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.

Related posts:

1. Groupon Hits $1M in Gross Revenue in Canada
2. Canadian Online Advertising Grows Dramatically in 2004, 2005
3. IAB/PwC Release First Half 2005 Internet Ad Revenue Figures

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:

Related posts:

1. Which Yellow Pages Group Employee Would You Invite For Dinner?
2. Which is the Funniest Yellow Pages Group Ad From the Past 4-Years?
3. How Social is Yellow Pages Group in Canada?

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?

Related posts:

1. Which is the Funniest Yellow Pages Group Ad From the Past 4-Years?
2. Join the Conversation, Your Business Needs It. A Social Media Presentation
3. Which Yellow Pages Group Employee Would You Invite For Dinner?

Some other interesting facts about their first 2-months in Canada:

Toronto represents 51% of their Groupons Sold, while Vancouver is at 49% of the total sales volume
In terms of gross revenues, Toronto is 52.6%, Vancouver at 47.4% of gross revenue.
In terms of savings to consumers – Groupon has saved consumers $1.56M during this time.

With respect to ComScore traffic, they started to register in February of this year and are a good upward trend, breaking the 200K UV mark in May.

Related posts:

1. Groupon Has Saved Canadians $4.6M and Hits $2.5M in Gross Sales in Canada
2. Online Ads Soared in First Half
3. IAB/PwC Release First Half 2005 Internet Ad Revenue Figures

In less than 24-hours, we have moved to the #1 free application in Canada. Will be interesting to see how long we stay in that position.

I did a post last year on the reasons for the success of the YellowPages.ca iPhone application, when we hit 1/2 million downloads (we are now over 1M) and I think those reasons are still valid today – what do you think.

NOTE: here is the link to the press release on the 1M download mark – YellowPages.ca™ Mobile App for Smart Phone Hits Milestone With One Million Downloads Over 30,000 Downloads Each Week!

Related posts:

1. First Look – YellowPages.ca iPad Application
2. New YellowPages.ca Mobile Application Available
3. Just in time for the release of the iPhone in Canada – YellowPages.ca iPhone / iPod App Gets a Staff Pick Nod

Here is a first look at the new iPad application for YellowPages.ca by Yellow Pages Group.

As far as I can tell this is the first directory application in Canada and one of the first directory applications for the iPad by a major IYP.

What are do you think of the application?

Home Page of the Application (Vertical View)

Home Page of the Application (Horizontal View)

Search Results for Hotels NearMe – I was at the Yellow Pages offices in Calgary

Selected Country Inn and Suites – I can see from the listings, they have a video (content is king)

Looking at some Photos

I like this business, what about adding it to my favorites

Hotels in Near Me search (vertical view)

Looking at the results (vertical view)

Country Inn and Suites (vertical view – all the content in one easy view – very cool)

What you Favorite a Business you add a new icon to the home page

Reverse Lookup Screen

Related posts:

1. YellowPages.ca iPad App – #1 Free App in Canada in less than 24-hours
2. New YellowPages.ca Mobile Application Available
3. First Look – Screenshots of the new YellowPages.ca

Interesting to see professional sources so highly rated.

1) Friends and Family

2) Reviews from newspapers and magazines

3) One’s broader social network

4) Other blogs and forums

5) Celebrity review ( most influential on 18-34 years old )

Read the full post on Greg Sterling’s blog

PS – I on the runway in Toronto leaving to New York for the CM Summit and using Wordpress for the iPad to post this, works not too bad except for the fact that it won’t let me paste in the post.

If you use word press for the iPad and have a solution to the paste option in a post let me know.

Follow-Up – never did get the links working in the WordPress App. Had to switch to safari to add the reference links. This was a little frustrating as well as editing was more difficult than I thought in the editor window.

Related posts:

1. Join the Conversation, Your Business Needs It. A Social Media Presentation
2. Am I Media – Are You?
3. Facebook – Can Local Business Florish in Social Networking?

The way to manage Celiac’s is to go on a strick Gluten-Free diet (or the removal of all wheat product from your diet). If my friend eats food with gluten in it, it can put her in bed for a couple of days and can be quite painful. On a personal note, I have also moved to a gluten-free reduced diet with my wife since the fall of last year.

Since my wife and I started our gluten-free reduces lifestyle we find the web is a pretty good place to go for generic information on going gluten-free. One of the challenges is looking for for gluten-free restaurants in cities. Not saying that it does not work but here are my specific issues with using the web.

Try – “gluten-free in XXXXX” where XXXXX is any city. You will usually end up with links to information sources on celiac’s or gluten-free and some resources of Gluten-Free restaurants. Some local businesses who have done a good job of optimizing for this keyword will rise to the top, but in a lot of cases, I notice businesses who say they have gluten-free options which does not mean they have a specific gluten-free menu. As my friend pointed out, it can be extremely frustrating to find details on either gluten-free menu’s or restaurants that cater to people with Celiac’s (which BTW cross-contamination can be a big issue).

So my specific issue with the web:

1) results for a city are usually a hodgepodge or results of “information” sites and some local sites

2) some of the directories have way to many restaurants come up under gluten-free but there is no information as to specific gluten-free menus or how they prevent cross-contamination. Net effect, not really relevant.

3) I need to be in front of computer. This can be a real challenge when you are on the go to have to boot up your computer. My mobile phone is always on me and trying to surf the web on a mobile phone can be challenging at best.

I have recently discovered a really cool application for my iPhone called Celiac Feed. In a nutshell; a user generated application that works based on the location of your iPhone to provide you with a list of restaurants/bakeries in your area that provide gluten-free options. The locations only make the list when one of the users recommends. In the Celiac world I have found out that people love to share information and really support each other. Therefore, the level of trust from these recommendations goes way up.

This application was probably one reason why my friend decided to purchase her iPhone as opposed to a Blackberry. She was on the fence for awhile in terms of which one she would buy. After I showed her this application (and although the information in Canada is limited) and the user base seems pretty small at this point, she decided on the iPhone and has been active on this application every since.

This got me thinking about the major shift that is happening to mobile. Was this one case where the application drove a sale of hardware and how many times a day is this happening now? Not sure if you agree this is a profound as I think it is, but I find it very interesting that a tiny niche application can drive a $500+ sale. For me, this is transformative as more and more devices become ubiquitous, it will be the utility of the device that will drive sales.

For niche local based applications, smart phones are far more superior than trying to search on the web. As an example, this morning at the Bed and Breakfast we are staying in (The Cottage in Qualicum Beach, BC) the owners knew we had people coming with a gluten-free intolerance and actually went out and purchased Gluten-Free bread for us. The bread itself was amazing, it actually tasted like real bread. They bought it at a place called Village Bulk Foods that has in it a Silly-Yak Bakery (a gluten-free kitchen) where they make breads, muffins and more.

So I immediately added this a recommendation to Celiac Feed along with my comments for everybody in this community. This was easier that trying to go to the web to post and is now immediately available to this mobile community.

If you have a gluten-free intolerance and an iPhone, I strongly recommend you download and Celiac Feed application it works well. More people need to use and contribute to it to make it really rock in Canada.

Here are some screenshots of the application from my location in Qualicum Beach, BC.

Have you tried other gluten-free applications for your smart phone? Please comment below with your experiences in using mobile in a niche way.

Related posts:

1. Which is the Best Canadian ‘Mobile Web’ Local Search Product for the iPhone?
2. My Blog is Fully iPhone Compatible – Thanks to WPtouch: Mobile Plugin
3. Local Search in Canada Using the Apple iPhone – a Visual Comparision

– Twitter has 105,779,710 Registered Users, Adding 300K A Day
- Twitter Adds Places To Its Geo-Tweets, Just Don’t Call It A Check-In
- Live From Chirp: Twitter’s Platform Roadmap
- Ev Explains Twitter’s Move Into Mobile Apps: “Otherwise We Are Failing Users”

So enough about Chirp, this has been covered extensively this week.

While I am waiting for my wife I was playing with my iPhone, actually wishing I had an iPad (after the Chirp conference and speaking to a number of people about their iPads, I am convinced that I need to buy one, but that for another day). Back to my iPhone – I was playing with Mobile Web, not iPhone applications and I got to wondering about the Mobile Web experiences for Canadians?

So here is what I did.

I visited the following sites through my Safari browser on my phone. Google.ca, YellowPages.ca, Yahoo.ca, and 411.ca. I tried to visit yelp.ca, but it gave me their actual website, not their mobile enhanced so they are not included.

I then entered the exact search term “restaurants toronto” for each site and was presented with their results. The screenshots below are the results page for each of the above websites. Check them out yourself.

So here is what I want to know? Based on the screenshots below for the search “restaurants toronto” and nothing but the screenshots below, which mobile application provides the best results? I am going to leave it as best results, you decide whether best results mean content, look and feel or brand loyalty.

In alphabetical order:

411.ca

Google Web

Yahoo Web

YellowPages.ca

One more screenshot from an application that I am testing on my iPhone (it is not available to the general public yet) called Urbanizer, mood based searching. This application is going to rock. You can subscribe to get notified when it is available in the app store.

Urbanizer

If we are missing your favorite mobile web application, put the URL in the comments, I would be happy to add it to this post.

Related posts:

1. Mobile Applications Bring Local Relevancy to Gluten-Free Restaurants and Drive iPhone Sales?
2. Local Search in Canada Using the Apple iPhone – a Visual Comparision
3. Canada’s Yellow Pages(TM) Mobile App, over 1/2 Million Downloads and 3 Reasons for its Success

In February I did a post on my FourSquare experience that you can read on my initial experiences and the impact on local.

A couple of days, one of my work colleagues, Mohamed Kahlain, follow him on Twitter, sent me the link to CheckIn Mania, a mashup that features checkins from FourSquare, GoWalla and Britekite. This was originally posted on Mashable.

In a nutshell what CheckIn Mania does is allows you to enter any city, click on the map and select a business. Once you select a business you can see who is the mayor of that place + how many checkins to that business and any tips. You also have the ability to select the “Search by Map” which is a neat feature that allows you to move the map and the locations update as opposed to updating the locations by click.

Here is the screenshot with one of my favorite restaurants (of which I am in the Mayor in Calgary) called Spicy Hut.

It is no secret that any of the location based services listed above have the highest penetration in major US markets like San Francisco and New York, but what about Canada?

Are Canadians checking in?

So I decided to spot check some businesses in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal to see how active Canadian’s are. I decided to focus on Restaurants. My selection criteria for which restaurants and spas to choose was as following, In Google I did a local search and selected business #3 in their 7-pack. In YellowPages.ca, I selected the #8 business and in Yelp.ca I selected business #6. This would give me a random sample of businesses. I also limited this to FourSquare as this is the most popular check-in service.

Here are my findings.

Vancouver Restaurants:
C Restaurant (selected from Google) – 9 checkins
Tojo’s Restaurant (selected from Yelp) – 33 checkins
Top Of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant (selected from Yellowpages.ca) – 17 checkins

Calgary Restaurants
Calgary Marriott Hotel (selected from Google) – 21 checkins
Capo Restaurant (selected from Yelp) – 5 checkins
Karma Fine Indian Cuisine (selected from YellowPages.ca) – 2 checkins

Toronto Restaurants
Bistro 990 Restaurant (selected from Google, this is actually listing #4) – 11 checkins
Pomegranate Restaurant (selected from Yelp) – 8 checkins
The Real Jerk (selected from YellowPages.ca) – 34 checkins

Montreal Restaurants
Restaurant Toqué (selected from Google) – 5 checkins
Santos (selected from Yelp, actually #8) – 40 checkins
Arahova Souvlaki (selected from YellowPages.ca) – 15 checksin

The only thing that surprised me about the above results is Toronto. I would have expected to Toronto to come in closer to Montreal in terms of checkins because of population concentration and smartphone penetration. However, this might be a result of the fact that Toronto does not have the density of Montreal (land mass to population size), which might also explain why Vancouver is more comparative to Montreal. Calgary actually holds it own, relative to its population size and the fact that Calgary.

Although comparatively to the US, Canada is not at the 1/10 rule (see some US results below), it is pretty clear to me that Canadians in the large urban markets have started to embrace checkin. This group, like in the US, are the ones at the start of the product curve and the big question going forward is whether checkin services will hit mass adoption.

How does this compare to the top US cities. Here are the results for San Francisco and New York using the same process as above. I used YellowPages.com as the 3rd source.

San Francisco Restaurants
Zuni Cafe (selected from Google) – 459 checkins
R & G Lounge (selected from Yelp) – 296 checkins
Cote Sud (selected from YellowPages.com) – 6 checkins

New York Restaurants
Spring Street Natural Restaurant (selected from Google) – 495 checkins
La Sirene (selected from Yelp) – 52 checksin
Serendipity 3 (selected from YellowPages.com) – 236 checkins

Related posts:

1. Interested in a Marketing Role with Canada’s Leading Online Commercial Directory; YellowPages.ca?
2. My FourSquare Experience
3. Groupon Has Saved Canadians $4.6M and Hits $2.5M in Gross Sales in Canada