Yelp is making it clear that it won’t tolerate businesses trying to purchase good review for their pages on the local search and review site. Starting Thursday, the company began displaying prominent red-bordered pop-up boxes alerting users with this message: “We caught someone red-handed trying to buy reviews for this business. We weren’t fooled, but […]

LocalVox, a New York City-based startup offering local, social and mobile marketing solutions to small and medium businesses (SMBs), just raised $7.4 million in a funding round led by Talus Holdings. “LocalVox plans to utilize the funding to bring their comprehensive, yet simple and affordable marketing solutions to new markets, further invest in product development […]

Google’s Q3 earnings report was leaked earlier than expected Thursday, an event that turned out to be a spoiler for a bad movie. The search giant pointed a finger at financial printer RR Donnelly for prematurely releasing a draft of its third-quarter financial results without authorization. On the second page of the report, the words […]

GetResponse, an email marketing solutions company, analyzed 21 million email messages sent from U.S. accounts during the first quarter of 2012 to find the most popular open and click-through times, along with recipients’ engagement times. The thesis that was tested: “sending times matter, and message results depend on reader engagement routines, not just a little […]

This continues our series profiling daily-deals companies. The purpose of these Q&A profiles is to give merchants, marketers and others in the industry a glimpse into what some deal providers out there are doing. These profiles are also meant to offer different outlooks on the future of the industry. This week we’re profiling Sharing Spree, […]

Pinterest is more of a go-to destination than Facebook is for shopping-related activities, according to a study from Bizrate Insights. The study found that 70 percent of Pinterest users use the visually driven social network to get inspiration on what to buy, compared with 17 percent of Facebook users. Meanwhile, 67 percent of Pinterest users […]

According to a survey of 3,434 MerchantCircle member merchants, conducted by Reply, 68.7 percent of respondents use Facebook’s free tools to promote their business, followed by Google+ with 49.2 percent, Twitter with 32.8 percent and other social media platforms with 19.1 percent. However, when it comes to paid services to promote their businesses, 74.3 percent […]

Isis, a mobile wallet venture born out of a partnership between Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile USA, will launch its trials in Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas, on Oct. 22. The goal is to have 20 Isis-ready mobile phones by the end of the year, according to an Isis spokesman. Isis will enter an […]

According to David Fischer, vice president of marketing and business relationships for Facebook, three out of four users who claim a Facebook Offer do so after seeing a story in their News Feed about a friend who purchased the offer. This lends strong support to the idea that offers on Facebook are truly social, and […]

Daily deals are about sales, loyalty and customer satisfaction, and analytics play a key role for any business or deal provider that’s looking to improve in those areas. ForeSee, a customer experience analytics provider, offers merchants and deals sites like Groupon tools to help deals foster customer loyalty and, as a result, yield better results. […]