Microsoft just released results of a survey of 400 small businesses (SMBs) that shows they continue to struggle with search marketing (how to think about it, how to do it). This is consistent with what I and others have observed about the majority of SMBs, even those with websites.

Search Engine Land, December 16, 2008

The business surveyed are all local businesses, no large corporations. Looks like the drop in spending corresponds to what is happening in the economy...

Local Biz Bits, December 10, 2008

Noa Gertin of Palore has recently completed some interesting research on SMB PPC ad spends. They looked at over 3000 SMBs who advertise online, on different websites, out of which they focused on 300 businesses who also advertised on search engines in the past 5 months.

Bluementhals.com, December 10, 2008

Noa Gertin at Palore just pinged me with some real happy talk kind of news. According to their data, which they get from crawling local search sites, the search engine advertising spend for SMBs took a 50%+ hit in Sept/Oct 2008.

Localseoguide.com, December 10, 2008

the spend amounts are interesting but is that the full budget, the money spent after the margin is extracted by a vendor/third party or a mix of both represented?

Screenwerk, December 10, 2008

Hanan Lifshitz, Palore CEO, speaks about Selling in a Down Economy at the Kelsey Group's ILM:08

Kelseygroup.com, November 19, 2008

Many of our customers are companies who sell online marketing services to small businesses. When they come to us for sales leads, they usually know exactly what they want - what profile of businesses they‘re looking for and from which sites they’d like us to get the leads.

Search Engine Land, October 30, 2008

Palore’s Hanan Lifshitz has done a column at SEL, which shows some interesting numbers for the San Diego CA market.

Screenwerk, October 3, 2008

Here at Palore, we recently finished working on a large scale project in San Diego County, covering all businesses in all categories, from more than 10 leading local, vertical and IYP sites - a total of 168,466 businesses.

Search Engine Land, October 3, 2008

Still have some stuff to post about Kelsey’s DMS but got this data from Palore the day, that I wanted to share. This graph is from reviewing over 2,800 Denver auto dealers and repair shops.

Local Biz Bits, September 18, 2008

A few of us received a quick sneak peak at some new Palore local search data. They’ll have their own studies out within a few days as well. This time it has to do with Denver auto dealers and repair shops.

LocalMN Blog, September 17, 2008

At Palore, we examine SMBs’ online advertising behavior, collecting information on the online presence of small businesses, ad spend data, advertising packages, etc. We recently completed a advertising-related survey of small businesses in the Boston metropolitan area that includes over 20 local, vertical and IYP sites. We looked at over 30 categories of businesses.

Search Engine Land, September 4, 2008

If you’re living in South Dakota and looking for a new restaurant to try, you can skip a trip to the Internet if you are interested in user reviews. Why? A 2008 local search advertising study by Palore – a content provider for local search sites – reveals that in the Restaurant Yellow Pages category (the most reviewed type of business online), less than 5% of restaurants in South Dakota receive reviews.

Local Search Guide, August 12, 2008

The latest nugget of data has been released from the folks at Palore. This set shows the monthly ad spends from a sample of 6,000 advertisers in San Francisco and New York within the Yellow Pages headings of beauty & fitness, landscapers, photographers and limousine services.

Kelseygroup.com, August 6, 2008

Below is a nice chart from Palore, representing over 6,000 businesses found on leading online directories. Categories selected were beauty & fitness, photographers, landscapers and limousine services, for the LA and San Francisco area.

Local Biz Bits, August 6, 2008

On the "local-mobile search landscape" panel at SMX Local-Mobile, Palore’s Hanan Lifshitz presented the following slide...

Screenwerk, July 28, 2008

So I might not fit the west coast H&B model, but Palore.com has released a sneak peak on some local search data. They’ll have this information on their own blog very soon as well.

LocalMN Blog, July 24, 2008

What is one of the most important things a small business could do on-line? Claim their business listing in such places as Google, Yahoo, Merchant Circle etc. The small business listing is the backbone of local search. This is the information that searchers first see about your business.

Local Biz Bits, July 7, 2008

It was just over a year ago when I chatted with Hanan Lifshitz of Palore for the first time. We've spoken a number of times since then, and he and the Palore team have done some great things in providing local business data. I'm very happy that Hanan has agreed to do an online interview.

Search Engine Guide June 30, 2008

The folks over at Palore.com crawl the Web to identify which local businesses advertise online, where they advertise, when, and how much they pay for their ads. Periodically I will be posting some of their research data.

Local Biz Bits, June 13, 2008

The guys over at Palore have been sending me some interesting info on the local search sites they have been crawling. Recently they looked at how many sites a particular business appeared on as an advertiser. According to their data it looks like a high percentage of SMBs advertise on only one site.

Localseoguide.com, June 13, 2008

Still, a small but meaningful percentage of SMBs are advertising on more than two sites. What the market needs is broad distribution to overcome consumer fragmentation, which is the product now being sold by ReachLocal, Yodle and IYPs, among others.

Screenwerk, June 12, 2008

The folks at Palore sent me a new data set they're releasing tomorrow. You might remember, the company recently changed its business model to focus on all the granular data it was scraping from local search sites.

Kelseygroup.com, June 12, 2008

Palore is a company that any company trying to create winning vertical strategies should talk to. They can provide key research that will help you choose the right categories to target and help you assess the opportunity.

Local Visibility, June 2, 2008

It looks like they've gone from the cool icons to providing data extraction services for local businesses and data aggregates. I'm guessing the businesses could be anything from local shops to national chains.

LocalMN Blog, May 29, 2008

As I said before Palore's crawling is revealing some very interesting local datapoints. The latest is a snapshot of ad sales penetration for US IYP sites in the attorneys category.

Screenwerk, May 28, 2008

The company has changed its model to utilize all the data it was scraping from local search sites to get this info. From that have come useful data sets that the company is now structuring in various ways to be used by destination sites (licensed), or as research tools for marketers.

Kelseygroup.com, May 8, 2008

Palore, which I've advised, some time ago changed its model from consumer plug in to data aggregator for third party destination sites. The company had been aggegating data from a range of sources, largely about restaurants.

Screenwerk, May 8, 2008