We all knew it was coming and it’s here. Google has quietly added a “Call” link to their local business listings in Google Maps. For instance, go to http://maps.google.com and search for “eyeglasses in houston” and you’ll see Frames Direct as the top listing. If you click on the “call” link, you’ll get a form to input your phone number. If you do, Google will call your number and connect you to Frames Direct when you click on the “Connect for free” button. Google foots the bill. Read the rest of this entry »

Yahoo informed us a while back that they had problems with our navigation at http://www.framesdirect.com. Apparently, on the bottom of some of our catalog pages we had links to “More designer eyeglasses” where we would list other brands. Say for instance someone is looking at Ray Ban eyeglasses on our Ray Ban catalog page. At the bottom, we’d have a section for “Other designer eyeglasses” and list Rodenstock and others that came close alphabetically. We figured it was handy for the user and is pretty standard. Heck, even Amazon.com does it.

Yahoo, however, considered the practice to be spammy and redundant. Of course, when you try to ask what they mean, they basically just repeat themselves (look at our guidelines, etc.) and won’t give you any information.

We couldn’t figure out why they felt this way. Our competition is doing the same thing (and a lot worse) and Yahoo wasn’t giving them any grief.

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