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Posted on Thu, 01/19/2012 - 02:18 PM by
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First, how many menus are we talking about? How many restaurants? Foursquare says it’s getting more than 13 million menu items from nearly 250,000 restuarants “in major U.S. cities.” I don’t live in a “major” city, but I’m already seeing a couple menus here and there from restaurants in my small town. Bob’s Burgers & Brew is a small chain with about 8-10 locations here in Washington state (but none in Seattle). You can see the menu link on its Foursquare page, and when I click it looks like the full menu.
As best I can see, neither Google nor Yelp nor Urbanspoon have menus integrated into the local search experience like this. Here’s the same Bob’s location on the other sites:
On Urbanspoon, users are encouraged to upload photos of the menu. But that’s nothing compared to the full-text experience that Foursquare offers. Why This MattersWhen I wrote about Foursquare Explore last week, you may remember the point about Foursquare offering full-text search of the tips/reviews that users share on the site. With text-based menus, Foursquare can offer even deeper search of menu items and descriptions. They’re not doing this yet, but that can — and you have to bet they will. Look at the menu page for Bob’s. Someone looking for “sliced kielbasa” or “jalapeno poppers” is going to find that menu when Foursquare makes it searchable. Final ThoughtIf you’re scoring at home, Foursquare claims to have “tens of millions” of tips; Yelp has somewhere around 22-23 million reviews, as I understand, and Google has somewhere in the neighborhood of 13-15 million reviews and ratings combined.* And Foursquare now has something that neither Google nor Yelp have: menus for a quarter-of-a-million U.S. restaurants. I’d say that the game is on in local search. (The 13-15 million number is based on Marissa Mayer’s statement last March that Google Hotpot had 3 million user submissions at the time and was/is getting a million ratings/reviews per month.) Hey! RSS Subscriber: Have you purchased my e-book, “How to SEO Your Site in 60 Minutes”? If not, what are you waiting for? It’s only $25 (for the time being). Find out why Search Engine Guide said, “I can almost promise that following the advice in the book will earn you your money back ten to one hundred times over.” Here’s where to learn more: E-Book: How to SEO Your Site in 60 Minutes. This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business Search Marketing. Touché Google & Yelp! Foursquare Now Has Restaurant Menus MORE NEWS FROM SMALL BUSINESS SEMWhy I’m Not Sure Google Will “Nail” the Places-Plus IntegrationDavid Mihm wrote an epic post earlier this week about the eventual merge/integration of Google Places and Google Plus. (It would help if you read that post before continuing on here.) SBSM Flashback: May 2011For those of you who are new SBSM readers & subscribers, here’s a list of noteworthy posts you probably missed from one year ago. I try to put together a post like this each month to introduce new readers to old content that might be worth reading. Google’s Freshness Algorithm in ActionReal quick post here (I hope) about fresh content in Google’s search results. Background Google has been emphasizing fresh content in its search results for some time now. That link goes back to November 2011, and when I write on Search Engine Land about Google’s monthly search quality ... The Fallacy of Timing Blog Posts & Social Media UpdatesStudies that claim to tell you when the best time to publish a blog post or share content socially are, in my opinion, mostly a load of crap. One Month Away: Local University – Advanced! – in SeattleWe’re exactly a month away from what should be a terrific day of local search marketing information! RELATED SMALL BUSINESS NEWSHow and Why I Use LinkedIn Groups to Build My BusinessAs I’ve written here in the past, I think there are solid business reasons for participating in most social networks these days, but if your business sells primarily to other businesses, you must get more active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not the biggest or most talked about network these day, bu... Is Seek or Shout the Holy Grail for PR, Bloggers and the Disconnected Media?This is a guest post from Yvette Pistorio of Cision. Two shifts have dramatically changed the way media and public relations professionals interact over the past few years: the move away from email in favor of online social channels, and the emergence of versatile, freelance content creators who ar... Content marketing is important but not free!One of the things that irks me is when I hear a marketing “expert” extoll the virtues of content (or social or digital) marketing and to close the sale — they remind their audience — “and best of all, it’s free.” A Very Short Message to the Shitdiots at @KloutA Very Short Message to the Shitdiots at @Klout originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license. State of IndependenceYears ago I worked in retail on both sides. I started out working for an electrical goods chain store, then moved onto a smaller local one. |
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Still not sure if Foursquare is serious about local search? Consider this: The site just added menus thanks to a partnership with SinglePlatform. I’ll explain below why I think this matters.
