Darby Sieben -

Chicago based Groupon which started selling its daily deals in Canada on April 19 in Toronto and on April 26 in Vancouver has hit the $2.5M in gross revenues as of yesterday. Back on June 20th I posted that Groupon hit $1M in Gross Revenue, marking a acceleration in revenue.

NOTE: This is according to my tracking document and not an official release from the company.

Some other interesting facts about their first 4-months in Canada:

Toronto represents 44% of their Groupons Sold, while Vancouver respresents 56% of total units sold. This is quite a major shift from my post in June 20th, when Toronto represented a larger share of the units sold for Groupon.

In terms of gross revenues, Toronto is 46% while Vancouver is at 54% of gross revenue.
In terms of savings to consumers – Groupon has saved consumers $4.6M during this time.

In terms of traffic growth, as reported by ComScore, they started to register in February of this year and are a good upward trend, breaking the 300K UV mark in May.

What is great news for Canadian consumers is that Canada’s largest deal site, RedFlagDeals.com is launching a daily deal service very soon.

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Here are some recent videos from some team members at Yellow Pages Group talking about SEO and SEM.

First up, In this clip we sit down with John Fanous and Bill Aver of the Yellow Pages Group to chat about Local SEO. We caught up with John and Bill at SES Toronto 2010.

John discusses how the Yellow Pages is in the business of helping businesses be found, and their new Local SEO offering is designed to help businesses be found online. Bill and John also touch on why this offering doesn’t represent a coflict of interest vis a vis their print directory. NOTE: this was originally posted on the NVI Blog.

Second, Sean Ballard, product manager who launched Yellow Pages Group’s SES Solutions in February of this year speaks about Acquiso, one of the leading PPC management tools for agencies and clients who manage lots of SEM campaigns.

FInally, this is a repost on my blog, but here is the video for Yellow Pages Group Search Engine Solutions product, featuring our VP of Performance Marketing, Tracy Smith.

Blast From the Past

To prove that SEM and SEO is not a new topic at Yellow Pages Group, here is my interview with Greg Jarboe at SES Toronto back in 2008 explaining why YPG invaded the conference:

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It was one of those amazing days of incredible meetings, finalizing a new deal (wait for this one) and introductions to some incredible technologies and start-ups in the social media space. During one of those meetings, I was asked the question; “How Social is Yellow Pages Group?”.

This was one of those questions that I had to pause to give some thought. I answered by outlining some of the initiatives and realized we do a lot. So I figured this would make a good blog post.

Here are just some of the things that we are doing in the social space.

YellowPages.ca

Introduced this year, you can now login into YellowPages.ca using your Facebook Username and ID which will automatically set you up with a Yellow Pages Account. Login in the top right hand corner of the site. This initiative is lead by YPG’s social media guru, @martyboy008 and his incredible team of social media experts.

This sign-in allows you to rate and review businesses and share your discoveries with your social graph. For example, here is screenshot of a recent review that I wrote on the Red House Thai & Malaysia in Pickering (this is the place that started my love affair with Thai food and anybody that knows me, knows I love Pad Thai).

Finally when you connect using your Facebook Account, you can actually see what businesses your friends like.

YellowPages.ca Facebook Application

The first of its kind in Canada, released in 2008 – the complete YellowPages.ca experience within the Facebook environment complete with ratings and reviews.

This one even got press coverage by CTV in June 2008 – check out the video,

RedFlagDeals.com

Without a doubt, RedFlagDeals.com is Canada’s most active shopping network featuring one of the most active forums discussing all the best places in Canada to find deals.

For everybody looking for free stuff, one of their popular areas is Canadian Freebies & Free Stuff,

Coming Soon … the RedFlagDeals.com Daily Deal,

Urbanizer iPhone Application

Urbanizer is Canada’s first “mood-based” application for the iPhone (here is the link the iTunes Store) that works in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

One the web you can see moods of current cities. Here is a screenshot of Calgary.

LesPac.com and BuySell.com Classified Sites

In the province of Quebec, LesPac.com has established itself as the leader in the classified space. In English speaking Canada there is BuySell.com, another top classified destination for Canadians.

Restaurantica.com

One of Canada’s most engaged communities, Restaurantica.com features over 200,000 reviews on restaurants.

New Additions to the Social Family of Yellow Pages Group

Urban Pill

One of the leading blog destinations for what is happening in Vancouver, UrbanPill.com is pretty cool to follow if you live or plan on visiting Vancouver.

GigPark

GigPark is a social recommendation engine that was built by @pema and @noahgodfrey (these guys kick-ass in the Canadian tech space) – who sold this platform to CanPages in 2009.

Quick Links to the Social Destinations for the Above

YellowPages.ca on Facebook
YellowPages.ca on Twitter (managed by @zelia, YPG’s super crazy social media communicator)
PagesJaunes.ca on Twitter
Yellow Pages Group Local Video Channel on YouTube
Yellow Pages Group Ad Campaigns on YouTube
Yellow Pages Group on LinkedIn
YellowPages Mobile on Twitter
Urbanizer on Twitter
RedFlagDeals.com on Twitter
RedFlagDeals.com on Facebook
Restaurantica.com on Facebook

Funny thing, on the phone this took all about 2-minutes, this blog post took a little bit longer. Perhaps I should have done just a video.

Tell me what you think – did you enjoy this post? Any feedback?

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