Google Local Services Grows, Facebook Mints Money

Good morning. It’s Monday, November 6th. Tomorrow is Election Day throughout the U.S. Please vote. Also, Veteran’s Day is Saturday. Many people and companies will observe the holiday on Friday.

Highlights

Google’s Local Services program expands
Facebook generated $800 million per week last quarter.
A new look at voice search shows 20% of mobile Google searches are made by voice. That’s a huge number showing mobile’s acceleration as the device we use.

Google Local Services is the new name of the pilot program called Home Services. The program is open to locksmiths, plumbers, electricians, HVAC, and garage door services. Those categories aren’t new–they were prominent in lead generation businesses years ago and the yellow pages before that.

Google is broadening the program to 30 markets from the initial 17. Their announcement

Facebook had a great and a terrible week.

The financial results are staggering: $10.3 billion in quarterly revenue, which is 47% growth over last year’s revenue. There were 20 million total users ten years ago. There are now 1.37 billion DAILY users.

The terrible part of Facebook’s week came on Capitol Hill, and although they shared Congressonal scoldings with Google and Twitter, most media latched on to the social media company’s advertising of Russian-based messages targeting U.S. cultural divisions. Here is a link to the ads that House Democrats posted online.

After looking them over, head over to Patrick Ruffini’s “Why Russia’s Facebook ad campaign wasn’t such a success” in the Post.

Spotlight Headlines

The best article I’ve read about this industry in years is the NYT’s “How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Start-Ups. Allow some time. It’s 7,000+ words.

Also check out SitePro News’ infographic 10 Essential Holiday Marketing Tactics for 2017 and Summit Hosting’s fun take on “Office Jargon Sentiment”

Monday Coffee Break

Max Lanman shot a video to help his girlfriend sell her 1996 Honda.

He made the video “special” because that’s one of his superpowers. This will be one of the week’s top viral videos. It’s been accelerating (groan) since its launch Thursday.