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IYP important in Bing

Took me awhile to get a sense of exactly what they do - but I think the core of it is that they have packages depending on what industry you are in, and based on that put you into a network of relevant sites. These sites all run banner advertisements for a cost per number of impressions. It's basically like IYP advertising. We should definitely explore adding this as a service. Service would include gathering network of applicable sites, creating ads, and reporting on monthly stats. More active management, like ad copy testing, could be included.

20 Local Search Marketing experts weigh in on the importance of 47 criteria that influence rankings in the Google and Yahoo Local search algorithms.\nThis could be used as a checklist for going local SEO and IYP.

Survey of most recommended factors to focus on. 

IYP and Local for Canada.

Conclusions * Local business owners seem to be confused about what actually constitutes spam, but can you blame them? The world of the Local search engines is often confusing even to those of us who study them on a daily basis! * Google's creation of a public forum for reporting anomalies in Maps has helped a lot of businesses recover traffic lost via Maps, and has probably helped Google identify weaknesses in its own algorithm as well. The responsiveness of the Maps team has been relatively admirable, even without providing verbal confirmation in the thread that changes have been made. (Of course, business owners whose situation hasn't been addressed are irate over the lack of response...) * The on-again/off-again bulk upload feature of Google Maps seems to be a particular favorite tool of mapspammers. * Local business owners: claim your listing at Google to avoid being victimized by hijackers and to decrease the likelihood of conflation with someone else's listing. If you don't have a website, direct your Local Business Listing at Google to one of your listings featuring the same information on another portal, such as Yahoo, Citysearch, or Yelp. * The large percentage of reported record conflations also underlines the importance of giving Google a strong signal of your business information (i.e. spiderable HTML address and phone number) on your own website. The more closely Google can associate that particular information with your business, the lower the chance of identifying someone else's business with the same information. In all honesty, I was surprised that the total number of bona-fide instances of spam reported in two months was so low, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's possible that the quality of Local results has improved dramatically since the advent of the 10-pack in January. However, more likely is that the typical local business owner doesn't know where to report possible spam. It'll be interesting to see whether

optimize video for local search

Google's Local algorithm (the one that populates maps.google.com and helps populate the 10-pack, 3-pack, and Authoritative OneBox) counts links differently than its standard organic algorithm. \nIn the Local algorithm, links can still bring direct traffic from the people who click on them. But the difference is that these "links" aren't always links; sometimes they're just an address and phone number associated with a particular business! In the Local algorithm, these references aren't necessarily a "vote" for a particular business, but they serve to validate that business exists at a particular location, and in that sense, they make a business more relevant for a particular search.

"announced"