The Livesearch team over at Microsoft announced last week that they would be effectively ending the Live Search books and Live Search Academic projects, and that the accompanying sites would be taken down.

According to the livesearch blog:

Based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries. With our investments, the technology to create these repositories is now available at lower costs for those with the commercial interest or public mandate to digitize book content. We will continue to track the evolution of the industry and evaluate future opportunities.
As we wind down Live Search Books, we are reaching out to participating publishers and libraries. We are encouraging libraries to build on the platform we developed with Kirtas, the Internet Archive, CCS, and others to create digital archives available to library users and search engines.
In partnership with Ingram Digital Group, we are also reaching out to participating publishers with information about new marketing and sales opportunities designed to help them derive ongoing benefits from their participation in the Live Search Books Publisher Program.

The underlying tone of the article? The project was great and worthy and all, but they weren’t making any money.

While the death knell is still sounding for livesearch books, the blog cheerily annouced their new focus:

Given the evolution of the Web and our strategy, we believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer, and content partner. For example, this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers.

The (between the lines lesson) learned? If you want to read a book, go to the library, but if you want to make money, go on the internet.

For many local businesses, getting their name out there both online and offline can be a struggle. The competition seemingly increases each year and opportunities diminish for many. The best way for any local business to stay in front of their potential customer’s eyes is through online local listings. These days most consumers look to the internet when searching for the best place to provide them with exactly what they need. This is where Local Search Engine Marketing comes into play. By placing your business in these local listing sites with optimized content regarding your services, you are effectively allowing your site to be found multiple times within the search engines. For just 49.95 a month, Brick Marketing will submit your business profile along with your website, address, phone number and hours of operation to local search engines – Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, MSN Local, YellowPages.com and several more. The good thing about this service is that the business does not even need a website in order to be listed. Providing your business simply has an address and phone number, it can be listed along with every other business in your area. This is a submission service and does not guarantee a particular ranking on any search engine but does mean your business will exist on the web if it doesn’t already. At any time, you may change your information and there is no commitment period. You may cancel at any time for any reason.

With Brick Marketing offering this form of Local Online Marketing, you can be sure you are in good hands as they are members of the Better Business Bureau and are known widely for their impeccable service and reputation. Sign up now for Brick Marketing Local and enhance your local business today!

Mobile marketing is picking up speed. Live Search recently announced some new additions to its mobile marketing applications, including:

• Weather forecasts
• Web search
• Traffic reports
• Bluetooth headset support
• Map a contact
• Delete a recent location
• Collections

Each of these applications can prove to be useful for your customers, but they can also be of use to you - the local small business owner. For instance, if you have a business that can be affected by the weather, encourage your customers to check the weather on their mobile phones before coming to see you. And they’ll be really happy to know that they can search for your business online right from their mobile phones with Live Search’s Mobile Web Search. Would your customers want to know how long it will take to get to your location right now? Introduce them to up-to-the-minute traffic reports.

There is more than one way to take advantage of mobile marketing and if your customers have cell phones and spend a lot of time in their cars, this could very well be an avenue for you to reach them.

There’s a new search engine in town that hopes to topple Google. It’s called Powerset. I’ve already read two reviews of Powerset, as well as tried it out for myself, and the two reviews could not have been different. Both were by bloggers that I respect and admire.

Greg Sterling of Screenwerk likes Powerset. Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim doesn’t. They both make good points.

Andy Beal is right when he says that Powerset simply appears to be another way to search Wikipedia. But I’d hope that Powerset has plans to take their search engine beyond Wikipedia. Just for the record, they do also pull information from Freebase, as pointed out by Greg Sterling. But the overriding question is, does it provide anything valuable?

I’ll have to agree with Greg Sterling and say that there is some value in it. I tested a query that would intentionally be ambiguous. “Poetry schools” can mean all sorts of things. Under traditional keyword-type queries, anything that mentions the word poetry or school, if the query is made without quotation marks, would be pulled into the SERP. If I’m looking for information specifically about poetic movements, which is what the terms Poetry Schools typically refers to, then the keyword-type query wouldn’t prove much helpful. I tested it in Google and I was right. I got a few results in the top 10 that were helpful, but most of them were not.

On the other hand, Powerset gave me exactly what I was looking for, mostly from Wikipedia and some from Freebase, but without the fluff that came in Google. So that’s one query in particular where Powerset was more useful. But what about local search?

Local searchers are going to be looking for information that is useful to them in their particular neck of the woods. For most people, especially rural searchers, Wikipedia isn’t going to be much help. A search for Texas brought up information organized into 4 tabs: Geographically (about the state of Texas), TV Series, Band, and Novel. In other words, somewhat helpful. But what about Sweetwater, Texas? 515 Wikipedia articles that mention Sweetwater, Texas, a community with less than 15,000 residents.

Among the type of entries found for Sweetwater, Texas are:

• Rattlesnake Roundup
• KTXS-TV
• Registered Historic Places
• Libby Thompson (a prostitute and madam of a famous brothel)
• Women Airforce Service Pilots
• Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
• Bat Masterson (his first gunfight took place in Sweetwater, Texas)
• Clyde L. Garrett
• Asa Earl Carter
• Willie Amos
• Active Worlds
• Pig Show

So does Powerset, or semantic search, have any local search applications? Possibly. I think so in limited terms, but it can’t go on forever relying on Wikipedia. If Powerset could tap into the search algorithms of the major search engines and aggregate them with its semantic search technology then that would prove a lot more useful. It would have to filter out the fluff that is found and simply include useful search results based on the semantic intentions of the searcher - if that is possible. But for now, let’s suffice it to say, it’s off to a not-half-bad start.

Local live search is a great way to check out what your clients are finding when they look for your keywords. Really, I should say potential clients because they might not ever find you if your competition is strong.

Do searches for your keywords on a regular basis, not just to see what position you´re in, but to check out the competition. What do they have that you don´t? Could you do anything to get ahead of them, or to make it all but impossible for them to move above you on the lineup?

Your competition is often the best place to find out what works and what doesn´t. You can see for yourself the tactics that they are using and develop your own to overtake them.

Local live search makes it possible to see exactly what your competition is up to and how you rank against them. This should give you quite a bit of information on how to beat them.

Imagine that you´ve had your business listed on local live search for ages. It´s brought you a bit of local advertising traffic, but then it suddenly stopped. What could cause the abrupt halt in the flow of traffic?

There are several reasons your local live search listing would stop bringing in business, one of which is that it is no longer listing the right information. This could be because you changed things around at your business, got a new phone number or any other change in information. It is very important to update all your information if you want local live search to be able to give people a method to communicate with you.

Whenever a change is made to your email, website address or phone number, or even physical location, you need to make sure that your business information is updated everywhere. This means your business directory listings, local live search, website and anywhere else that your business is online. This is vital if you want to continue bringing in new clients that find you online.

After all, a business where no customer can find you is pretty useless!

MSN’s Local Live Search aspires to be like Google Local. If you visit the two sites you’ll see that there are some similarities. But Local Live has one feature you won’t find on Google Local and, in my opinion, that features makes it worth pursuing as a marketing vehicle.

First, let’s talk about the similarities. Both search engines provide a way for users to map businesses they are interested in finding in their local area. It’s almost a no-brainer that this would be a valuable service. You can search the map or search for businesses on either Google Local or Local Live, but you can also use the Get Directions feature and pinpoint exactly what you are looking for.

Google’s My Maps allows you to save your searches for future use. Local Live’s Collections allows you to do the same thing. But the feature that Local Live has and Google Local doesn’t, which I believe makes it a little bit stronger of a product, is its Explore feature. Local Live Collections gives you plenty more features than Google’s My Maps, including the addition of push pins to show items you are collecting, and one of those features is Explore.

With Local Live Explore, you simply type in a zip code or a city and state as if conducting a search for businesses in that area. Then you go to the Collections drop down box on the top right side of the page. Scroll down to Explore and select that option. In the results field on the left side of the page, MSN indexed collections in the local area you are exploring show up as clickable results and push pins appear on the map to show you where those collections are located. In a sense, you are “browsing” your local area to find something interesting. This is a powerful feature for local businesses to tap into. But if your business isn’t listed with MSN or saved as a collection then you’ll never be found.

Local Live Search is somewhat like a directory. If you head over to maps.live.com you’ll see what, in effect, is a directory. The categories can be overwhelming, but they’re not really. They are there to serve as a way to organize the listings in the directory. The question is, how can you - the small business owner with a local presence - make the most of the Local Live Search directory to get the traffic, and the business, that you want?

Whether your business is an Arts & Entertainment business or a travel-related business, you can list your business in the Local Live Search directory and when searchers at MSN Live look for a business like yours in their area, yours will be one of the businesses they find.

Each category is broken down into subcategories as well. For instance, if you click on Real Estate & Construction, you will see that category broken down into several subcategories. And it’s not just a small list either. Consider these subcategories:

• Building & Construction Services
• Construction Site Services
• Doors & Window Construction
• Drilling & Pumping
• Roofing & Siding Construction
• Stone & Masonry
• Surveyors
• Wood Materials & Experts

That’s just a small sampling. Each of those subcategories are also broken down into further subcategories. The Doors & Window Construction subcategory has 11 categories of business listed under it. After a searcher digs down as deep as she can go into categories, Local Live Search will ask her to input her location. This is done either by zip code or city and state.

Local Live Search is a great business tool for local small businesses. Don’t just list in Google and Yahoo! Go the extra step and list your business in Local Live Search as well. Every little listing helps and you can’t overlook the third largest search engine online.

We’ve discussed Google Local and Yahoo! Local, but we haven’t mentioned Local Live Search. Until now.

Local Live Search is just as important as Google and Yahoo!’s local services. Just because it isn’t as well trafficked doesn’t mean that Local Live Search can’t be of benefit to you. It can.

Local Live Search has many of the same features that Google Local and Yahoo! Local have. One unique feature that I like about it is the Collections feature. Local Live Search Collections allows users to save a local search result for future reference and for easy search by others. All you have to do to get your business searchable at Local Live Search is to sign up for an account, which takes all of five minutes, and then find your business and save it to your Collections folder.

To search for a local business at Local Live Search you can enter a business category or the business name then the zip code or city and state. Then you can sort by relevance or distance. If you can imagine people in your local area looking for your services then you should include a listing of your business at Local Live Search. When you list your business at Local Live Search, you can have a link in your profile to your website, but you can also get a link to your Superpages profile. That’s two ways you can be found through Local Live Search. How many more ways do you need?