Category Archives: eCommerce

SEO Experts QueryClick.com Discuss Google Place Search and The Heightened Importance of ‘Local’ Results

The launch of Google Place Search at the end of October has significantly altered the face of Google SERPs. With the focus now placed emphatically on local results, the ramifications of this change will affect a range of companies as well as the operations of the average SEO.

The most notable change to the result lay-out is the abolition of the “7-pack” section which previously appeared at the top of the page. The familiar grouping of 7 local search results adjacent to the map display has been replaced by a more comprehensive listing of local search results, with the geographical visualisations now located in the right hand column – an alteration which has caused concern due to the subsequent obscuration of the Adwords section.

According to Andrew Shortland, founder of ‘Local SEO Guide’, the tool lends itself to small businesses. His belief is that the new format “intensifies the competition for local rankings”. Shortland also points out that sites with a physical address within the searched for city will gain an advantage over those which lack the corresponding location.

In a similar vein, customer reviews will also benefit a business site, affording reviewed businesses a greater prominence within the SERPs.

The driving theory behind the latest development is the statistic offered by Google that over 20% of searches are location related. This may now be increased as search habits are modified to make better use of the Place Search function.

SEO company QueryClick.com believe that different sectors will be affected to varying extents by the introduction of this tool.

“The tool will affect some industries more than others, with one obvious example being the hospitality industry, for whom geo-modified search queries will play a more significant role. In such cases, search engine optimisation will revolve more closely around the location of a hotel or restaurant. Place Search definitely heightens the importance of local results, but does not represent a complete usurpation of organic search.”

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SEO Experts QueryClick Welcome News That Britain Leads the Way In Online Shopping

In a report carried out by the US consultancy group Boston Consulting, it has been revealed that the UK is a global leader in the field of e-commerce, with the highest online spend per capita in the world. The internet has contributed approximately £100bn – 7.2% of GDP– to the British economy in 2009, and represents the second largest online advertising spend after the USA.

According to search engine optimisation experts QueryClick, the dominance of the UK in the e-commerce sector has been borne out of a growing tendency of the British public to utilise online shopping services due to a marked desire to receive value for money.

“Many people in the UK feel they are able to get a better deal online, and often this is the case. The atmosphere of economy in Britain drives many to seek out better value for money via online shopping. The rise in dominance of the world of e-commerce has resulted in a greater level of competition which, for us, equates to a greater opportunity to offer our services in a region in which we are market leaders.”

The internet as an independent sector would be classed as the fifth largest industry in Britain, just behind the financial services, which accounted for 9% of GDP in 2009. The BCG study, aptly entitled The Connected Kingdom, discovered that internet companies in the UK employ over 250,000 staff, with many of these positions made available by various SMEs.

Co-author of the report and partner at BCG, Paul Zwillenberg, provided an insight into the report’s findings:

“Everyone thinks the global Silicon-Valley-based companies are driving growth, but this report makes clear that in the UK it is coming from the ‘mom and pop’ businesses. They now have global footprints, they are selling to the ‘long tail’ and they are making their businesses more efficient.”

The driving force behind the lead status of the UK for e-commerce stems from the notable amounts of money spent by Brits online. Research by eMarketer tells us that some 28.5 million Britons make online purchases, whilst around 40% partake in online shopping at least once a month, spending on average £71 monthly.

All this has come despite the relatively slow broadband speeds experienced within the UK, as well as the recent recession, in which, as SEO company QueryClick points out, online advertising spend continued to grow YOY despite the overall contraction in advertising expenditure.

Via EPR Network
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BT Business Direct Confirms Top Industry Names Ahead Of UC & IT Live Conference

Communications specialist BT Business Direct has confirmed the line-up of keynote speakers for this year’s UC & IT Live conference, which includes a raft of industry-leading firms.

Top names from the communications sector will take part in the free, one-day event including unified communications specialists Cisco, Microsoft, BT and Tandberg.

Representatives from the companies will join together to deliver the event’s keynote seminar which is set to focus on all elements of unified communications and how they should work together to create a robust, reliable and cost effective solution.

The conference will also be attended by world-renowned IT vendors including HP, Toshiba and Microsoft. Representatives from these businesses will be available to discuss emerging technologies with delegates, along with their company’s product roadmaps. It is also possible to pre-book one-to-one sessions with your vendor of choice or with BT Business Direct, a leading supplier of voice and data solutions including laptops androuters, to discuss a specific project or IT challenge.

A spokesman for BT Business Direct said: “UC & IT Live is the latest in a series of events from BT Business Direct specifically geared to appeal to IT decision makers from UK businesses and public sector organisations.

“This free event will bring all the world’s leading IT vendors together under one roof, making maximum use of the time invested by delegates.”

The conference takes place on Friday, September 24 at Twickenham rugby ground. Delegates can choose to attend either the morning session which is being held between 9am and 12.30pm, or the afternoon session which takes place between 1pm and 4.30pm.

To finish off your visit to the home of English rugby, take a behind the scenes mini-tour of Twickenham, which will take in the England players’ dressing room, royal box, hospitality suites, medical room, players’ tunnel, president’s suite and include a pitch side walk and stunning views from the top of the stand.

To register as a delegate for this free BT Business Direct event visit:
http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/articles/…

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Bird And Co Website Wins National Award

A Bird and Co website, 360 Diversity, has helped Core Assets Group win the EFA and EFB Best Small Organisation award.

The Employers Forum on Age (EFA) and Employers Forum on Belief (EFB) Awards were established to reward companies that have been prominent in tackling workplace discrimination against age and religion or belief.

The award was open to all employers who have shown innovative ways to overturn outdated work practices and have strongly tackled prejudice.

Launched in 2009, 360 Diversity is a solution that enables companies to show their commitment to diversity, exceed targets set out in legislation and to encourage communication. The site also provides news, events and internal policies. It is split up into six sections, each covering one of the main strands of diversity: age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion and sexual orientation.

Bird and Co created a comprehensive CMS web design for the website that integrates with the company’s intranet, active directory infrastructure and the company’s whole computer network.

Nick Downton, web services manager for Bird and Co, said: “Working with Core Assets on the 360 Diversity project has been an enjoyable experience. The technical challenges involved in turning Core Assets’ ideas into reality were significant, but a close working relationship between themselves and our expert technical team meant we could turn each one into a working feature. We are delighted to be considered at the forefront of innovative technical solutions.”

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Findmypast.co.uk Makes Birth Records Even Easier To Search

Findmypast.co.uk, leading UK family history website, has launched an easier way to find the births of English and Welsh ancestors online. The company has re-indexed over 100 million birth records dating from 1837 to 2006.

Findmypast.co.uk’s fully re-indexed birth records make finding ancestors much simpler and includes: search results in the form of a list of individual names; the ability to search the complete 1837-2006 set of birth records in one go or by one or more counties at a time; new high quality images; smart search features including variations of a name; records of children unnamed at registration; and searching by mother’s maiden name at the same time to help find the most elusive births.

With this new resource now available, findmypast.co.uk has uncovered some interesting facts about the births that were registered between 1837 and 2006: 10 babies named Fish Fish born between 1840 and 1883, bizarrely, all in Lancashire. The list includes one Fish Fish Fish born in Blackburn in 1864; Just five Ringos were registered in 1964 and 1965, compared with 2,414 Georges, 36,877 Johns and 56,170 Pauls; six Dick Turpins were registered between 1854 and 1916; four Maradonas were registered in 1986, the year of the infamous ‘Hand of God’ goal; eight Peles were registered between 1970 and 1972, following the footballer’s 1000th goal in 1969.

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New Boating Web Site Puts Buyers Together With Sellers

A new boating Web site aims to put boaters and boater wannabes in touch with the people that can fulfill their wishes. The site, www.allboatingads.com, features boats for sale, equipment for sale, as well as services such as insurance, boat service, and marinas.

Pete Riopel, a financial planner based in Larkspur, started the site after 20-plus years as a sailor.

“It seemed like a fun and interesting thing to do,” he said.

The site allows users to do a key-word search to find what they want, and also allows the search to be e-mailed to the user if new matches turn up. It also allows up to eight photos to run with a listing.

“The advantage of my site.” Said Riopel, “is that you can narrow down your search.” As with many Web sites, users are required to sign up to use the site. There is no fee to sign up.

While Riopel is computer literate, he had to learn new things to get his Web site up and running. He had to learn HTML, and about boating throughout the Bay Area. He also plans to paint with a broad brush on the site.

“I tried to cover basically everything.” Riopel said, “Everything that is boating is here, and what is here is about boating.”

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Masterseek Expands Its Search Engine In China

After creating a lot of buzz and earning huge success in the US., the popular B2B global search engine has now expanded its hands in China. The users now can search for the companies, organizations and business professionals in China, which is a big and highly potential market. This is a giant Asian market where loads of business practices are conducted. There are hundreds of unique companies that provide immaculate business opportunities. Masterseek has taken a wise step by expanding its search engine in China.

Expanding the search engine activities in the Chinese market ensures that the users can search from the huge number of business houses. There are three million Chinese companies that can be searched over by the users of Masterseek. That is a huge resource for the users to meet up new business persons and companies and enhance the scope of business. The company aims to become the preferred search engine among the business communities in China where the users can research and analyze new business opportunities, monitor different markets, search and find potential buyers, customers and business partners.

Masterseek has made a clever move by deciding to enhance its spread in China. The leading global search engine Google has stopped its censorship of search service in China, which is Google.cn. It is soon going to be pulled out of China, leaving a vacuum of high quality search engines. Masterseek can fill up a significant portion of that space with its top-notch business search engine. It is proving to be a good move by Masterseek to establish its foray in the Asian market.

At present, China act as a major business partner of U.S. where the trade value has increases more than 350 billion US dollars. The U.S. market also imports numerous affordable consumer goods. Rasmus Refer of Masterseek corp says, “This trade also automatically increases the interest in finding new partners and suppliers between China and the U.S., while the number of Internet users in China soared in the last two years, which now reaches over 355 million Internet users. It is a huge market we will now try to get a share in within B2B searches”.

Most importantly, the China – specific business search engine will display results in English so that the content can be viewed by global audience. The search engine will not only help in finding business opportunities and business people, but also news and press releases related to China.

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Masterseek Enjoying the Success of Company Profile Concept

Masterseek, the leading search engine in the Business to Business category is beaming on the success of its company profile concept. It helps the users to find company directories all across the globe in different types of industries. The company profile concept of Masterseek allows the users to search by type of business names, professions, products or services, and location. Earlier, the users get to access the product descriptions, contact information and company profiles from more than 50 million companies in 75 nations. With the success of this concept, the number of the companies that can be accessed by the Masterseek searches have increased even further. The best part is that the number is rising at a rapid speed, which indicates the success of this concept. At present, there are 82 million company profiles within the Masterseek network and the number is increasing.

The company profile concept of Masterseek is greatly beneficial especially for the small and medium companies. These companies can easily incorporate it in sub categories in 26 languages, which increase the visibility factor of these companies.

By spending only 89 USD every year, these companies can enjoy the visibility of their profiles in the other countries. The cost is very low in comparison to the benefits that these companies can enjoy. The business professionals or other enterprises that are based in other countries and need information on these companies can easily search for what they are looking for. The company profile concept of Masterseek is working in a big way.

Masterseek aims to become the most preferred business search engine and analysis tool and it has become quite successful in the process. The introduction of the company profile concept was started with the aim of helping the companies to feature information about their enterprise, products or services in the biggest platform so that the interested users can easily locate potential suppliers, clients and customers and engages into increasing the business prospects.

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Helping David Compete Against Goliath – Affordable Internet Marketing Solutions for Small & Non-Profit Businesses

A Calgary web design business, Professional Web Studio specializes in providing quality Internet marketing solutions for the “Mom & Pop” businesses through to non-profit organizations in both Canada and North America.

Affordable Internet Marketing Solutions for Small & Non-Profit Businesses

With over 20 years combined IT experience Darlene and Bjorn, owners of Professional Web Studio started this business to enable those smaller businesses along with non profit organizations the opportunity to establish a successful web presence and effectively compete against the Goliath’s across all industries. “I found that what I enjoy the most is programming and developing websites because I enjoy seeing the end result of the website along with our happy customers” says Bjorn.

Through the development of custom web sites, integration of social networking (including Twitter and blogs), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and fast and accurate maintenance, Professional Web Studio aids its clients in achieving goals, growth, competitiveness and business they could only dream of.

Darlene and Bjorn understand SEO and weave SEO techniques into the development of their websites as opposed to selling Search Engine Optimization packages as an additional service to their business.

Today’s world of business seems to be filled with promises and hopes that many organizations cannot meet. Furthermore today’s consumer has very little time and demands the right information from the start. So it’s little wonder that those companies who actively and continually update their online presence will see the biggest growth in consumers.

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Masterseek Emerges As A Top B2B Search Engine

Masterseek, the global B2B search engine, has become a successful brand among the business portals in Europe. This successful search engine covers information on 82 million active companies and their products all over the world. According to Alexa, Masterseek has outperformed the many business portals in Europe and emerging successfully as one of the strongest brands.

Alexa ranked Masterseek as the number one business portal because of some outstanding statistics. The site witnesses visit of more than 3.000,000 business people every month from all around the world. It has more than 1,000,000 pages on Google and more than 1,800,000 people makes their business decisions every month by using the business platform of Masterseek to find new business, suppliers, manufacturers, products and services. Masterseek is also ranked top as an international business search tool by Google and Yahoo.

In terms of online presence, Masterseek has outperformed its competitors. It has got top rankings from Alexa Traffic and the major search engines, which proves its success in the online arena of business portals. It has a huge number of indexed pages in Google in comparison to the competitor websites. Indexed pages stand for the number of pages that are included in the result of the search engine. Higher number of indexed pages indicates that the number of visitors of the website is also high. Presently, Masterseek has three million and above Google indexed pages and the number is increasing rapidly. In comparison to that, the indexed pages by Google for the competitor websites like Kompass.com are around 2.8 million, Kellysearch.com around 1.7 million and Europages around 1.8 million.

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Buy WoW Gold Safely And Conveniently At WoW-Gold-Team.com At 2010 FIFA World Cup

World of Warcraft had over 11.5 million subscribers, which is the best Massively multiplayer online role-playing game. WGT Online (wow-gold-team.com), as a industry new leader of wow gold selling market, have done over 3,000,000 successful wow gold transactions and Over 180 million wow gold and other game currencies delivered in the past three months.

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Findmypast.co.uk Begins Publishing Chelsea Pensioners’ Service Records

Findmypast.co.uk publishes online Chelsea Pensioners’ British Army Service Records 1873-1900, providing colourful insights into the lives of ordinary ranking soldiers born in the UK and worldwide.

Leading family history website findmypast.co.uk has published online for the first time nearly half a million military service records of men who were pensioned out of the British Army between 1873 and 1900 and who received a pension administered through the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. Findmypast.co.uk has been working in association with The National Archives for nearly two years to scan, transcribe and publish these records online.

Known as “WO 97” at The National Archives, the first tranche of these records are now available to search online at findmypast.co.uk for the first time ever. Once complete, the entire collection will comprise over 6 million full colour images of the service records of soldiers in the British Army in receipt of a pension administered by The Royal Hospital Chelsea, and who were discharged between the dates 1760 and 1913. Many of the soldiers listed will have served in some of Britain’s most significant wars, including the Battle of Waterloo, the Crimean and both Boer Wars.

The details that can be found in these records are invaluable to family and military historians, providing a rich and colourful story of people’s family history, with a level of detail that is hard to find in any other historical records. The information could include the soldier’s date and place of birth, name and address of next of kin, height, hair and eye colour, distinguishing features such as tattoos, rank and regiment, occupation before joining the army, medical history and when and where the soldier served.

Debra Chatfield of findmypast.co.uk, said: “The Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records are a rich resource for family historians. For each soldier you’ll find a minimum of 4 pages of information, including a physical description and details of other family members such as dates of their baptism and marriage. These fascinating, detailed records enable you to find out so much about your soldier ancestors, even including what they looked like, long before the invention of photography.”

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Easy Saver Rewards Program Has Many Benefits The Easy Saver Can Take Advantage Of

If you like to save money without effort then you need to learn about the advantages of belonging to an easy saver rewards program. Let’s talk honestly about money for a moment. For most of us the hard times have hit our bank accounts. Unemployment rates are at an all time high and so are foreclosures. Those facts alone indicate the state of our economy; it’s a given that we’ve been forced to focus more on ways to save money. We’re learning to stretch our budgets to new limits, not because we want to, but because we’re forced to find ways to make every dollar count. It’s not surprising that the easy saver rewards programs are such a hit.

This article is intended to provide an overview of basic easysaver rewards programs. And after reading this you are sure to want to join a program so you can reap the rewards of membership; they’re that good.

I’ll start by explaining how the programs are formed and that will give you a good idea of how the rest of the plan works. To begin, a group of manufacturers, business owners, or merchants agree to be a part of the program. This means that each will offer top quality products and or services to members of the program at tremendous savings. When a merchant or manufacturer joins a quality easy saver rewards program there is a certain level of assurance that he will gain new customers. This is because his offers are provided along with others for quality products and services. As the merchant gains new customers they are likely to become loyal because they have discovered the quality provided by the company. At the same time that the merchant is benefitting he is also committing to continue to make offers to members that will provide them with great products at substantial savings.

As the consumer, when you join an easy saver rewards program you immediately become eligible to enjoy the benefits offered by the program – which is a collection of countless products and services provided by the businesses and merchants as described above. You’ll be able to enjoy savings on every day products, luxury items, and even travel related expenses such as car rental and hotel accommodations. While some people join these programs for short term purposes, such as to purchase new household items after a move, most join and remain members for years. It’s really easy to understand why they do. The easysaver rewards seem to get better as time goes on. Merchants are always providing new offers and new manufacturers continue to join the program and contribute.

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SmartFile Release Makes PC Backups Easy, Efficient, and Portable

SmartFile stands alone with its multifunctional platform, being the first online file storage company to offer a secure PC backup solution as part of its suite of online storage and file sharing software.

SmartFile Release Makes PC Backups Easy, Efficient, and Portable

SmartFile, a market leader in FTP, Online Storage, File Sharing, File Upload, and File Backup services, has strengthened its presence with the release of SmartBackup – an application designed to provide a secure, seamless, and efficient way to backup your PC files.

Offered at no additional cost with any SmartFile account, SmartBackup gives users full control over the backup process. Users control which files to backup, which files to ignore, and when the backups will occur. In addition, SmartBackup lives up to its name by running a sophisticated deduplication process, preventing users from inadvertently creating more than one copy of the same file. Even if you have multiple PC’s and external storage devices, SmartBackup allows you to select and schedule all of these for backup to a single SmartFile account. After a backup has been created, users can restore these files to any PC with an Internet connection.

For more information or to signup for a SmartBackup trial, please visit http://www.smartfile.com.

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Study by Clickbooth Will Help Businesses Better Target Women Ages 35 to 55

Marketing to women ages 35 to 55 can prove more difficult than marketing to other groups of online shoppers, as they are less willing to part with their money on a whim. Affiliate program network Clickbooth wants to help its clients reach more members of this valuable demographic, the largest online today. Part one of its recent study, “An Inside Look at Marketing to Women Ages 35 to 55,” addresses the makeup of this group and offers clients of Clickbooth’s CPA affiliate network tips on how to better reach them.

Study author Sara Anderson states that affiliate program network campaigns aimed at this demographic should be broken into smaller units that target specific groups, such as:

Single Mothers – There are approximately 10.4 million women in this group. They value their children, their time, and their appearance, making and saving their money, and finding a life partner. These factors should be considered when creating a CPA affiliate network campaign for them.

Stay at Home Mothers – They make up 25 percent of the married woman demographic, and they value highest meeting the needs of their family. When marketing to this group, Anderson suggests addressing the entire family. With this group, an affiliate program network campaign should include inspiring stories of other women in similar situations, who have successfully cared for their families using the campaign’s products or services.

Working Mothers – These educated consumers do not have time for endless research before making a purchase. Because of this, a CPA affiliate network campaign targeting this group should stress a product or service’s time and money saving features.

Married Women with No Children – Approximately four million women fall into this group. They value their freedom and independence, so when targeting an affiliate program network campaign toward this group, consider playing off what they value most: making and saving money, their spouse, having fun and meeting their health and beauty needs.

Single Women with No Children – They are a smaller portion of this demographic, but no less valuable. As they are more likely to be interested in finding a life partner, consider a CPA affiliate network campaign that targets a product or service’s ability to improve their image or help them meet someone special.

Anderson stresses the importance of the language used in affiliate program network campaigns that aimed toward this demographic. She suggest that clients “speak in a language that relates to her, appeals to her caring nature, shows concern for her time, and complements (not complicates) her life. The last thing she needs is a process that takes more of her time – simplicity is key.”

To read the full study by Anderson, which also includes tips on how to increase conversions with women ages 35 to 55, go to blog.clickbooth.com.

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BT Business Connects CAN Media With Schools And Surgeries Across The UK

BT Business and CAN Media have announced a new deal which means two million viewers in schools and GP surgeries across the UK will have access to a private TV information service. The three-year,£20 million+ contract will see BT take over the delivery, installation and operational management for the Life Channel Service from CAN Media.

The Life Channel Service, the UK’s largest private television network with over seven million viewers, is used by local government agencies to showcase and promote health and educational initiatives to the local community. Research* has shown the channel is more than twice as effective as posters and up to three times more than leaflets in communicating health and well-being messages.

Life Channel campaigns help schools improve their Ofsted ratings, and the NHS in achieving the national priorities set out by the Department of Health and measured by the Care Quality Commission. Independent research** has shown that 1 in 2 primary school and 1 in 3 secondary school pupils positively modify their behaviour as a result.

Working with partner Croft Technology plc, BT Business will take over the operational management of the existing Life Channel network. It will also install and manage the service in 5,000 schools and 4,000 GP surgeries, provide broadband, PCs and up to four large panel TV screens at each site.

Mike Darcy, chief operations officer, CAN Media, said: “We needed a supplier that would not only support our hardware, software and helpdesk requirements today but could also support us as we develop the service in the future. BT offered us a wealth of technical experience and expertise at a competitive price.”

Humphrey Penney, director custom solutions, BT Business said: “Communicating important information to local communities in this innovative way needs high bandwidth. As the market leader in digital out-of-home television, CAN Media were looking for a reliable supplier when taking the decision to outsource the delivery and management of their Life Channel Service.”

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CQout Sets Sights On eBay Crown

CQout, the international online market place and auction community, has announced that it is setting its sights on disaffected eBay sellers as part of its US expansion plans.

CQout managing director, Siamak Bashi said, “We have recently celebrated our 10 year anniversary of providing auction services to UK where our reputation for trust and security is second to none which has helped us to grow to become one of the largest auction service providers. Our plans are now to continue our growth by providing tailored services to our US customers. We believe auction users in the US deserve a better service than they are currently getting f r o m  eBay.”

The decision to move into the US market and to take on eBay was made following customer demands for an auction service which responds to its customer needs rather than impose rule changes every few months, like the recent imposition of certain enforced ‘Post Free’ product offerings which have alienated many previously loyal users.

The general ethos at CQout has always been to be flexible and respond to what customers ask for. Siamak highlighted, “We recently had the owner of US movie poster website who wanted to run their own auction site. But rather than go through the expense of buying software and hassle of running an auction site they asked us if we would tailor our services for their site. Within days we had an auction service running on their site”.

Siamak believes CQout is ideally positioned to take the fight to eBay as its pricing structure is lower than eBay and has proven particularly attractive to medium to large sellers with its no listing fee policy. This means a seller can list thousands or even tens of thousands of items on CQout at zero cost, which means additional exposure and marketing for their products for free.

While based in the UK, CQout has taken several important steps to ensure a safe, secure and seamless service is provided for all US customers.

CQout online auctions services for US customers will be provided on the CQout.com top level domain, but it will use exactly the same secure technologies which have been tried and test over the last 10 years in the UK market, and lead to it being the only auction site to be certified hacker proof to standards set by the FBI and audited independently by McAfee Secure, one of the biggest names in internet security.

The US auction service is also fully integrated with the rest of CQout auction operations, so when a seller lists their items on the US site, it can automatically be shown and made available to International buyers f r o m any country the seller chooses via a simple tick box selection on the selling form. The sellers products are seamlessly displayed and sold in the seller’s chosen currency, but prices are also displayed automatically in the buyers’ home currency. This makes the buying decision much easier for customers and is therefore less prone to mistakes and abandoned sales. This is a big contrast to eBay where sellers who want to sell internationally have to list separately on other eBay sites and pay additional listings fees. The CQout in-house payment systems SecurePay and EasyPay are also available to all CQout buyers and sellers f r o m any countries where Visa & MasterCards are available, which covers virtually the whole world.

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Bizwiki.com Goes Live, Delivering Wiki-power To Small Business

The wiki-powered business website Bizwiki.com announced its American version went fully live today. Bizwiki was launched as an Alpha in the USA in December 2008, promising to change the way local search works by enabling its users to build up the most detailed and up-to-date index of business in the United States.

Bizwiki.com Goes Live, Delivering Wiki-power To Small Business

The new fully live version features over 5,000 categories of business, and in contrast to traditional Yellow Pages websites invites business owners and representatives to add and improve their companies’ records with everything from contact details to prices and opening hours, completely free of charge.

“We are also launching new functionality today that allows the site’s users to‘Watch’ any business, receiving an email notifying them of any additions and edits,” said Bizwiki co-founder Matt Aird. “This is useful for anyone who is interested in following changes, but is primarily designed to empower people to get involved in claiming their own businesses and ensuring the information the public sees stays as accurate and relevant as possible.”

Creating a ‘Watchlist’ of businesses on Bizwiki is free. Representatives are invited to sign up with Bizwiki.com and look up the companies they are interested in, then simply click ‘Watch this business’ to receive notification of any changes to the record. They are also able to add more information and details to records while doing so.

“We’ve tried to take ideas and concepts from some of the most successful user-created websites in the world, such as Wikipedia and the Open Directory Project, and improve them to where the ‘anyone can edit’ principles of a wiki can be used in a business-environment,” continued Matt Aird. “The biggest single difference is probably that our site is built in a consistently structured format, allowing us to rapidly scale-up the amount of information and also give our users an easy way to search the site.”

The Bizwiki difference:

• It’s free – Unlike many established publishers that charge for inclusion, Bizwiki is free to search, free to edit and free for companies to list on.
• It’s editable – The ‘anyone-can-edit’ approach is a challenge to the frequently out-of-date records in conventional printed Business Directories.
• It’s a wiki – The wiki approach allows far more depth of information about each business to be compiled than anything conventionally available.
• It’s structured – Bizwiki is built using structured data, allowing reusability of information, bulk updates from chambers of commerce or webspiders, and an easy search experience for users.

Bizwiki was built by industry-veterans with years of business directory and meta-search experience behind them, including Keith Hinde, Matt Aird, Craig Sefton and Arthur Jenkins who between them have helped develop directory and search products for Infospace, local directory publisher Thomson Directories, TradePage and Webcrawler.

Visit www.bizwiki.com to add or edit your company or create a Watchlist of businesses.

Via EPR Network
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New York City Businesses bank on America’s Love Affair with Pets and Social Networking

What do Midwest Airlines, Loews Regency Hotel, Paws Pet Resort, Pet Express Pet Taxi, Wagwear, and Gavroche French Restaurant all have in common?

New York City Businesses bank on America's Love Affair with Pets and Social Networking

Well they are all New York City Pet Friendly Businesses that are banking on America’s love affair with pets and social networking to promote their services to the 71.4 millions homes that own pets throughout the US. And, YapStar has given them a creative way to get their message in front of the people that will listen through the YapStar Pet Holiday Contest at http://www.yapstar.com.

Red Magic won the YapStar Contest with 17012 Votes received from social networking activity and public voting from pet lovers in almost every state in the USA and from England, Germany, Australia, Canada, Norway, Portugal, and Mexico. With Magic’s sweet face and beautiful red coat it’s no wonder why he had fans cheering him on to be crowned “The YapStar”.

As sponsors of the Pet Holiday in New York City, these pet friendly businesses have put together a magical weekend of pampering for the YapStar Winner, Red Magic and Diana Dunigan.

Red Magic and his owner Diana Dunigan from Brunswick, GA, will be flying into NYC on Midwest Airlines through their Premier Pet Program which offers special pampering for “Red Magic”. To make sure they fly in style, Red Magic will be toting along his new “Bag on Wheels” from Sherpa Pet Products. Waiting at the curb on their arrival, Pet Express Taxi will whisk them away in their very own pet specialty cab to Loews Regency Hotel in Midtown Manhattan where they will be waited on hand and paw in first-class comfort.

Then off to the Happy Paws Pet Resort; where Magic will enjoy a “spa session” in order to look his best when they go out on the town for a shopping spree at Wagwear, a favorite among preppy pups and their fashion-minded owners. And what better way to end the day then at Pet Friendly Gavroche Restaurant, enjoying Camelia Cassin’s traditional specialties of the French country side under the stars in a garden out back where “Red Magic” is welcome. And, that’s not all! Red Magic will come home from his pampered holiday to a stunning pet portrait painted by Suzanne Berry.

About YapStar.com
YapStar.com at yapstar.com is a local search and review, social shopping and social networking community designed by pet lovers, for pet lovers and the pet businesses that serve them.

Via EPR Network
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