Users can search for restaurants, gas stations, shopping centers, and other places in their vicinity using WolframAlpha. The semantic search engine now recognizes the addresses from over 2.4 million providers and also provides opening times for a third of them, according to C. Alan Joyce of the WolframAlpha team. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Bing, there are currently one trillion web pages on the internet. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important to apply the right SEO strategies. An optimized page will be found high up in search engine ranking. But as so often, there are plenty of opportunities to cheat. The so-called black-hat SEO sites are based on low quality or even spam but can be found at the top of the search results. Search engines like Google are proving a method to stop this. Read the rest of this entry »

The location-based mobile check-in and rating service Ditto now belongs to the online coupon giant Groupon. The Ditto team is looking forward to working together with Groupon, according to the company blog. The App, developed by Pingpin Inc., was first released last year as a mobile application. Users can check-in to certain locations, see where their friends are, communicate with them in real-time in order to meet up, and post and read ratings using Ditto. Read the rest of this entry »

Next to online directories, there are a number of local search platforms and mobiles apps that help users find businesses and service providers in their vicinity. “Because the local data from each of the services usually comes from the same sources, one can assume that they also deliver results in a similar manner,” concludes Greg Sterling from Searchengineland. But he wanted to know for sure and hired Implied Intelligence to review the completeness and the accuracy of the results from the leading local search services in the USA. Read the rest of this entry »

The mobile application from the Gelbe Seiten is now available for free on smartphones equipped with the Microsoft operating system Windows Phone. Users with the new Nokia Lumia line of phones as well as a number of devices from Samsung and HTC can quickly find service providers on the go with the app. Read the rest of this entry »

Waiting for Google Drive

The cloud service Google Drive was officially launched on Tuesday but not every user could start right away as desired. Subscribers to drive.google.com might got the message that the service is not yet prepared. At least you can put your name on the waiting list and will be notified when the access is free.

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The world’s largest 850 million plus user social network has invested heavily in preparation for its IPO in May. Shortly after the acquisition of the photo service Instagram for about $1 billion, Facebook bought another startup, Tagtile. With it, Mark Zuckerberg is launching into the world of mobile local-couponing. Tagtile has developed an app with which users can gather digital sale points with their smartphone by holding it up to the Tagtile cubes, found in stores. Read the rest of this entry »

The online offering of Das Örtliche belongs to the most-used local search services. In March, the portal gained a large amount of new users: according to the current numbers of the IVW (Informationsgesellschaft zur Feststellung der Verbreitung von Werbeträgern), the number of visits raised by 13 percent to 21 million in comparison to the previous month. Das Örtliche therefore takes its place directly following Das Telefonbuch with 24 million visitors as second amongst telecommunication directories in Germany. Read the rest of this entry »

Google ventures the long speculated jump to cloud computing. According to the news magazine Spiegel, the virtual drive called GDrive will be accessible to users in the course of this week. Google is known for investing in new software (Google Earth, Picasa), based on the great success the company has as unchallenged market leader amongst search engines. The new function will be offered for free. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of last year, Groupon was celebrated as the star of the stock exchange. The company’s IPO brought them a whopping €700 million, the largest IPO since Google’s, and was launched to having a net worth of $13 billion. Now, negative press has caused the growing-stock to fall, and Groupon’s current valued worth is around $8 billion. What happened? Discontentment has been growing among the investors, customers, and users. Read the rest of this entry »