Being in the same city as the companies we’re helping is convenient and more personable than just doing business over the phone or internet, but we still do the same quality work, and help businesses wherever they may be.

The facts are that local businesses all around the country are struggling to come to grips with the new laws of marketing, and they just can’t deal. Wherever they are, they need to be on the map, and on the 1st page of it for that matter. They need our help more than ever.

It would be selfish and discriminatory of us to deny our services to those outside our current operating area, so we are now helping businesses nationwide.

To learn more about how to get your business on the map, click here.

Simply put, a Google Place is a page that Google has reserved for each local business or office that its crawlers have found on the internet.

90% of these are unclaimed and usually unknown by the business owner or management, even though Google sends automated postcards to the address they have on file, inviting the business owner to participate.

What is the significance of this? We established in an earlier article that the search engine is the #1 tool to find local business, and unless you’ve been hiding in a cave without internet, you probably know that Google owns about 2/3 of the search market share.

Further, Google uses the Place Page as the #1 factor in ranking businesses locally. Therefore, this page is of the utmost importance in ranking a business in Local Search.

The Place Page has many factors in itself, as illustrated in this chart:

There are dozens of different fields and factors that go into the Place page, including required fields which are the most important part. But without claiming and editing their Place Page, how can a business even get the required fields right?

But there are more factors than just those in the Place Page. In fact, there are 79 known elements that go into the Local Search Ranking for Google. That is less than the Periodic Table but the number is growing steadily. (There are 19 “negative factors” that have been studied but they are not elements.)

Fortunately, experts in internet marketing like those here at Magnon know what all those elements are, and how to use them to get the best possible ranking.

To learn more about how to improve your local search engine ranking using search integration, click here to watch the FREE video.

This chart pretty much says it all:

What is the significance of this? It means that local businesses need to focus on what they need to do to make a top ranking in Local Search listings, rather than continue to throw their money away on untargeted ads in the traditional media.

If less than 10% of your customers are looking for you in the newspaper or magazine, why would you emphasize advertising there? TV and radio ads can be costly, and are also to a non-targeted audience.

It’s good to have a listing in the yellow pages, but unless you’re marketing specifically to older people, there’s no point in running costly ads there, when you can clearly see it is being taken over by Local Search.

The best thing about using Local Search listings to advertise, is that it’s basically FREE, to anyone that knows what they’re doing. It’s not really advertising; rather, it’s just being there in the listing when a customer looks for your type of business.

To get to the top of those listings is indeed the tricky part, particularly for those new to the game, but its importance is vast: 90% of searches don’t go past the 1st page of the search. So if you’re not on that page, you’re invisible to 90% of search users.

But most small businesses simply don’t have the expertise to manipulate their local search rankings, in fact they don’t know where to start.

That’s why most smart business owners will outsource this function to a knowledgeable internet marketer that does this type of marketing on a regular basis.

You don’t need to pay a full time IT staff just to manage your local search rankings, it costs much less than that.

For more on how to improve your local internet search rankings for your small business click here.

Still trying to manipulate the SEO standings with futility, and possibly buying expensive and unrewarding ads such as Adwords and even Yellow Pages, business managers are late to the game.

True, many have caught on to social media, which is helpful for many businesses, depending on their genre. But what are they doing with it, and what are they getting out of it? How much are they spending to maintain just that one line of internet marketing?

The most emergent platform for internet search marketing is still the combined local and mobile search. Facebook has exploded, but it will plateau, and its outreach for certain types of business is limited.

Local search marketing is still in its infancy, as few are realizing the potential of having their business on the top of the page in local search rankings, and how easy and inexpensive it is. Bypassing the traditional SEO process, your small business can by #1 in the local search if you do it right.

You do need an internet marketer with savvy to accomplish this, but it’s not rocket science like traditional SEO, and therefore much cheaper to do, and with more noticeable results.

Google claims that over 20% of internet searches have “local intent” and have therefore modified their search engine accordingly. Still on the cutting edge, Google wants to give people the results what they want, meaning if they search restaurant, they’re not looking for a big national restaurant chain, but one in their local area.

Mobile searches are increasing tremendously, based on the same principles, but an even higher albeit unknown percentage of localized searches. Mobile local searches are basically the same as local searches but with a few differences to account for.

I can attest personally, that as a regular traveler, I habitually search Google Maps on my smartphone to find the local restaurants or other business I may need. I am totally reliant on the local search to provide the information I need to connect with the local business. Who has time to whip out their laptop while driving in a car or getting off the airplane?

What I found from experience is interesting, and the experience didn’t always concur with the ratings, reviews, and overall appearances online. This is because the local/mobile search platform is still very young, and some are taking advantage of it while others are already getting left behind.

It doesn’t have to be that way. For any small business, whatever you’re spending on marketing, the bulk of it should be dedicated to the local / mobile (and social) search integration.

Forget the yellow pages (although it is a good online citation, that part is free), news print ads, and expensive TV/radio ads. The future is here, and it is integrated internet search marketing. It is easier and cheaper to achieve results now than it has been for quite some time.

If you get in on the ground level, you can get a leg up. Otherwise, you’ll be playing catch up, and likely get stamped out by the large chains in the process.

To find out more what you can do for your business using local, mobile, and social internet search integration, click here.

What about now? There is quite a bit more technology in the new millennium. Do you think Styx was right? Or was that just a panic because technology was expanding so rapidly?

You may be surprised to hear the case of a lifetime IT expert that learned to program in Basic language in grade school in the 1980’s. I later worked with Pascal in high school, Fortran in college, then a little C, Visual Basic, of course HTML and on with the GUI developer and network platforms, mostly by Microsoft.

In fact, I have always been a big proponent of any new technology that helps to improve our lives in some way, whether entertainment, communication, or medical. Machines to save our lives? I have no problem with those, nor do I have an issue with machines that simply make our lives easier, or just more fun.

The problem I see more and more of is that of machines running people’s lives. My niece can’t have a normal social interaction with people anymore. She constantly has to play with her cell phone. She gets together with her friends and they stare at their phones the whole time, vigorously texting and facebooking.

She’s not the only one. Millions of young Americans all over the country can’t function without constantly taking orders from their cell phones. If you watch them walk down the street, many look mentally ill, stopping play with their phone every few seconds.

There are those that can text and walk at the same time without harm, and those that can only pretend. A woman at the mall was caught on camera earlier this year tripping over the wall to the mall fountain while texting. I can guarantee she wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last.

If anyone tells you they haven’t seen someone playing with their phone run into another person or inanimate object in public, they don’t get out much. If they tell you they haven’t heard of anyone causing an accident by texting and driving, they don’t pay attention to the news.

I’m not really an opponent of texting and driving, but the fact is that most people can’t handle that kind of multitasking while doing such an important chore of driving. In fact, many cannot talk on their phone and drive at the same time. Some get so involved in taking orders from their phone that they fail to pay attention to what they’re doing with the thousands of pounds of machinery they’re driving.

In the old days before cell phones, people would simply turn on their car radio, listen to some Styx, or talk with other passengers, and really not many accidents were ever caused by these actions.

Cell phones bring us so much more ease and convenience in life. I have had smart phones for 10 years now and can’t imagine living long without one. When I plan to go somewhere new, I can plug it in on Google Maps, turn on the GPS, and watch my dot arrive at the destination. I can also call for directions if all of that fails, or call for help if my car breaks down.

If your friends are sitting together wondering what to do or where to go that night, I can almost guarantee one or more will whip out a smart phone of some sort and look up movies, restaurants, sports bars, dance clubs, or whatever it is your people like to do. It’s amazing. You don’t even have to get off the couch and go to the computer anymore, much less the yellow pages.

I think technology is incredible. I don’t quite understand why people let it run their lives, but I believe it is mostly the younger generation that was raised solely on technology who allow it to control them. Some of the older people have indeed befallen the same trap, albeit in the name of business.

With all my free time nowadays I like to travel around the country and see some of the more interesting parts. Sometimes I hike deserts or mountains, or other places where my technology doesn’t work real well. I shut it off the machines and enjoy life. It’s kind of hard to do water sports on the beach while you’re taking commands from a cell phone.

The bottom line is that if you know how to put technology in perspective, and turn it off when necessary, it can be wonderful. That way, you’re controlling the machines, not vice versa. If Styx had added “machines that run our lives,” that would have been a more serious omen for the future. Alas, that aspect was covered in various sci-fi movies that began in the 60’s.

The future is here of course, as it always is, and some wonder whether we can survive with young people running into each other while their cell phones control their minds and bodies. We can endure, but the world will certainly become more dangerous in the meantime.

Having been raised by television and computer, many of our youth don’t know how to think for themselves, thus unable to make right decisions concerning their interactions with technology. It’s up to the older and wiser, who they believe to be stupid, to save them.

In the meantime, we’ll have more laws concerning our safety, enacted as a response to young people causing accidents while machines are controlling their minds and therefore their actions. Most if not all of these laws will be indiscriminate and not account for the fact that some of us still know how to use technology safely and even multitask when necessary.

So as we as a society attempt to grow with our rapidly increasing technology, and simultaneously live safely in harmony with the machines, we all must suffer the consequences caused by a growing number of people unable to do so acceptably.

We can get through this, but not just by creating more laws that apply to all and therefore slow down our progress. We also need to teach those end users of technological devices to do so safely, wisely, and in a manner which does not de-humanize us.

We’ve seen this all before, first when the Technology bubble of the 1990′s was ready to pop, online search engines were being bought for billions.

During the past 5 years there has been an increase in online acquisitions, including Yahoo paying out a total of $10 billion for Broadcast.com and Geocities, both considered some of the worst buys of the century.

The profitability of Google’s $1.65 billion buyout of Youtube.com is under question, but that may have been just a move to achieve a near monopoly on the online video sharing market.

If you could get an honest answer out of Bill Gates on the issue, he’d probably tell you there’s no price you can put on a virtual monopoly.

The IPO story is a bit different. The company offers shares in return for millions or billions in added capital.

Facebook is viewed to be worth about $50 billion USD and has about $1 billion in revenue per year. Most people use the site to connect to friends and family, but recently it has become one of the major players in advertising due to its targeted demographic ability.

Twitter with its estimated $150 million in advertising revenue, is looking at an IPO as well that should bring in perhaps hundreds of billions in new capital dollars.

Groupon and LivingSocial are also reviewing their IPO options that should achieve billions in capital.

So what should you do about it? If you have a lot of money to wager, Facebook is the safest bet, as the social media groundbreaker and forerunner. There is no sign of their platform being overtaken by anyone anytime soon.

However, you have to realize that, just as in the technology bubble, when companies were paying billions for web sites, they all could be overvalued right now. Think about the case of an EMP blast, which our enemies dream of. What would a web site be worth? Not much.

When you buy a share in a web site, which is basically all these companies are, you get a piece of paper saying you own a very small portion, like a couple of letters, on their site. You are betting on a business with no solid product, that relies solely on advertising revenue. It’s almost like a house of cards.

The best answer would be to figure out an idea for a new site that you could set up for operating costs of less than $1000 per month, like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Youtube, or any of these initially did.

Give people a good service that they desire, with an easy interface and attractive options. Use your imagination. It could be worth billions one day.

More info on the IPO’s and Buffet’s take.

A Korean economic newspaper reported that such a deal is being hammered out between Apple and Samsung.

Apple would get a variety of components in return: LCD panels, processors for mobile devices, and flash memory.

According to this report, this would make Apple Samsung’s largest customer.

This is especially interesting considering Samsung’s new tablet PC Galaxy is supposed to be the major player against Apple’s Ipad 2. (see previous article on Samsung Galaxy)

Reference CNET article

The Galaxy Tablet 10.1 is powered by a 1 GHz Tegra 2 dual core processor running the Android Honeycomb OS.

The tablet now has a larger screen for watching movies, an 8 megapixel real camera, and 2 megapixel front facing camera. It also factors in dual surround sound speakers for the portable theater effect.

The article also points to Samsung’s new mobile phone, the Galaxy S II with a 4.3″ screen capable of 1080p video, powered by Google’s Gingerbread (Android 2.3).

More info from the MSN article: