Search Engine Watch came out with a good overview article to what you should be doing – http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2094582/Understanding-the-98-Google-Local-Ranking-Factors. Most of the suggestions are common sense but I’m still amazed how many businesses, both large and small, aren’t even doing the basics.

Here’s what I consider to be the basics:

• Updating all fundamental information such as store hours, address, phone number, etc. so they provide users with contact information and a way to find you.
• Selecting pertinent categories that describe your business. Each local review site (Yelp, Citysearch, and Places) had different categories to select from. Most offer you the ability to choose more than one. This helps you to show up in search results or when people are drilling down into specific categories.
• Adding a description of your business and services targeting specific keywords. This not only gives the user some context to what you do but it also has SEO benefits.
• Adding links to all your social media profiles including Facebook and Twitter. It’s easy to do and it gives more ways for the user to connect with you.
• Encouraging users to post reviews. Make sure employees mention that they’d appreciate a review to satisfied customers, offer signage in-store reminding visitors, etc. The more reviews a store has (especially positive ones), the more authority and relevance it’ll have in local search.

Everything changed this past week when I was up in the SF Bay Area for work. I decided to really use Foursquare and chronicle my trip with digital footprints. As an added bonus, My friends within Silicon Valley were power users of app which made it even more interactive. I was constantly getting pushed alerts of their activities and conversely they were receiving mine.

After using Foursquare heavily for a week, I can definitely see the appeal of geolocation apps. It lets you know what your friends are doing without asking them or checking a social media network for a status update. It was actually fun to get badges (I’ve upped my count to 7 in a weeks time) and discuss with your friends the tricks to get certain ones. It was also addicting. Every place i went the iPhone came out to check-in.

As a marketer I truly see this as the future. With Facebook’s timely release of their new Places feature, they seem to think so as well. By just using Foursquare for a week, I had already begun to look out for “special deals” nearby my location and was being influenced by the tips that people left about businesses I was considering patronizing. I also tied my Foursquare updates to both Twitter and Facebook. By letting my social circles know where I was and what I was doing, spurred comments and recommendations for places to eat, see, etc. — a truly social experience.

I’m definitely on the bandwagon for Foursquare and similar geolocation/tagging apps. I’ve continued using it even in LA. I can’t wait to see the adoption rates with Facebook Places now that geotagging is readily accessible for millions of active users to try. I’m expecting it to be high and if everyone likes it as much as I did, the question becomes how as marketers can we capitalize on it?

• …filter results by videos, forum-mentions, and reviews.
• …filter  results by recency.
• …show more text and pictures along with their normal search listings.
• …see related searches more easily through text links and their “Wonder Wheel”.
• …and filter results by a timeline of news.

Phew! A lot changes for the dominant search player. It seems like they are trying to get ahead of the search game before real time searches (like Twitter) and natural-language searches (Wolfram Alpha) become more popular? Perhaps their recency filter might eventually incorporate real-time conversation like Twitter or Facebook’s feed or their Wonder Wheel will help people find what they are looking for faster.

One thing is for certain is that web developers might have to think in different ways in order to get as many eyeballs still on their site. If you can filter by results that have been indexed or changed within the past 24 hours, will your first result first page search result still always be number one? Will you need to manage your forum mentions more closely in order to protect your brand now that its conveniently packaged with the touch of a link?

Would love to hear your thoughts on how this might impact the future of natural search listings and how you might design things differently going forward.

So is the 2008 Holiday retail sales doomed as predicted or has Cyber Monday shown a silver lining? I don’t envision death to retail but then again I also don’t see a Holiday season of anything better than flat growth. According to comScore, the Holiday Shopping is down by 2% overall including Cyber Monday.  As consumers become more Internet savvy, I’m really not surprised that overall internet traffic has picked up.  But I think most of this traffic growth is due to media’s influence of reporting huge deals by struggling retailers and consumers willingness to scour for deals and coupons.

Most of the deals this Holiday season seem to be 20% or 25% off with free shipping for Internet retailers. There seems to be a proliferation of these deals that are being remarketed as something new every week.  Not a bad option for those new 2009 clothing lines, sporting goods, or small electronics.  However, if you are in the market for anything larger, like the flat screen TV that I’m waiting for, I would be holding tight and waiting for the January clearance.