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Social Intent vs. Search Intent More importantly, Facebook ads not only fail to gauge what a user's current intent might be, but they fail to acknowledge what Facebook know a user's intent is. Essentially, most Facebook users log on to socialize, not buy. In this respect, Facebook ads can make you look a lot like the guy who goes around a cocktail party trying to sell insurance. Social intent is probably one of the main reasons that Facebook's average CPM ranges somewhere between 13 and 53 percent below the industry standard. Indeed, as ClickZ reported, Facebook ads get half the clicks of network banners and the average click-through rate (CTR) for Facebook ads in 2009 was 0.063 percent and 0.051 percent in 2010. Conversely, the average CTR on AdWords is around 2 percent. That's 20 times the industry standard and almost 40 times that for Facebook ads. This is probably because many search sessions revolve specifically around making a purchasing decision -- maybe not buying right then and there, but deciding how the user will buy when they're ready. And when they are ready, there's a decent chance they'll return to Google to recall that product or purchasing decision they arrived at during previous sessions. Context is Everything Given Facebook's position in the marketplace, this isn't to say that Facebook ads should be ignored by marketers. Indeed, Facebook has become such mainstream channel, that it can't be ignored by certain advertisers. As this Webtrends study points out: ... industries that are fun to discuss with our network are seeing higher CTR. ... Brands that are social get a higher CTR, which translates into better engagement metrics: Post Quality Score, EdgeRank, Feedback Rate, and others. In turn, Facebook rewards such behavior with a lower cost-per-click and greater visibility in the News Feed. It's the marketers and/or campaigns that are driven by results, however, that should think twice before investing too much into Facebook -- especially if

Local Search Tools For the SMB and Professional Category: Local Search - Mike - 6:00 am I have been using two "new" local search tools of late and have been impressed with both of them. The Local Search Toolkit from seOverflow has recently been released from beta and upgraded to work with the many changes that occurred recently in Google Places. The tool provides competitive information for a range of information for the top 7 listings in a given geo search. It will provide both URLs and totals for each of the following: Site Title Tag, Categories, Citations, Reviews , Number of Photos, Number of Videos, whether the listing is Owner Verified and the listings Distance to City Center. It's free and provides a wealth of information. It's useful for determining which reviews sites are most prevalent in which industries and which citations sources are the most prominent. Another tool that I often use is the Whitespark Local Citation Finder. The free version has been around for a while and is also useful in finding citations for either keyword phrases, your own site or those of a competitor. They just released the Local Citation Finder Pro version. The Pro Version is $20/mo and normally I do not write about products that charge a fee but it has a new feature that I am finding incredibly useful (they provided me with a free subscription). Local Citations Pro now offers the ability compare the specific citations between any number of  searches and or business listings. So for example you can examine your business listing and the citations for the listing that is tops in your category and against the citations for a series of search pharse. The information is offered up both visually and via a spread sheet file: Pro users also get these other features: Compare Citations Easily determine which citations your competitors have that you're missing. Sort by Value Sort your results by SEOmoz Domain Authority and Majestic SEO ACRank. Get Results in Minutes

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Only 61% of consumers rely on traditional search engines to find web sites today, compared with 83% in 2004. That means marketers need to become well versed in multiple types of online media-not just search engines-to help consumers find products. A new Forrester Research report, "The Forrester Wave: US Search Marketing Agencies,

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