Local search site CitySquares has made a very cool acquisition. They’ve purchased an online retail directory, Yokel.com.

Yokel is designed to help you find which local stores carry specific products or brands. It was the brainchild of Scott Randall and Don Zereski and launched in 2006.

CitySquares has been one of the fastest growing local search engines. It began in the Northeast and quickly expanded nationwide. Acquisitions such as Yokel will help advance CitySquares’ place in the fast-growing local search landscape.

After years of speculation, Apple is finally expected to unveil its new tablet product at the end of the month. There is great anticipation over the new device, with rumors, predictions and punditry littering the blogosphere.

Apple fanboys and girls can’t get enough. They’re turning to the search engines to gobble up any ounce of information about the new gadget. Hitwise has the data:

If you go to Google.com/news and scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll now see Fast Flip. This is a visual-based news platform that was launched into Labs last September. It’s designed to enable users to read the news similar to how they would a print edition – there are pages, that you flip through.

Google was keen to point out that Fast Flip remains in Labs. But it is a feature that is quickly growing. Last month, 55 resources were added to Fast Flip.

This does appear to be an attempt by Google to coddle traditional news publishers. Many of them are losing ad revenues and subscriptions due to the dang internet. Perhaps displaying the news online in a format that mimics print will allay fears. It will only do so if adopted by web users, however. And for that, we shall see.

Landing page optimization (#lpo) can be a powerful way to increase conversion rates and to get more people to complete online forms.

What you do after the form-fill can be even more important.

If your next step is to follow up over the phone, you are probably kissing away money and costing your company a fortune – unless you dial the phone within five minutes…

Delaying your first-dial response time from 5 to just 30 minutes decreases your chances of qualifying the lead by 21 times!

Even delaying the first-dial from 5 minutes to 10 will cut your lead qualification percentage by a factor of four.

This information comes from a joint study between M.I.T. and InsideSales.com (download the whitepaper)

How much effect does a 21x increase in qualification have on the overall sales revenue of a
company?

How many companies understand the importance of this strategy?

There is no excuse for not having a fast first-call time with power dialers from InsideSales.com natively integrated into CRM platforms like SalesForce.com.

So get off your butt, and on the phone – the clock is ticking…

The French government is working on a tax plan to charge online advertising revenue generated from actions within their country, Clickz reported Friday. Just how they would determine the numbers will be interesting to see.

” A report presented to the French government this week suggests that each time an ad is clicked, online firms should be charged a levy of between one and two percent of the revenue generated, which would then be used to compensate media and content owners in other sectors, such as recorded music or print media, for example.

The proposal, commissioned by the government, was written by former music executive Patrick Zelnik, former minister Jacques Toubon, and the president of Sotheby’s France, Guillaume Cerutti. It singles out a number of major online ad firms including Yahoo, Microsoft, and search giant Google. According to the Guardian, Toubon told the Libération newspaper in France the aim of the proposal was to curb “the limitless enrichment” of the world’s leading internet players,” ClickZ stated.

The scope seems to be broader than PPC generated revenue and considering people spend money to get placement in the organic results and make money from the traffic it could become a tax on all search engine activity.

As SitePoint asks “how can the Government monitor sponsored links when they are clicked by French users? ISPs could be forced to implement link monitoring software but that’s a huge and costly undertaking. In addition, how would revenue amounts be associated with each link? Click costs can vary from a fraction of a cent to hundreds of dollars.”

Forcing ISPs to monitor the clicks and then determining if income was generated would be hard and then getting companies that have no offices or servers in France would create even more challenges.

Instant Answers is arguably one of Bing’s best features. If you want to know the score of a game or status of a certain flight, simply type it in and get the answers directly in the search results.

Various information has slowly been added to Instant Answers over time. The latest update involves adding the NBA Instant Answers to Bing’s mobile search site, which can be accessed at m.bing.com.

Here’s what it looks like:

Scroll down and you’ll see the regular search results, with tabs to filter results:

The Third Annual Crunchie Awards have been announced by Tech Crunch and Google and Bing are among the recipients. The awards are given to various areas of the technology field.

Facebook has won the best overall product award for all three years. The list of all winners is below:

Best Technology Achievement:
Backblaze
Bing (Microsoft)
Chrome OS (Google) (Winner)
Google Wave
PuSH
Silverlight (Microsoft)

Best Internet Application:
Animoto
Dropbox (Winner)
Groupon
MOG All Access
Posterous
Yelp

Best Social App:
Aardvark
Brizzly
DailyBooth
Farmville(Winner)
SocialVibe
StockTwits

Best Bootstrapped StartUp:
atebits (Tweetie)
Shoes of Prey
Tinychat (Winner)
Wildfire Interactive
wizehive
Wufoo

Best Mobile Application:
foursquare (Winner)
Google Voice
Gowalla
Kindle for iPhone
Skies of Glory
Tonchidot

Best International:
Amiando
Jolicloud
Playfish
Spotify (Winner)
TweetDeck
vente-privee.com

Best Time Sink Application:
Canabalt
Civilization Revolution (iPhone)
DailyBooth (Winner)
I Am T-Pain
Pandora
Zoosk

Best Design:
Animoto (Winner)
Brizzly
Chrome (Google)
Clicker
Facebook Mobile
Threadsy

Best Enterprise:
Amazon Web Services
Atlassian
Azure (Microsoft)
Chatter (Salesforce)
Google Docs/Office (Winner)
Yext

Best CleanTech:
CalStar Products
Locust Storage
Picarro
Sappphire Energy
Sun Run (Winner)
Tendril

Best New Gadget:
Apple Magic Mouse
Barnes & Noble nook (Winner)
litl webbookMotorola Droid
Sonos S5
Zune HD

Best Tech PR:
Brew Media Relations
LaunchSquad
OutCast Communications
PerkettPR
Spark (Winner)
SutherlandGold Group

Best Angel:
Betaworks
Chris Sacca (Lowercase Capital)
Jeff Clavier (SoftTechVC)
Ron Conway (SV Angel) (Winner)
Y-Combinator
Yossi Vardi

Best VC Firm:
Accel Partners (Winner)
Charles River Ventures
Benchmark Capital
Greylock Partners
Sequoia Capital
True Ventures
Union Square Ventures

Founder Of The Year:
Aaron Patzer (Mint) (Winner)
Elon Musk (Tesla)
Jack Dorsey (Square)
Jeremy Stoppelman & Russ Simmons (Yelp)
John Borthwick (Betaworks)
Omar Hamoui (AdMob)

CEO Of The Year:
Josh Silverman (Skype)
Marc Benioff (Salesforce)
Mark Pincus (Zynga) (Winner)
Neil Young (ngmoco)
Richard Rosenblatt (Demand Media)
Tony Hsieh (Zappos)

Best New Startup Or Product Of 2009:
Aardvark
Bing (Microsoft) (Winner)
Foursquare
Hunch
Milo
Spotify

Best Overall Startup Or Product Of 2009:
Android (Google)
Facebook (Winner)
LinkedIn
ngmoco
Twitter
Zynga

Google has added to their education/assistance information with the launch of an optimization center for Adwords, an area offering tips and strategies for all levels of Adwords’ users.

The center has gathered information from numerous specialists and categorized it into basic, intermediate and advanced to be accessible to all levels of ppc experience. There are also areas covering each account feature and advertising goals. Some of the center’s navigation points are listed below:

* Ads: Ensure your ads attract the right customers.
* Keywords: Choose relevant keywords that your customers are searching for.
* Targeting: Target the customers who most want to see your ad.
* Bidding & Budgeting: Control ad position and cost.
* Account Structure: Organise your account to mirror your business.

* Improve Return On Investment (ROI): Get more value from your advertising.
* Improve Ad Position: Raise the position of your ads to increase their visibility.
* Increase Sales and Leads: Get more clicks from customers who are ready to buy.
* Improve Click-Through Rate (CTR): Make your ads more relevant to potential customers.

The AOL/Google search partnership agreement is ending this year and according to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong the company will be looking for the best possible deal, though Google will get “firsts dibs”, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Initial reports had Armstrong stating the new partnership was open to the highest bidder, but the Wall Street Journal updated their online story to state that Google had “first dibs” – suggesting there was an option in the previous deal with Google.

Microsoft is interested in the partnership to increase its market share and AOL could “get the same economics from a new deal”, Armstrong said according to WJS.com.

AOL has about 2.9% of the search market, according to comScore, and would help push Microsoft over 30% when combined with their Yahoo deal. Google holds over 65%.

The added interest in AOL comes from its high click thru rate. AOL searchers have the highest CTR of all engines according to Chikita, Their CTR for ppc ads is over two and half times that of Google. Given the engines monetize through paid search the numbers become interesting.

Bing (1.74) and Yahoo (1.37) also have significantly higher CTRs compared to Google (0.98).

These higher CTRs would give Microsoft a chance to compete with Google in the one area where it counts – revenue. Interestingly, just like searchers, many advertisers just use Google – though in my experience there are better CPAs using the other engines. Since there are fewer advertisers the bids are lower – this may not be the case in the future if advertisers become aware of these figures.

If you’re rocking the iPhone or Android 2.0.1 or later (can you say, Nexus One?), then you’re getting access to a new feature on the Google mobile homepage. It’s called “Near Me Now” and you can access it via a link underneath the main search box (you know, where you type in the keywords).

Once there, you’ll – and I know this is going to blow your mind – find restaurants, businesses and other establishments that are in close proximity to your current location.

I’m a caffeine addict so naturally I wanted to see how good the coffee results were. With most geo-location apps and mobile web sites, it’s – eh – ok. This time, the skies opened, and singing rang through the heavens. Because, friends, Starbucks, Caribou and Camille’s are indeed the closest coffee shops!!!!! This really almost never happens.

Restaurants provided similar results. The results weren’t in perfect order of geographic distance from my location, but that’s not the total point.

Angus Barn is one of Raleigh’s most treasured restaurants and it happens to be quite close to me. Great first suggestion. Crazy Fire is, of course, part of a chain and quite popular. Azitra is one of the best Indian restaurants I’ve been to that wasn’t in India – another great suggestion.

I’m impressed because Google isn’t always this good with results in Raleigh-Durham (Neither is anyone else for that matter). But this is very spot-on.