Theres already two big disruptions underway to the delivery business. uber-type deliveries. made by people who happen to be closest to the warehouse and customer. and in a few years: driverless cars. now add a third disruption. drone delivery. that’s right. remote drones delivering packages to customers. and it seems a majority of millenials are receptive to the idea.

Millennials Are Most Receptive to the Idea of Drone Deliveries – See more at: https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Millennials-Most-Receptive-Idea-of-Drone-Deliveries/1014657#sthash.lhecQMIb.dpuf

Go to google and do a search for “king of the united states”. and you’ll see “barack obama” in google’s answer box. its a tricky situation that google has with their answer box when it comes to polarizing subjects, such as politics. the newest controversy in our industry is democrats being upset that if you do a search california’s prop 63, a republican answer shows up in the answer box. my guess is that google’s algorithm is going to have to figure out which websites have content that is political and provide a democrat answer and a republican answer. this could also be done when it comes to questions such as the origin of earth. you could have a religious answer and an atheist answer. (disclosure: search engine land, like many in the tech industry, writes from a democrat perspective)

Direct answer fail: Google gives only one side of proposed gun ammo & magazine law

Coming soon to Google, Bing, and Yahoo: apps!

That’s right.

The way this is going to work is when you’re on your cell phone and you go on Google, Bing, or Yahoo and search for something, not only will you get links to websites. You’ll also now possibly get links to download apps that answer your search question.

They’re currently beta-testing, which means they’re experimenting on a small scale for now.

If this does get traction and gets rolled out, it’s going to be a big advantage for small businesses to be early adopters and get their apps entrenched in organic, search engine optimization listings.

One of the biggest drawbacks of creating an app for a small business has been the fact that the app is only valuable if people download it.

Well, if businesses’ can get their apps in search engines, there could be some real potential here.

Noted internet marketing guru Greg Sterling recently wrote an article where based off of data from Google and comScore, he’s calculating that people that search for something locally could make up close to half of all searches on search engines.

This is huge to grasp.

For any small business that doesn’t actively market themselves on the internet because they think that the search engines are for big, nationwide companies, half of all people searching on the search engines are looking for LOCAL businesses.

There have been some in the internet marketing industry making a big deal about how voice search is the future of our business. (aka Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, OK Google, etc.)

I think it has a ways to go though.

Search engines on computers and cell phones offer the benefit of choice. You can look at various websites and click on those you want to.

Voice search is limited in the sense that it doesn’t offer choice.

There are some industries where voice search can be more successful, like when customers have zero loyalty to a brand. Like taxi cabs. I would think most people could be Ok with asking Siri for a cab and talking to a random company. Or someone that wants to be surprised by calling a mystery restaurant.

But a lot of small businesses charge a decent amount of money for their products and services where consumers will want to do their research.

If there was a way voice search could offer the choice, then I think it’s use could get more wide spread.

According to study done by Blue Nile, 27% of keywords searched for in 2015 are done in the form of a question.

So in other words keywords like “average price of limo service” or “moving service near me”.

I’ve noticed the past few years, more and more, study after study is showing searchers getting more specific with what keywords they’re searching for.

And sure, in the auto repair industry, “auto repair” does get searched for more than any other individual keyword. But it’s not getting searched for as much as it once did.

Because there’s been a dramatic rise in how many people will search “brake repair” or “affordable auto repair” or “discount ford auto repair”.

I’ve been saying the same thing to our small business clients: there is a TON of opportunity targeting these specific keywords.

The rest of the search engine optimization industry hasn’t caught up yet. So it’s likely your small business competitors aren’t caught up either.

For years, search engine optimization companies used link building tactics Google wasn’t happy about to produce better rankings.

But since 2012, Google has slowly but surely wiped out nearly every effective link building technique.

And one Google spokesman has even gone as far to say that trying to do link building can do more harm than good.

And of course, Google could just be trying to scare people into not doing it anymore, but the past year or so, the SEO industry has formed a consensus to focus on content instead of link building.

The reasons are that Google is now confident in knowing if people are trying to game the link building system. So if you try it and Google catches you, Google might remove you from their search engine for a period of time, aka a Google penalty.

It couldn’t be any more clear that in 2015, the way to get better SEO rankings is through content.

The last few years, the advertising industry has been paying close attention to consumers preferences on how to pay to watch video on the internet.

Would people prefer to watch a quick ad before their video plays like on YouTube? Or would people prefer to pay like they do on Netflix or Amazon Prime?

A recent study suggests that people would rather watch a quick ad.

Which is great news for businesses considering how it’s still very possible in the next 5-10 years that people will cancel their cable and dish TV service to just watch TV through the internet.

The opportunities for small businesses to advertise for TV watchers will be plentiful!

Normally, I keep my articles on the topics of internet marketing, but because we at Customwave have so many taxi and airport transportation clients, I felt that it’s relevant to write about Uber.

Right now, Uber is severely hurting the taxi industry. Why?

Because of the way Uber hires independent contractors as drivers, they don’t have to pay for the same insurance, permits and other business costs that virtually all taxi companies pay for.

Some people have said that Uber’s rise has come about because of superior technology and the ease of mobile payments, but at the end of the day (and especially in this economy), it comes down to price.

With lower costs, Uber’s prices under cut the other taxi companies.

And Uber’s background checks on the drivers they work with is questionable too. The San Francisco Chronicle details a couple incidents that have happened and how the district attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles are stepping in for a joint investigation.

To make matters even worse, CNN did a story on how Uber allegedly has hired other independent contractors to sabotage competitors similar to them. CNN reports that these contractors make calls to rival airport transportation companies and cancel them at the last minute. CNN’s numbers say this has been done at least 5,600 times.

My message to taxi companies is hang in there. Uber is not going to be able to get away with what they’re doing forever.

The government is going to have to step in, but not to save the taxi industry. They’re going to step in because if Uber continues to get away with not paying for insurance, permits and other stuff, what’s stopping all the other taxi companies from operating the same way?

That’s why Uber eventually will be forced to play by the rules everyone else does.

If I can point to one thing to show off how important website advertising is and will become, it’s this eMarketer study forecasting that by 2018 digital or internet advertising revenue will surpass TV advertising revenue.

So what can we learn from this?

The goal of the vast majority of TV advertisers is branding and to build awareness. Internet website advertising can achieve the exact same thing, but the cost is tons lower and people are realizing how much of a bigger bang for a buck they get advertising on websites versus TV.

Why is this the case?

The simplistic answer is that website advertising has tons more inventory than TV. By inventory, I mean places to advertise on.

I know there’s tons of TV channels out there. 1,000. Maybe 2,000 tops for the average household that has cable or dish TV.

But think of how many websites there are on the internet. Yeah, a lot more.

And with so, so, so much supply and only a bit of demand, it equals very low cost.

Small business owners especially have a giant opportunity to brand their companies and build awareness in the local like never before. I highly recommend people take advantage of it.