AAA Mobile A Costly Endeavor

AAA has launched AAA Mobile, a new service for GPS-enabled mobile phones that contains the travel information, maps and road service that AAA has offered for years. Users can receive audible turn-by-turn directions as well as information about hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions listed in AAA's well-known TourBook guides. With one touch, members' phones can send their GPS location to AAA and connect members directly with a AAA representative for roadside assistance. So if they have car trouble and are unsure of their exact location, AAA will still be able to send help.

The service can be downloaded directly from certain GPS-enabled phones. AAA enlisted the help of the Networks in Motion location-based services platform to run AAA Mobile. Users can search for destinations by category (such as hotel or restaurant), for the closest locations or those that match a business name. They can also see maps of their current location or other locations. Pan and zoom capabilities will enable them to locate specific entries on a map. AAA subscribers can download the application to their phones and must pay a $9.99 monthly fee for service.

This offering really represents the convergence of all of AAA's great services into one easy-to-access wireless application. It's certainly a tool that will make AAA members take notice, but not necessarily take advantage of. Asking those current members to pay $9.99 a month for the service may be asking a bit too much. For a fee of about $6.00 a month, members can sign up for a full membership to AAA, which includes many more offerings than the AAA Mobile service. AAA should instead consider offering AAA Mobile as a value-add for members or perhaps use it as part of a promotion to enlist new members.

A Victory for Vertical Search

Healthline Networks and Ask.com have teamed up to launch Health Smart Answers featuring Healthline. The new service is designed to help Ask.com users find reliable health information more quickly. They will be able to access medical definitions, images and links to physician-reviewed content.

Healthline is known for its taxonomy-driven medically guided search platform used by consumers and business partners. The search platform is comprised of a database containing more than one million medical terms. In addition to Ask.com, other Healthline customers include prominent organizations, such as Aetna, Merck and U.S. News & World Report.

This certainly isn't a large announcement, but its impact could be rather enormous. Essentially, this represents a general search engine featuring content from a vertical search engine. While traditional search engines have received the lion's share of attention in recent years, it seems it's now becoming the vertical search engines' time to shine. Companies of all types now recognize how valuable vertical search engines are in collecting and organizing relevant data for consumption by users. These users want and expect more specific and targeted results and vertical search capabilities are the answer. As Healthline continues to build its customer base, expect Ask.com to explore partnerships with vertical search specialists in other subject areas.

Google Crosses the Rubicon

It's no secret that Google and its brethren have been feverishly working for several years now to crack the local business advertising market, historically the province of yellow pages publishers. However, despite endless resources and top programming talent, Google has apparently concluded that you can't organize information that doesn't exist. There's just not enough information available online on most of these small, locally-focused businesses.

Of course if you've got boundless self-confidence (and billions in the bank), no problem seems insurmountable. That's the genesis of Google's new "Local Business Referral Program." While there's a sales element to this program, the bottom line is that Google is beginning to compile a proprietary national database of local businesses.

Google's vision is to have a fleet of independent contractors running around the country, collecting information on local businesses and snapping pictures of them. Bounty: $10 per listing if the company verifies the collected data.

Job requirement are minimal: love of the Internet, access to a digital camera, and ability to fill out a W-9 that won't get kicked back by the feds. Forgive me for chuckling at the visual picture of the workforce this program is likely to attract.

There's some indication that Google expects this supremely qualified force to "talk up" the benefits of advertising with Google, but this seems secondary to what is clearly a major data compilation exercise.

What particularly intrigues me is that Google does not appear to be assigning companies to its contractors to interview. If they should all decide to visit only pizza parlors and drug stores, that's apparently okay to Google. Even more surprising is that Google won't pay a contractor if some other contractor got to the company first. How many times will you have your work rejected before you give up in disgust? Similarly, after being hit up by multiple Google contractors for the same information, how many local businesses will conclude Google is not cutting edge, but out of control?

Of course, those of us in the business know that gathering data is nothing compared to maintaining it. I presume that Google expects all these businesses to self-maintain their data using a handy web page. If only the information business was that easy.

Though Google's foray into the data business -- at least in its early stage -- seems a bit amateurish, it has now crossed the Rubicon. It has moved from organizing data to building proprietary databases, and seems willing to do so on a massive scale. While most of us have chosen to view Google as a "frenemy" to date, this is a profound move, perhaps more profound than even Google realizes.

Labels: frenemy, google, local business referral program

LexisNexis Launches Pay Per Call Service

LexisNexis last week launched Martindale-Hubbell Attorney Match--Direct Call Service, a pay per call service that will be hosted on the newly launched attorneys.com assisted search lawyer directory. LexisNexis worked with pay per call advertising provider Ingenio Inc. to create the Direct Call Service.

When they sign on (with a set-up fee) to Attorney Match--Direct Call Service, attorneys advertise, but are only billed for calls they receive in response to their ads. Law firms that subscribe to the service will receive phone calls via attorneys.com, lawyers.com, and the Ingenio advertising network of Web search engines, Internet Yellow Pages directories, mobile search providers and free directory assistance services. Attorneys can set the price they want to pay for phone calls received.

LexisNexis officials believe that Attorney Match--Direct Call Service is a complementary service to Martindale-Hubbell's Attorney Match--Email Inquiry Service, which sends email inquiries from potential clients to a subscriber's in-box. Both services enable attorneys to easily recognize the value of their marketing efforts.

Pay per call is very important in the business-to-business world because very few transactions are actually entirely concluded online. The same is most likely true for legal transactions, especially since potential clients usually prefer verbal contact with a legal professional. Online services such as attorneys.com are great for the client who needs to identify an appropriate attorney and for the attorney who wants to be found. But web pages, which are great for finding background information, can only do so much. Pay per call services are really a necessary component to help close a deal. With the direct call service and the email service, LexisNexis has all its clients' marketing bases covered.

A Big Win for CoStar

CoStar Group, an information service provider focused on the commercial real estate industry, has formed an alliance with the Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) Institute to provide CCIM members with online access to CoStar's database of researched and verified commercial property listings. Members will have access to all for sale listings in the U.S. that are included in the CoStar database in addition to lease listings in each member's local market.

While members will be able to search the CoStar database, they will also be able to list their own for sale properties in the database--increasing their reach to CoStar's subscribers (which include investors and brokers).

The partnership will also enable CCIM members to access CoStar Connect, a service that lets brokers and owners post their own for lease and for sale listings on their own web sites using CoStar's listing information and building photos. CoStar Connect automatically updates and manages customers' online property information.

This deal with CCIM is a big win for CoStar, as competition in the commercial real estate listings space continues to strengthen. CoStar and its nearest competitor, LoopNet, are trying to position themselves as the workflow platform of choice for the industry. Working with CCIM, which is an affiliate of the National Association of Realtors, will definitely help CoStar raise its profile within the industry and offering tools such as CoStar Connect will also help motivate members to regularly utilize that and all of CoStar's features. The alliance undoubtedly expands CoStar's reach--more than 8,700 commercial real estate practitioners hold the CCIM designation.