Google is rumoured to have tabled a $500m offer for local social network Yelp. According to Adam Bunn, Head of SEO at Greenlight, the UK’s independent search marketing agency, if the deal goes through, it will be a major acquisition for Google giving it direct access to a wealth of data that could make its local search offering much better.
Bunn also points out the huge potential for Google to sell targeted ads and how Microsoft has quite likely been the trigger for Google’s reactionary move. Full comment follows below.
Yelp contains hundreds of thousands of reviews on local businesses and services, covering hundreds of towns and cities and pretty much every vertical you can imagine, and boasts over a quarter of a million users across the UK, US and Canada.
These kind of deals give search engines direct access to structured data allowing them to reliably and accurately incorporate that data into their search results without the need to go through the usual crawling and indexing process, and increasingly offer functionality directly to users rather than simply sending them to another site.
This is one of the strategies that Microsoft had chosen for Bing, and the main reason why it took so long for Bing to launch properly in the UK; identifying potential content or functionality partners relevant to that market, negotiating with them and then integrating their data takes time. But it’s worth it; Bing for example offers some compelling functionality integrated directly into its results, like restaurant booking courtesy of TopTable. And once up and running the costs for the search engine are marginal compared to the cost of crawling
A potential acquisition of Yelp by Google could be seen as a reaction to Microsoft’s strategy. And let’s not forget the huge potential for Google to sell targeted ads across a local network that it controls directly.
Adam Bunn is Greenlight’s Head of SEO at Greenlight. He is a search professional with a total of 6 years SEO experience behind him. Adam oversees natural search strategies for a number of Greenlight’s key clients, such as Vodafone UK and British Gas. Since joining Greenlight in 2006 as an SEO consultant, Adam has built and now leads the agency’s growing consultancy team, as well as pushing the strategic development of Greenlight services.
A rising star within the search arena with unrivalled strategic expertise in SEO research; Adam regularly provides innovative thought leadership pieces, white papers and opinion pieces for trade publications including Econsultancy, UTalkMarketing and Tech Weekly.
Thanks to his industry experience and broad knowledge as an SEO practitioner, Adam also coordinates the in-house training programme for Greenlight’s SEO staff, and has run bespoke external training programmes for the likes of First Conferences and Lastminute.com.
About Greenlight
Greenlight is an award winning, specialist search marketing agency providing targeted and accountable natural and paid search solutions. The agency has helped numerous companies to succeed in search marketing over the years by improving its clients’ positioning and website visibility in the top search engines, and driving traffic to their websites.
Greenlight provides a full range of search marketing services from offices in London and New York, including search engine optimisation, pay per click management, link building, consultancy and SEM training.
Clients include FTSE, NASDAQ and NYSE listed companies as well as charitable organisations and government bodies. Greenlight works with SMEs, global brands and top interactive agencies across vertical markets as diverse as publishing, financial services, retail, travel, hospitality, property and entertainment. www.greenlightsearch.com
