Krillion, the retail search engine optimizer whose motto is “find national brands, locally,” is now getting 65,000 unique visitors per month and over 200,000 page views to its appliances, the first of many planned verticals. A second vertical, still unannounced, is currently being readied for release.
The 12-person company, funded by Hummer Winblad is unique in its emphasis on SEOing major chains for local search – much akin as TripAdvisor is for travel. It is about as far from a “destination” site as you can get – although social features are being developed that might change that.
In the six months since its release, the company has been particularly focused on getting out of the “Google Sandbox,” in which new sites are under-ranked, and ramping up its SEO efforts on all the search engines. The company has also formed a number of key relationships, including ShopLocal, eStara and BlogHer, a women’s oriented blogger site.
Constant Contact, the leader among email marketing services for small businesses with 120,000 customers mailing out 500 million emails a year, has filed for an IPO. In the S1, the company says it is looking to expand its services beyond email to include survey solutions and upgrades, such as logos and archive access. (a May profile of the company is here).
Currently, customers pay from $15 to $150 per month, with the average customer paying $32. Two-thirds of its customers have fewer than ten employees. The company has marketing relationships with 1,700 active channel partners, including Network Solutions, American Express, and VistaPrint.
Unpaid sources of customer acquisition account for 45 percent of new customers. They include customer referrals, and the inclusion of a link to its website in the footer of emails.
Starting this fall, Idearc’s SuperPages may be accessed via Instant Messaging as a result of a new relationship with Multiplied Media, the Calgary-based provider of “Poynt,” a local search service that operates over IM. Multiplied Media was formerly known as “IllumiCell.” The “Poynt” platform currently hosts YPG’s Internet Yellow Pages and classifieds in Canada.
“It is all about driving purchasers to the merchant,” says Multiplied Media CEO John Lowe. “We’re disseminating merchant information; getting them to click to chat; getting them to make reservation; buy a ticket — whatever.”
Lowe says that IM has proven to be very user-centric for local search. “It is intuitive, very quick, and easy to use as possible. And there is no spam inside the system. The trend is accessing information across multiple platforms. Our core capability is optimizing across networks.”
Merchant Circle threw itself a party last week at Nola’s in Palo Alto to celebrate a year in business and registration by 140,000 small businesses. I’m on their Evite list, so I knew about the party. It is probably a good thing that some of their registered small businesses didn’t know about it, however. They might have come with knives (or worse!)
While the site actually offers a terrific set of free tools and services – truly — it continues to pump up its user base by auto-dialing small businesses, and getting them to rush to their PCs to see if their customers said terrible things about them. Of course, it is just a come on. In many cases, there are no reviews. Just a place to sign up.
I can’t imagine co-founder Ben Smith, when he started the site, was thinking of developing a list of disgusted small businesses. At the time, he denounced the Yellow Pages as a “mafia” and vowed to be the true, tech-savvy friend of small businesses. His original concept was that local businesses, up-and-down the street, would sign each other up for the benefits (hence the “Merchant Circle.”)
