What Google Knows - Who Are You?

We often wonder what Google knows about us and there is a simple tool you can use now that will tell you exactly who they think you are... 


Go to 
www.google.com/ads/preferences


Here you can see and edit your profile with Google.
Who cares... advertisers care.  Google keeps trying to get you to slice out your "special" friends on your email list, Google keeps trying to test what it is you want... now you can see all


Here is another great article on the subject that was recently in Bloomberg Business Week.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/who-does-google-think-you-are-02022012.html


This all dovetails into Google's new centralized privacy policy... translation: we will watch you on every device on all sites... YouTube, your smartphone, your gmail and form a collective picture of you.  Who said "don't be evil" didn't include selling every inch of you to advertisers?

Everyone Envies Local - should you?

Local looks like the obvious panacea to everyone.
The more local you get the more likely you are near something or someone that is about to make a purchase right?

Well according to Chris Devore, co-founder of Judy's Book that couldn't be farther from the truth...

His three take away's are:

1. There's no money in it

2. It doesn't scale

3. It's too obvious

While I applaud Chris' sentiment  (read article link below),  I do believe that there are plenty of opportunities to make local work.  One of course is to pick an industry and go across the US (world?) to make it work.  Lending Tree is an example of this and so are Dentist and Doctor referral sites.  Offers Network has chosen Real Estate and Automobile Dealers...across the US with only one or two players in a market.

Our tools dominate for them over all their competitors.

But trying to turn an entire local market into a money maker I think is a loser...calling on a house painter one day, a hair salon another doesn't scale.  Each sale is small and their understanding of how to price and deal with promotions is very limited ... so scaling a new promotional service across an entire "town" is tough.

Remember this, Groupon has 10,000 sales reps calling local businesses every day and there are some 200 other "deal-type" sites out there... so good luck trying to get local businesses attention. 

Devore’s Advice to Entrepreneurs: Be Wary of Local: http://www.crashdev.com/2012/01/top-three-reasons-not-to-do-local.html