'Nearby' I don't use Google Shopping very often. I therefore missed the addition of a "smaller stores" filter.

Instacart Launches in-Store Navigation Almost a decade ago, when Apple's iBeacon was a shiny new object, there was considerable anticipation of "search to shelf" experiences with

Suit: Google 'Deceived' Consumers with Online Ordering As part of the effort to make search more transactional, Google added an "order online" button in the GBP

Local Inventory Can Beat Amazon I've argued local inventory (online) can help divert consumers away from Amazon. But it's not inventory alone; it's inventory

Amazon Kills Bookstores for Grocery Biz Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy has made the decision [https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/exclusive-amazon-close-all-its-physical-bookstores-4-star-shops-2022-03-02/] to shutter most of the company'

Uber Hooks Up with Yelp for 'Explore' Uber launched a new feature [https://www.uber.com/newsroom/uber-explore/] in its flagship app that relies heavily on Yelp content

Ukraine: Tech in the Crossfire A major front in the war for Ukraine is online. Tech companies, especially social media, are being forced to choose sides. All the major US

Ukraine and Perpetual Cyberwar The tragedy of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is still unfolding. Roughly 50,000 people have fled the country with more to follow. Russia will

Fake Reviews: Bribing Yelp Elites, Amazon Sues We've previously written about review fraud [https://www.nearmedia.co/meh-ta-moment-fake-reviews-gmb-a-big-lead-driver/] and the platforms' inconsistent takedown efforts. Yelp is probably

Trust: Consumers' Top CX Priority Most companies think they're doing a better job of delivering positive customer experiences (CX) than they actually are, according to the new

Google Follows Apple Privacy Lead on Android Google is brining its "privacy sandbox" to Android devices and, in the process, will effectively get rid of its IDFA-like advertising

Super Bowl Ads: But Are They Worth It? Last year a 30 second Super Bowl spot cost $5.5 million. This year it was up to $6.5 million (or

Yelp: 60% of Revenue from 10% of Views Yelp reported [https://www.yelp-ir.com/] Q4 and full year 2021 revenues this week, beating analyst estimates. Growth has come despite a

Apple Taps into Pay Apple just introduced [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/apple-unveils-contactless-payments-via-tap-to-pay-on-iphone/] a way to turn the iPhone into a point-of-sale (POS) terminal for merchants. Called Tap

Angi Hopes Walmart Delivers Cheaper Acquisition Seeking to further diversify its customer acquisition strategy, Angi (formerly Angie's List) partnered with Walmart. The deal, announced [https://ir.angi.com/

Take Our Reader Survey [https://www.nearmedia.co/please-take-our-survey/] Facebook's Q4 'Wipeout': Dip or Beginning of the End? This week Meta reported [https://investor.fb.com/

Google Delivers Another Huge Q: $75B Google once again beat analyst expectations [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/01/alphabet-googl-q4-2021-earnings.html] (.pdf [https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q4_alphabet_

Spotify: Revenue vs. 'Responsibility' Controversial podcaster Joe Rogan has almost 4x the audience [https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/1478059547688374281] of right-wing pundit and vaccine disinformation purveyor Tucker Carlson.

Yelp: Local Business Back to Normal – Almost US GDP increased at 6.9% percent in Q4, much better than expected. Yet inflation concerns have overshadowed the strong performance of the

Review Gating Is Dead Review gating is the practice of routing satisfied and dissatisfied customers down different pathways. The happy customer is asked to write a review, the grumpy customer

Is Promoting Competition the Enemy of CX? The anti-tech lawsuits [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/24/google-sued-by-4-attorneys-general-over-location-tracking.html?] and legislation [https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2992/text]

Amazon Style: The Future of the Store As you've heard, Amazon is opening a new retail store in LA [https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-reimagines-in-store-shopping-with-amazon-style] : [Amazon] Style.

PlaceIQ Bought by PE-Backed Precisely Precisely, a company that calls itself "a global leader in data integrity software," has acquired [https://www.placeiq.com/2022/01/a-big-milestone-on-the-placeiq-journey/] the

Shopify: Omnichannel for the Win Shopify is out with another interesting (and massive) report, "The Future of Commerce in 2022 [https://www.shopify.com/research/future-of-commerce]." It'

DDG Crosses 1B Searches, Neeva Sets Pricing DuckDuckGo, which has seen meaningful growth over the past few years, said it has now exceeded 1 billion queries [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic]

Metasuit: FTC Lives to Fight Another Day When the FTC brought its antitrust suit against Facebook/Meta in June of last year, the court dismissed it [https://www.nearmedia.co/

Yes, the iPhone Is 15 Yesterday the iPhone officially had its 15th birthday. Does that make you feel old? In 2007, when it was introduced, Steve Jobs called it a

Privacy Driving DuckDuckGo and Brave Growth For the longest time it seemed like search engines and browsers built around privacy would have almost no impact, unable to wrest meaningful share

Why Google Lost the Product Search Battle For at least five years consumer surveys have repeatedly told us that Amazon dominates product search. Different surveys have different numbers: the range

Holiday Spending Grows, E-commerce 21% Despite a resurgent pandemic, US consumers still shopped a lot in the run up to Xmas. According to data [ https://www.mastercard.com/news/press/

Thank you for joining us for the first year of Near Media. Despite it being a hard year, we relished the opportunity to appear in your inbox and hope that

Google's Local Algo Update Fallout Google recently confirmed [https://twitter.com/googlesearchc/status/1471546117125029889] that it completed a local algorithm update, between November 30 and December 8. Many

Google Local Guides: More Volume, Shorter Reviews A new SOCi analysis [https://streetfightmag.com/2021/12/15/soci-study-finds-62-of-google-reviews-are-written-by-local-guides/] of nearly 170 million Google reviews across 1.1 million business locations

Bleak Milestone: 800K Dead from COVID Later this week the US will hit 50M cases and 800,000 dead from COVID, likely an undercount of the real mortality figure. The

Google's Local Pack Refresh During a previous Near Memo [https://www.nearmedia.co/squarespaces-everything-to-sell-anything-google-vs-lowe-and-has-the-local-pack-outlived-its-usefulness/] we discussed how Google's local results were in need of an upgrade.

Yelp: 'Our Review Approach Is Best' Yelp released the results of an October consumer survey [https://blog.yelp.com/news/survey-finds-what-makes-reviews-trustworthy-consumers-want-more-than-ratings/] about reviews and consumer trust. Yelp'

Will Smart Glasses Replace the iPhone? Apple has an entire building and hundreds of employees dedicated to its forthcoming mixed-reality glasses. The expectation is that the first of perhaps multiple

Xooglers Sue Google for Abandoning 'Don't Be Evil' Google removed the phrase "Don't Be Evil [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_

Cyber Monday Comes Up a Bit Short As with Black Friday, Cyber Monday's spending disappointed. Last year US consumers spent $10.8 billion on Cyber Monday. However this

Black Friday: Not Quite As Black Black Friday didn't quite deliver. With fewer in-store discounts, foot traffic was nearly 30% lower than 2019 [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/

Macy's: Digital Commerce Better with Stores More than a decade ago I ran into Euclid Analytics [https://searchengineland.com/euclid-offers-google-analytics-for-the-real-world-99982] ' founder Brent Franson on a flight from

Survey: 'At Least' Half of Search Is Local For years, I've been trying to get an accurate sense of what percentage of Google search volume is

Outlook: Small SMB Optimism Declines Earlier this year when the economy was on a tear, there were millions of jobs unfilled, especially among local businesses. Now the economic vigor may

Who's Buying More Online? Affluent Consumers As we head into the holiday shopping season in earnest, there's lots of speculation about the mix of online and

Amazon Alexa Is 7 Years Old On the heels of the failed Fire Phone, Amazon released the first generation Echo (feat. Alexa) in November 2014 [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/

Will You Use You.com? On the heels of Neeva [https://neeva.com/], another search engine has launched: You.com [http://you.com/]. It appeared in public beta on Tuesday

FTC's Emerging Review Fraud Strategy In October, the FTC notified major US brands [https://www.nearmedia.co/fake-reviews-crackdown-amazons-toyland-shoppers-dont-care-about-voice-search/] that "misleading use of endorsements could lead to major

GMB to GBP: So What? I know that you already saw: Google "rebranded" Google My Business as Google Business Profile [https://support.google.com/business/thread/133876833/introducing-new-updates-to-business-profile?

Amazon's Lock on E-commerce Amazon dominates [https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecommerce-though-its-market-share-varies-by-category] e-commerce. And it appears there's nothing on the horizon that will change that. A

Going Back into Stores Most holiday shopping surveys say a version of the same thing: consumers plan to shop online but stores remain important to their overall experience. This hybrid/

It's Meta Time or the End of Days We're late to the meta-party. I'm sure you've read 20 articles and 10x more

Q3 Impact of Apple Privacy Rules 'Modest' Snap said it was hurt [https://www.nearmedia.co/amazon-goes-bopis-isp-surveillance-apple-bites-snap/]. But Twitter reported the revenue impact was "lower than expected

AGs: Google's AMP a Scheme to Drive Revenue The second amended antitrust complaint against Google (.pdf [https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.

Amazon Goes BOPIS with 'Local Selling' One of Google's strategies against Amazon is showing online and local product inventory in SERPs. Traditional retailers have sought to

Yelp: 85% of Business Locations Have Re-Opened Though the Delta variant is still here, local economies are nearly back to normal, according to Yelp's Q3 economic impact report

Privacy Rules Juice Apple Search Revenue Is it just a coincidence? According to a Financial Times analysis [https://twitter.com/PatrickMcGee_/status/1449608262492459011], since the introduction of iOS 14.5,

FTC Begins Fake Review Crackdown Earlier this week, the FTC notified [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2021/10/latest-ftc-notice-penalty-offenses-tells-700-national] "more than 700 businesses [https://www.ftc.gov/

Yelp's New Services for Home Services Last month, Yelp integrated its restaurant tools into a "Guest Manager" SaaS suite [https://www.nearmedia.co/google-local-inventory-astro/]. Now it&

Some SMBs Questioning Dependance on Social Millions of small businesses (SMBs) consider social media – Facebook and Instagram in particular – their top marketing channel. But following two recent outages and a

Welcome: If Google and Instagram Got Together... There's a new local search app [https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/07/welcome-debuts-a-smarter-city-guide-app-on-ios-backed-by-3-5m-led-by-accel/] in town, called Welcome (iOS only [https://apps.

Haugen: The Algorithm Is the Evil It's only a couple of days since former Facebook PM Frances Haugen appeared on 60 Minutes [https://www.nearmedia.co/fb/]. (You&

Facebook Whistleblower: 'Profits over People' You probably saw or read about the CBS 60 Minutes "Facebook Whistleblower" segment [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-misinformation-public-60-minutes-2021-10-03/] last night.

Marketers: Reputation Management Trumps Ads According to a new survey of multi-location marketers, "managing online reputation is now more important than advertising": 57% to 43%. The survey, which

Google's Refocused Lens and 'In-Stock' Filter Google is (re)introducing two shopping tools that have been around for awhile: Google Lens and local inventory. Google Lens

Local Restaurants on Front Lines of Vax Wars More than 180 million Americans have been fully vaccinated [https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total] and more than 210 million have

Apple's Opt-In Ad Rules Hurt Facebook There are many cynics [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/24/apples-ios-changes-hurt-facebooks-ad-business.html] who believe Apple's opt-in tracking rules [https:

Apple Maps Has Finally Arrived After a botched original launch and years of playing catch-up to Google Maps, Apple Maps has finally become truly competitive. There are a wide range

LSAs and Lawyers: Heading for Divorce? While nobody knows how much Google is making on Local Services Ads (LSAs), they're popular and growing. LSAs were introduced for the

What's My Business: WhatsApp's 'Yellow Pages' Earlier this week we wrote about Twitter's relatively new "About Module [https://www.nearmedia.co/

Twitter's 'About Module' for Local Businesses In April Twitter launched [https://twitter.com/TwitterBusiness/status/1384968745156755458] "Professional Profiles." They offer a verified and expanded

Shopify CAC, Marketing Benchmarks for SMBs Marketers are always looking for good benchmarking data. Shopify offers some [https://www.shopify.com/blog/customer-acquisition-cost] (based on a survey) that reflect SMB

Chase Buying Zagat and The Infatuation Banking giant JPMorgan Chase said [https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/jpmorgan-chase-acquire-leading-restaurant-171500485.html#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%2C%20September%2009%2C%202021,recommendations%20for%20where%

News Pubs Liable for Random Facebook Comments In a defamation case that may have broad implications, the Australian High Court ruled [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/08/high-court-rules-australian-media-companies-are-liable-for-defamatory-comments-posted-on-their-facebook-pages?

Report: Intuit to Buy Mailchimp for $10B Bloomberg reported [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-01/intuit-said-in-talks-to-buy-mailchimp-for-more-than-10-billion] this week that Intuit, maker of tax and accounting software, is seeking to

SMB Survey: 55% Not Buying Digital Ads A new survey [https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/366360/small-businesses-increasing-digital-ad-spend-not.html] of 800 SMBs by social content platform Ripl [https://www.ripl.

Survey: Annual 'SMB' Ad Budgets $109K Borrell Associates published its annual local advertiser survey [http://www.insideradio.com/free/borrell-survey-points-to-strengthening-ad-market-radio-in-good-position-to-benefit-from-gains/article_ce63ca88-0631-11ec-ace2-df5cc2e20782.html] . Conducted in Q2, the sample

WTF: Google Paying $15B for iPhone Default Search There have been various informed estimates over the years about how much Google is paying Apple to be the Safari browser'

GoLocal: Walmart's Last-Mile Delivery Service Walmart is doing something that would have been unthinkable in a pre-Amazon world: offering its delivery infrastructure to other retailers. Announced earlier this

Study: Most Search Queries Are 'Mid-Funnel' Marketers discuss the "purchase funnel" all the time without really knowing what it means for their actual customer's

Contrarian Move: Amazon Plans Department Stores At a time when e-commerce is driving retail growth [https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/quarterly-online-sales/?], Amazon is planning more physical stores. The Wall Street

'Historic Moment': Amazon Passes Walmart Walmart reported [https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2021/08/17/walmart-releases-q2-fy22-earnings] quarterly earnings yesterday. The world's largest traditional retailer said that

Apple Boosting Search with iOS 15 Apple has been slowly and incrementally improving its Spotlight Search feature on the iPhone over time. With iOS 15,  there are new upgrades and

'Vaxports' Coming to an SMB Near You As the seriousness of the Delta Variant sinks in, consumers are becoming more depressed [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/

Google Picking Winners and Losers in Food Delivery Google is beset by antitrust critics on all sides. In its defense Google often argues its decisions are for the benefit of

Climate Crisis: No More BAU You've probably read about [https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/09/world/ipcc-climate-key-takeaways/index.html] a massive new UN report [https://www.ipcc.

Yelp Surprise Profit, Vaccination Attributes Yelp announced [https://www.yelp-ir.com/news-releases/news-release-details/2021/Yelp-Reports-Second-Quarter-2021-Financial-Results/] a surprise Q2 profit and 52% YoY revenue growth this week. The company saw gains

Local and Organic Drive 73% of Page Views If you didn't already know, the two most effective digital channels are organic SEO and local (Google Local Pack), according

The (New) Ethics of Targeting and Tracking For 20+ years, digital marketers essentially captured as much data as they could about consumer behavior and identities, as quietly as possible – so

Snap Personalizes Map with 'My Places' It's "places week." On Wednesday Apple relaunched its Maps Connect listings portal, as Places on Maps [https://www.

Apple 'Places' Replaces Maps Connect Apple's self-service listings management portal Maps Connect, which launched in 2014 [https://searchengineland.com/apple-launches-maps-connect-self-service-local-listings-portal-206349] , is now "Places on Maps

Roofer Sues Over 1-Star Reviews, Gets Bombed File this in the "will they never learn" column. A couple renting a house in Vancouver, Washington engaged with a roofer,

Section 230 Bill Takes Aim at Facebook One of the first concrete acts of "Section 230 reform" is Senator Amy Klobuchar’s proposed Health Misinformation Act of 2021

Square Bank Should Scare Traditionals Square has expanded its banking capabilities [https://squareup.com/us/en/press/introducing-square-banking] and is now offering full-service banking for small business customers. Formally called

Olympics Race to Avoid Financial Disaster In an ominous sign for the 2021 Olympics, Toyota said it will not air TV commercials [https://apnews.com/article/sports-2020-tokyo-olympics-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-5eb0e254b9a0cac7ad57005677eebe66] during the games.

What's Really Going on with IDFA? There's a lot of conflicting information about Apple's AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) and the number of opt-ins. According to Flurry

Craigslist Revenue Off Almost 50% Since 2018 Haven't used Craigslist lately? You aren't alone. According to a report [https://aimgroup.com/2021/02/11/craigslist-traffic-revenue-fell-radically-in-2020/] from

Biden's Sweeping Competition Order Faces Challenges On Friday President Biden signed an expansive executive order [https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/07/09/executive-order-on-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/] "promoting competition

Regulating Google Play: Would It Matter? Earlier this week Attorneys general from 36 states and Washington DC filed an antitrust suit [https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/07/36-states-dc-sue-google-for-alleged-antitrust-violations-in-its-android-app-store-498622]

$4.3 billion: Nextdoor Finally Going Public Current CEO Sarah Friar replaced founding CEO Nirav Tolia in late 2018, roughly a decade after the company that became Nextdoor was founded

Location Intelligence Enters a Challenging New Phase Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley said he's "stepping back" from his current role [https://streetfightmag.com/2021/06/29/where-location-intelligence-stands-as-foursquare-founder-steps-back/

FTC Humiliated, Facebook Antitrust Case Dismissed Earlier today, a federal court judge dismissed [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/28/judge-dismisses-ftc-antitrust-complaint-against-facebook.html] state and FTC antitrust lawsuits against Facebook. Like

Google Gives Cookies a Temporary Reprieve Google said [https://blog.google/products/chrome/updated-timeline-privacy-sandbox-milestones/] this week that it's going to push back the Chrome deprecation of third party

E-commerce Review Fraud a $152B Problem Nearly 90% of global e-commerce spending (eMarketer: $4.3 trillion) is influenced by reviews. That means product reviews on Amazon and other marketplaces are

Amazon Prime Day Sales May Reach $11B Last year Amazon Prime Day generated almost $10.5 billion in sales. This year should beat that, although Prime Day won't

Google Building Search to Sale Local Experiences Google is making it easier [https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/show-what-your-business-offers/] for local business owners to input their content directly from SERPs and