We often say how inspired we are by what our customers are doing. This is another great example! We’re happy we can play a role in helping people feel a greater sense of community.

Interested in learning more about how social networking companies are using culturally relevant boundaries to help people connect? Download this (free) article which appeared in GeoWorld magazine “Where Are Your Friends?  Social Networking in Social Spaces”.

Algorithmically, they were then able to compare neighborhoods across different cities. For example, they determined which three neighborhoods in San Francisco were most similar to New York City’s East Village based on top check-in categories.

Want to know the three neighborhoods in San Francisco most similar to the East Village? Get the results and learn more at Foursquare’s Neighborhood Experiment.

Visit our Customer Use page for more interesting uses of neighborhood boundaries.

Mobile is discovery focused

Location is absolutely central to mobile and the concept of discovery is the standard for mobile users. We expect our smartphones to know where we are; who and what is near us; and to anticipate our needs, providing us that information as quickly as it’s bounced off a satellite and onto our device screens.  People are used to discovering items of interest through geotargeted ads in their favorite applications, like Pandora, and from friend recommendations on social media, like Twitter and Facebook. Culturally relevant boundaries or geofences – like neighborhood, college campus and shopping boundaries – are key to focusing mobile users’ discovery. The name of the game in mobile is, “I am here and let me discover who and what is around me now”.

Search and hyper-local search are still important

Since most people see their smartphones and tablets as an extension or replacement for their desktop, they still approach these devices with search in mind. People use their smartphones and tablets to search for information that is not related to a location or a specific time – for example to locate a phone number, find information on Wikipedia, and specific companies or online publications. Hyper-local search is essential for people looking for local companies and services, and also for those researching places they are planning to visit – be they at home or en route to the destination – to find places to stay, eat and to get a feel for that locale.

Discovery and hyper-local search will work together

As more mobile applications are developed that use both discovery and search, users will expect a continuity of data. If John has done a hyper-local search at home on restaurants in SoHo, he will expect to be served geotargeted ads for that restaurant or be alerted to which friends are in the neighborhood when he enters SoHo with his mobile phone. Quality and consistency of current geofences like neighborhoods and the availability of new culturally relevant geofences like shopping boundaries will enable hyper–local search and discovery to work effectively across mobile devices and those remaining desktops.

One trend that directories – which have a fairly traditional business model – are obviously struggling with is how to incorporate discovery (i.e., mobile search, social media, and deals/coupons) into their model.  As Darrin says in the interview, many are simply bolting on features, when it might be more prudent to rebuild platforms from the ground up.  This reluctance to revamp is allowing newer players to claim more of the business.  In fact, the leaders in mobile search, social media, and coupons/deals are using Maponics data to do just that as they master the delivery of non-search based geo-relevant content.

Geofence data from Maponics includes predefined boundaries that represent the way real consumers think about the world. With them,  the entire search and discovery paradigm can reflect the on-the-ground geography familiar to consumers.  In addition to struggling with the discovery-side of the equation – many second tier directories are also flagging because they skip the geo step altogether, or rely on lower quality “free” geo data that is simply inadequate for professional grade applications.

You can read the BIA/Kelsey post here.

Access the full episode here (Darrin starts at 32:12):

This Week In Location Based Marketing – Episode #59

If you haven’t tuned in to this podcast before, we highly recommend it. Rob Woodbridge and Asif Kahn excel at keeping those of us in location based marketing on top of the latest industry developments in a fun, casual way.

This month you’ll also hear a fair amount about Maponics – we’re sponsoring all January episodes. Listen to learn more about how targeting ads using predefined geofences (neighborhoods, shopping malls, college campuses, more) helps local mobile advertisers deliver more relevant ads.

Don’t have time to listen, but interested in predefined geofences for mobile marketing? Take advantage of the free 3 month API or data trial we’re offering LBMA listeners!

But how do we actually do this?  And why is it important to you?  Below, we’ve outlined the key steps in our quality assurance model.  The importance of each step is illustrated using our neighborhood boundaries product.

Including quality in the design - Before we build a dataset, we spend a significant amount of time “designing it”. This means discovering and capturing the features that will be most useful to our customers. It also means preparing to provide the data in a format that is easy to implement. Close collaboration between the Product Development and Quality Teams ensures that quality measures are developed around each and every proposed database feature, from the ground up.

In order to allow different levels of neighborhood granularity in map displays, Maponics created the neighborhood hierarchy system. The Maponics Quality Team played an integral role, by drawing up the blueprint for a complex validation system. This plan outlined how to verify that neighborhoods were given the proper labels (macro-neighborhood, neighborhood or sub-neighborhood), thus ensuring the hierarchy’s accuracy.

Resource validation and standardization - Once we’ve got the design perfected, we define exactly how we’ll source and create each attribute.  Strict qualification of the multitude of resources going into each feature is key. Consistency and repeatability is also essential.  Both ensure accuracy and uniformity across the entire US, as we use this methodology to build the database.

Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries features authentic neighborhoods. To create this dataset, the Maponics Quality Team validates: resources supplied by local/city municipalities and other local sources, client feedback, and input from real estate agents. This breadth of original source data makes Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries a true representation of how locals view their neighborhood.

Stringent product review – After a dataset has been created, another major initiative is launched.  A whole new team is brought in to “poke holes” in the data.  Some of the things they cross-check (through automated, statistical and visual inspection) are:

• Boundary/ attribute accuracy – Is each polygon the appropriate shape and size? Have all polygons and features been given the correct name(s)?
• Topologic/geometric integrity –Are all features located in the correct spot lat/long wise? Are there any boundary overlaps?

Because of our Quality Team’s dedication to boundary accuracy and integrity, we’re able to offer the only commercial-grade neighborhood data with clear, single-line boundaries between neighborhoods. This allows search results to be associated with one distinct neighborhood (not two or more, as seen when neighborhoods overlap). The result: simplified implementation (fewer rules to write on the back end) and clearer/more actionable user search results.

The Quality Assurance steps outlined above are central to everything that Maponics does to bring you the best boundary data. But most importantly, our QA never stops. Each existing Maponics product is updated and expanded every quarter, using these same criteria.  And as a customer, you have the option to receive a quarterly change files, keeping you in the loop.

Finally, the Maponics QA process itself is continually reviewed – we’re always looking for ways to bring you more value!

Jeff Howe, Maponics Quality Manager, has been involved with GIS and GIS-related quality control for almost twenty years.

This is the second member-oriented tool that the NAR has licensed Maponics data to power.  Last year, the organization selected Maponics for its new Realtors Property Resource ^TM (RPR), an online library compiling valuable data for every property in the US. This extensive database leverages Maponics School District and School Attendance Zone Boundaries, as well as our Neighborhood and  ZIP Code Boundaries, to enable REALTORS® to search for property information by key geographic areas.

• exposing vital community characteristics using neighborhood boundaries
• decoding which nearby schools children can attend with school attendance zones
• informing buyers of resources, regulations and taxes associated with cities and counties by utilizing their boundaries
• capturing the attention of on-the-go real estate shoppers with mobile geofences

Learn more about this session and vote now.  Not sure whether or not you’ll be at the conference? Give us your vote, and let us know – we’ll send you the key points immediately following the session.

• Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries – North America ™
• Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries – Europe ™
• Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries – Rest of World ™
• Maponics School Boundaries ™
• Maponics ZIP Code Boundaries ™

In local, most companies are still playing with cities and states as the base of their main keywords.  For example, every yellow pages site out there has a URL called “New York City Restaurants” but not nearly as many are targeting neighborhood-specific queries.  If you search Google right now, you’ll see about 1.2MM URLs in its index that target “New York City Restaurants”, but only about 4,000 that target “Tribeca Restaurants”.  And if you looked for URLs that targeted similar queries for zip codes or nearby landmarks, you would see similar small numbers.

So what does this mean to you?  One of the keys to playing the long-tail local SEO game is to expand your “keyword footprint” by providing URLs on your site that target niche queries such as neighborhood and zip code searches.  And the fewer sites that target these queries, the easier it is to rank well for them.  Now it can be tricky to add that much content to your site and get it indexed and ranked properly, but if you do not have the content, you have no chance of ranking.

In mobile, we are seeing Google in particular showing results in tighter and tighter clusters around the location of the mobile browser.  This means that to rank well for mobile queries your website/URL needs to be showing signals to Google that it is in fact close to the location of the person with the phone.  One way to do this is to use highly specific keywords that reference the desired location such as a neighborhood.

While SEO is an ever-evolving game, if you don’t have the data, you’re not even in the ballpark.

LocalSEOGuide is Andrew Shotland’s blog about local search engine optimization and local marketing trends.  Andrew provides “national” and local seo services to enterprise-level sites, startups and small businesses around the world.