I have been a Yelp fan for years, but as other online customer review platforms have gotten better at assisting business owners, Yelp has gotten worse – in fact, down right awful.

The concept is a good one; allow customers to review a business that they have visited by giving it both a description of their experience and a rating of one to five stars. Yelp has also gone out of its way to limit the number of fake reviews with its highly secretive review algorithm. The algorithm detects if users set up duplicate accounts, it recognizes when fake reviews are posted and often filters reviews from a business’ competitors. The folks at Yelp have spent a long time developing this algorithm and have performed a lot of testing to distinguish between a real review and a fake one.

As other review platforms such as Google Places, Kudzu and Angie’s List continue to upgrade their system, Yelp has made very little improvements. Indeed, their interface and search results are as full of holes today as they were years ago.

For example, their review filtering system lacks so much flexibility that businesses often have as many filtered reviews (customer reviews that are filtered from view because Yelp does not believe them to be legitimate) as visible reviews. It’s important to maintain the integrity of a review platform, but it’ frustrating to ask customers to review your business only to have those legitimate reviews hidden from view time after time.

When it comes to a lack of flexibility, Yelp’s advertising is as rigid as its review algorithm. Yelp sales Reps like to assert how Google is a place where consumers go to perform research and Yelp is where they go to purchase. This, they believe, gives them an edge over Google in promoting their banner ads. Yelp ads don’t compare to the flexibility of Google, however. In fact, they’re not even in the same ball park. Google offers in depth analytical data and gives an advertiser more options to manipulate an ad then they can ever use. Yelp does none of this. A Yelp ad is placed on a page completely at Yelp’s discretion, not the advertiser’s.

Probably the worst part of Yelp is its customer support, which is almost non-existent. If a business has an issue with their listing, there is no phone number or email which to report the issue. There is only a submission form with a drop down list of categories. If a consumer’s problem does not fit within one of those categories then the form does not get submitted. Yelp is clearly not interested in helping business owners who do not advertise with them.

What Yelp forgets is that businesses are relying more and more on customer reviews. But these are not just businesses. They are business owners – mostly small business owners. People. Yelp’s negligence and lack of respect for business owners reveals an ugly discontent for any improvement that does not lead to more advertising dollars.

Online customer review platforms allow consumers to hold businesses more accountable. With such accountability, however, comes responsibility on the part of the platform to provide accurate information and to not stand in the way of good businesses. Unfortunately for Yelp, this is an area for which they receive only one star.

Regarding the big Google changes I mentioned in my last post, we have yet to see any visibly significant front end changes in Google search results. On the back end, however, changes have been clear in some areas. These back end updates have caused wild drops and swings in search results for certain keywords, but no change at all for others. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to the swings and may be an attempt by Google to keep everyone on their toes.

One thing is for certain, Google continues to give personalization and social interaction a much larger role in search through the use of rich snippet mark up and author tags. If you don’t know what any of that means, here’s an explanation:

You may have noticed that personal images are now appearing directly in search results. If you search the term internet web marketing, for example, somewhere on that first page you’ll see my website with my mug shot next to the listing. This image is taken from my Google Plus page and can be set up for your website or blog as well.

Also in search results, we’re beginning to see customer reviews – complete with gold stars – along side the listing. This is similar to what you see next to Yelp or Citysearch listings as they appear in search.

It is very evident by the application of these features that Google is trying to give a more personal touch to search. This poses some good opportunities for you to stand out among your competitors in search and capture more consumers, even if your listing is not in the first position.

In the case of local listings, lets use air conditioning contractors in San Diego as an example,  Google shows the rating from both the website and Google Places, giving the listing a double whammy. What a great way to stand out from your competitors.

Not all web properties will be able to take advantage of these new features and Google is still testing their applications, which means it all may work for some websites and not at all for others. To learn more about rich snippet mark up and author tags, click on the links I’ve provided.

Why is digital marketing so important?

Simply put, digital marketing is the future of sales.  But I almost hate to use the word ‘future’ because if you haven’t yet noticed, the future is here. Nobody uses the phone book anymore; magazines and newspapers are going out of business; broadcast media is too expensive; cold calling is no longer effective and networking is just too slow. Companies are going online to find customers.  Why?  Because that’s where the shoppers are.

According to Google, 97% of consumers search online when researching a product or service. And they’re not all going to your website.  Many are going to Google Places.  A whole lot of them are checking online customer reviews in places like Yelp, Angie’s List and City search. They are tweeting about their experience.  They’re asking their friends in Facebook, Linked In and Google Plus for recommendations.  They’re checking for a nearby salon, café or other business on their mobile phones. They’re checking daily deals and holding on to the coupons you’ve provided to them in your blog or email blast.

Digital marketing is everywhere.  If your sales strategy does not have a digital marketing component to it, then how much business are you losing to your competitors?

A Digital Marketing Campaign that Drives Sales

So then, how can you use digital marketing to take your business to the top of your industry?  More importantly, how can you use all the digital marketing components together to create a winning strategy that will drive consumers to your business?

SEO: Your website is your base camp for your digital marketing campaign.  Among other things, you can build backlinks to your web properties to show popularity. This will help it rank high in search results, but you also want a website that is not only pleasing to the consumer, but one that provides them the information they need to purchase your product or service.

Online Direct-ories: Google Places is important because it is usually the first thing consumers see when they search for a local business on the Web. Google Places is an online business directory. You can optimize your listing to help influence consumer buying decisions. Directories are all over the Web.  Get your business listed in Yellow Pages, Superpages, Info Group, Yahoo Local and others.

Customer Reviews: Are huge for consumers. Everyone wants to know what your customers are saying. Our clients continually boast about how much business they’ve gotten because a consumer read one of their reviews online. Engage the consumer here and help influence their buying decision. Know how to respond to negative reviews to attract even more customers.

You can file this post under “relatively meaningless topics that impact my life how?” But sometimes things just stick in your craw and compel one to voice their opinion. This one goes out to all those who dabble with Google Places.

Search Google for most local businesses and you will see a map to the right of the page with these red, well, we will call them ‘things’ for now as they are the subject of this post. Running down the middle of the page there are seven local business listings labeled A through G. This is Google’s local business listings or Google Places. Each one of them comes with a profile that you can update. You can upload images, video, coupons and all sorts of good information to help the consumer choose your business over others. To the right of each listing there are more ‘things,’ but these are grey, unless one hoovers over one of them with the mouse curser, then it turns red like those in the map, but for the moment, none of that matters. What really matters in my space at the moment is what we call those ‘things.’

I have heard them called a number of things such as stick pins, labels, place pins, pin markers and the worst of all, red pin heads. Why do I immediately think of a vaguely disturbing clown when I hear the term red pin head?

Now, they kind of do resemble a stick pin, but as we know, Google loves to regularly surprise us with changes and updates to its interface. No sooner will we decide to call them stick pins, will Google change their look altogether to something resembling nothing remotely similar to a stick pin. So we need something a little more generic.

It turns out the best solution just happens to be the most practical, and in fact, the very name I’ve been giving them for years now. Won’t you join me in calling them Place Markers? Let’s put an end to the foolishness. No more red pin heads. No more map placement markers. I dream of the day that Google users across the world will speak with one voice when referring to the place markers in Google Maps. Indeed, such uniformity puts us all closer to happiness throughout the world. It begins with you, Google User. Today, it’s place markers. Tomorrow, world peace.

And by the way, in case you were wondering, the placement of the comma in the title to this post is correct syntax.  Benny Hill watchers will get the reference.

No.  Surprised? Mobile phone marketing certainly has some important advantages, but many online marketing consultants believe that it is “the next big thing.”  They claim that marketing on handheld devices will become so big, that it will change the way many entrepreneurs originate business.  They base these claims on the staggering numbers of handheld purchases throughout the world.  Indeed, three mobile phones are purchased for every computer and it is estimated that four out of five people in the world own some sort of handheld mobile device.  These kind of numbers pose some interesting marketing opportunities.

The problem, as I see it, lies in the method of promotion.  Mobile phone marketing gurus teach business owners to build lists of cell phone numbers.  They urge business owners to find customers and prospects to “opt-in” to their marketing campaign, thereby subjecting themselves to text message and recorded voice advertisements.  Texting or sending recorded voice messages is considered spam by cellular providers and will get the sender in a lot of trouble if caught.  Hence, marketers need to get permission with an “opt-in” procedure.  I’m not sure about you, but I cannot think of one reason why I would opt-in to anyone’s junk via text or recorded message.

We consider our phones sacred and personal.  Send a junk text to our phone and you’ve invaded our private space – and have probably created an angry customer.

The argument in favor of this method urges that people opt-in to email messages all the time in order to receive a gift or important information.  This is true, but our phones are different than email.  We consider our phones sacred and personal.  Send a junk text to our phone and you’ve invaded our private space – and have probably created an angry customer.

Where mobile phone marketing is important for business owners is in search.  Most of us have a Google or Yahoo application on our phones to search the Internet – perhaps even a Yelp application.  Here’s where business owners need to concentrate their marketing.  Being able to search for businesses on a handheld is like having the Yellow Pages in the palm of your hand.  Business owners should be sure that their websites are mobile phone compatible.  They should concentrate on coming up high in mobile search results, even consider an Adwords campaign specifically for mobile devices.

Indeed, consumers will be increasingly using their handheld devices as mini laptops and business owners can certainly increase sales by keeping up with mobile technology.  I wouldn’t advise sending ads via text, though.  Rather than gaining sales, you may end up losing customers.

If you are a business owner serving a local community, chances are you have a Google Places listing. In fact, if you are a business owner serving a local community, you BETTER have a Google Places listing. And if you don’t know, Google Places is essentially an online directory that provides consumers with relevant information about a business. The kicker: Google Places listings are typically the first results shown when consumers search for a business online (see the images below). That’s why they are so significant!

The problem for many of you is that Google makes so many changes to its search algorithm and format that it’s hard to keep up. Afterall, you have a business to run and probably don’t have the time to stay up-to-date on such changes. For example, have you seen the latest one?

Image A: New Format for Google Places as of November 2010.

About a year ago, Google updated its local places listings to a new format. For most of you, it looked pretty much like image A; information gathered from both your Google Places page profile and your website, among other things. But Google never seemed quite comfortable with this format. For many categories they continued to show the old format with listings bunched together as you can see from image B. In fact, lately it seemed as though more and more industries and markets were going back to the old format (B).

Enter the Newer New Format
Just a few days ago, Google updated its format once again (see image C below). One of the most noticeable changes is the place markers, which correspond to the same place markets in the map to the right, are no longer red, they are grey unless you mouse over them, at which point they turn red again.

Image B: Old Google Places Format

The layout is a little different as well. The map at the top is smaller. The location data is to the right of each listing rather than directly underneath. And as far as the merged format, it looks like Google has completely done away with it, using a hybrid of both the new and the old formats.

When the consumer hovers over the double arrow on the right, an image of the business website used to appear.  As you can see in image C, now the consumer can still view an image of the website, but also other pertinent information from the Places Page such as images and location on the map.  This gives a much bigger advantage to the businesses that have completed a full Google Places profile.  Put your best images here for maximum conversions.

Image C: The Newer New Google Places format as of a couple days ago.

Your dashboard (the place where you log in and make changes to your profile) may have undergone some updates as well, but we have yet to see any wide-spread changes in this area so we’ll keep you posted.

I’m not quite certain yet as to the algorithmic changes that may have accompanied this format change. In other words, the mathematical and statistical information gathered by Google spiders that determine where you rank in search continue to have a lot to do with your location, relevancy and popularity in your market area. We’ll keep an eye out for changes in this all-important area of search.

Finally, it appears these changes are not a test, which Google does often, but are a broad update. If you don’t see them yet in your market, I expect you will soon. No need to get used to them, though, as I’m sure more updates are on the way.

Anyone can post anything about you online. They can do it easily, they can do it anonymously and they can do it for free. The search engines and social media sites do relatively little to monitor slanderous comments on their platforms. Any unhappy customer, disgruntled former employee or struggling competitor could seriously damage your public reputation just by posting a few negative comments online.

There are hundreds of online customer review sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, Urban Spoon, City Search and Merchant Circle that allow users to rate and review businesses. On these sites, users have almost complete freedom to post what they want, regardless if the claims are true or not. Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and the hundreds of other social media platforms allow users even more freedom to post negative comments about businesses and individuals.

How would you like “[your business] is a scam” or “[your restaurant] made me and my family sick” sitting at the top of search results when consumers search for you by name?

If a competitor or former employee really wanted to destroy your reputation they could post comments on thousands of blogs and online article directories. There are plenty of automation tools that allow users to post hundreds of articles at a time, thereby creating a huge negative online footprint in just a matter of minutes. They could even create an entire website dedicated to trashing your company. Good luck trying to get in touch with Google or Yahoo to have the site removed. In fact, because these posts most likely have your name attached to them in the title, they will rank amazingly well in search results, even above your own website.

So how do you protect your online reputation? If the comments are not true and you know who posted them, chances are you may be able to file a lawsuit. Check with an attorney, but you may need to prove damages as well.

Customer review sites are unlikely to remove the comments even if you ask them to, but most allow you to respond. In a very professional tone, address the comment as slanderous and point out all the other good reviews you have. The tendency is to lash out at the person who made the negative comment, but this would be a mistake. Remember, your response to negative comments is for other readers, not the original review. They want to see how you handle criticism. I address negative reviews in detail in my Web Domination PRO program.

If the comment is a blog post, web article or web page that shows in search results, the best you may be able to do is push the bad stuff further down the page so nobody sees them. Few people go past page three in search results so optimizing your own blog posts, articles and web pages to rank above the negative comments may be a good solution.

A big part of my consulting is managing your online reputation. Contact us for details. There are ways to remove, hide or address all the bad stuff people are posting about you online; however, if your company really does suck, no amount of damage control is going to help.

Finally, you can always make a You Tube video explaining that a competitor or disgruntled former employee is posting negative remarks about your business online. Let viewers know that you have tried to handle the situation fair and professionally. Of course, if the claims are true and your business really does suck, no amount of damage control is going to help.