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If you’ve ever done a city-based search for a local business anywhere in the United States, you may or may not have noticed that results are often located near the center of town, and sometimes they’re not. This can be massively confusing for business owners hoping to have their locations listed properly among searches conducted using Google Maps. It can be especially frustrating for businesses that are in major metro areas like New York City, Miami, Dallas, San Diego and others. Since I live and work in LA, I’m using Los Angeles as an example for viewing the map centroid.

Los Angeles Google Map Centroid

To find a centroid for the city you may be researching, go to Google or Google maps, and type in the name of the city. After you hit search, you should get a map that you can click on. This may not be the case for areas of lesser population, but for midsized and large metros, the results should be there. Look for the red place marker with the letter A (as an example there is a marker in the above image right next to the words “Los Angeles”). I added a little bubble where I live in Venice Beach, which when viewing at this level, does not get listed on the map.

Los Angeles City Hall near centroid

Zooming the map in a notch we can see that the centroid for Los Angeles is located near City Hall. At this level, no other cities are listed, but we begin to see transportation information (Los Angeles Union Station), downtown Los Angeles areas of interest (Civic Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, El Pueblo De Los Angeles Historic Monument), and downtown LA business information (Edison, Philippe’s French Dip, Ahmanson Theatre), as well as street names and nearby freeway information.

Los Angeles Fire Department and Los Angeles Police Department

Taking our magnifying glass and zooming in an additional notch we can now see outlines of building architecture. We also see business information, transportation information, and municipalities that were not appearing in the previous view. Not only do we see Los Angeles City Hall located near the centroid, we can also see that the Los Angeles Fire Department and Los Angeles Police Department appear very close to the centroid. In fact, it looks like the centroid for Los Angeles is at the address of the downtown LA Police Department.

Notice in the image above there’s more business information listed as well. Besides highlighting the LA Fire Department, I circled a well-known LA business, the Los Angeles Times. If you look carefully you may also see Pitfire Pizza and Curry House Take-Out Store. Not surprisingly, when I search Pizza Los Angeles or Los Angeles Pizza, the pit fire restaurant located right near the center of town appears as the top result in the map seven pack. However, the results are not similar when conducting a map related search for Curry Los Angeles or Los Angeles Curry. Go figure.

Los Angeles Health Insurance Quote and Computer Repair?

One more zoom in and now things really get interesting. Can you say map spam? I wasn’t expecting this, but it’s a reality, so we may as well cover it. We see that the centroid is near certainly listed at the police department downtown. We still see some transportation information (the bus icons), but additional businesses are also listed. I know the downtown Los Angeles area well, as I use to have a chiropractic office located on Spring Street. The pizza place and the curry takeout restaurant are real businesses located in the downtown area.

The Computer Repair Los Angeles business stood out being that it was in all-caps. I was beginning to think that this business didn’t really exist where it was being listed. Take a look for yourself using street view. Funny enough, street view shows the address for this business basically in the middle-of-the-road at the intersections of Main Street and 1st Street (you don’t get much more center of Los Angeles than that). It appears that there is no actual business located at Los Angeles Flowers, LA Health Insurance Quote, or even Los Angeles Garage Door. Knowing downtown Los Angeles is extremely popular for commercial flower purchasing, I thought there may actually be a flower business at that location, sadly all I could see via street view was a bus stop. One other listing, Los Angeles General Services Department, is for real, as it is a city government office.

I was not expecting to see what appears to be four different map spam business listings located so close to the city centroid, but I’m not surprised. After researching a little bit further, I saw several other clear examples of Google Map spam, which included a number of different business categories. The sad thing is these listings are likely affecting the map rankings (and incomes) of legitimate business owners in the city of Los Angeles, and unfortunately the majority of them are not even aware of it.

In summary: The centroid for Los Angeles appears nearest municipal buildings like the police department, fire department and Civic Center in downtown LA. Zooming in provides users with useful information regarding local related businesses, services, and places of interest. Zooming in further and staying near the city centroid, results in map spam.

Think Local SEO is easy? Think again. I recommend every business owner take the time to do some research on what businesses appear nearby their city centroid using Google maps. I also recommend reading Matt McGee’s post on Local SEO being harder than you may think.

A couple of weeks ago I took a photo of a hand xray using my iPhone. Normally, I’d use a digital camera but I have to always remind myself to turn the flash off, since taking photos of x-rays with the flash on makes for a bad image. I was impressed how the photo came out so I think I’ll start shooting more images using my phone and see how things go. In the meantime I created a flickr iPhone photoset for photos taken while in my LA ADIO Chiropractic office.

Wrist Hand X-Ray

With some lighting techniques I think I could get some pretty good quality images of xrays taken with an iPhone. What’s most cool about this is that anyone using there phone can take photos the same way. It’s an easy way to “digitize” xray files when you are visiting a health care facility.

Suggested search results for Do I Have…

LOL, these are too funny, or sad, depending on how you look at it.

I got volunteered over the weekend to do some development on the chiropractors twitter profile, and before I began looking around the net for a place to get page profiles done, I figured I’d post the information here so I could come back to it if needed.

Basically, the twitter profile for chiropractors hasn’t been too active, and I’d like to get things better organized and looking more professional for when the account starts getting tweeted from regularly.

Chiropractors Twitter Profile Screenshot

Unlike the @chiropractic profile I use for my personal account, this twitter profile is intended to represent all practicing doctors of chiropractic in the United States. One of the goals on the table is to help users locate chiropractors and answer questions regarding the field and/or practice of chiropractic. That being said I wouldn’t want the profile page to be a photograph of an individual, rather I’d want to be something that was representative of an entire industry.

There are quite a few services I’ve seen that create twitter backgrounds and graphics, with some being free and others costing anywhere from 20 bucks to $150. I’m sure in cases where a graphic artist has custom designed a twitter profile for a specific brand or individual (like some social media guru) the costs involved may be higher.

I haven’t given it much thought so I think I’ll be checking out a number of current twitter landing pages and custom designs to see what’s out there. I figure while a profile page background is getting designed we may as well go ahead and have a matching avatar created as well. If you’ve seen good examples of landing pages or profiles please point them out. Also, if you have a good source for affordable computer graphic design work, let me know.

April 13-15: Webmasters, Social Media Experts, SEOs, Online Marketing Managers (and just plain great people) descended on the Richardson Civic Convention Center in Dallas Texas for PubCon South 2010, a three-day educational conference and industry trade show specifically programmed for web professionals and website owners.

I traveled with my Canon Rebel Digital SLR camera, along with a new L-series lens, and was planning on taking lots of photos, but I found myself gabbing and taking notes rather than shooting photographs. When I returned home, I discovered less than two dozen pictures on the SD card, so I have far less photos to share than what I had from the 2009 PubCon Las Vegas.

13 incredibly smart and attractive people in the field of search and online marketing

Steve Plunkett (guy in the back holding up the peace sign) gets credit for getting people together for this photograph (LOL to who mentioned I was a CNN published photographer). For those that might want to print an original size of this photo and post it on your bedroom wall, you can view and download it from my photo set on Flickr. Who’s all in the photo? Post a comment and let’s get all 13 of these folks identified with proper link love. I have almost all the names, I’ll update this soon.

Brett Tabke speaking on Social Media at PubCon

The master of ceremonies, Brett Tabke answers questions related to social media (with a colorful Barack Obama image on the screen in background), during one of the many sessions held during the three-day conference.

The Men in Black Sunglasses – Steve Plunkett and Matt Siltala

These two guys are full of style, and are quite fun to hang out with at an SEO conference. Matt Siltala is an SEO based in Phoenix Arizona, and I have no clue where Steve Plunkett is based out of, I just know he can get the job done. Steve gets bonus points for being an NFL lover and Oakland Raiders fan like myself.

Michael Martin of Mobile Martin

San Diego’s own Michael Martin, an SEO, Computer Engineer, and contributor for several search engine related publications. Michael currently does a lot of lead generation  for topics like phone systems and voice over IP phones. You can find him on twitter under the username googleandblog.

Ben Fisher – Serial Entrepreneur – speaking at PubCon

I’ve listened to Ben Fisher speak at several search and social media related conferences. You may know him from his Social Dude website or his techpadagency profile on twitter. Based in Phoenix Arizona, Ben has been known to drive  all the way to Los Angeles to order coffee on a weeknight and talk tech with Internet friends.

Kenny Hyder enjoying good times at PubCon Dallas 2010

If you’re going to a search conference, Kenny’s a great guy to be hanging out with. He’ll keep you up late and make sure you get very little sleep, so your minds not focused on work, and can actually soak up fresh information. An independent marketing consultant, Kenny has numerous skills in the field of search and social media. You may be able to find him in Santa Barbara California but you’ll more likely find him on twitter.

Allrighty then, that’s some of the folks from PubCon Dallas 2010, see y’all in Las Vegas in November!

Testing iPhone photo uploads to the blog.

The above text was posted via mobile (along with the photo below). The remaining content are notes on what’s going on and what I am working to improve.

I’ve been talking about how I want to develop a theme for uploading photos from mobile devices so I’ll be doing some tests here and posting my notes.

There is an iPhone Wordpress app so one can create posts on the go. There is also ability to geolocate the post. The iPhone already geocodes photos (I’m fairly certain) with info added to the exif data of the jpeg files. These are good things but I want more.

One thing I noticed quickly was that the image link URL was ugly as hell, that will have to be modified so image files are more SEO friendly.

Also related to the image I had to go and manually edit via “Edit Image Title” and then “Edit Alternate Text” in the Advanced Settings. Too many steps for my comfort. Will work on a way to optimize this.

SearchFest 2010 took place on Tuesday, March 9th, at the Governor Hotel in downtown Portland Oregon. The event was put on by the Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland (SEMpdx).

The Governor Hotel was fantastic, I loved the old style architecture, the classic Jake’s Grill on the first floor, and the full-sized Starbucks in the lobby. I made Monday a very productive day, utilizing the hotel’s free WiFi, and sitting nearby the fireplace in a comfortable lobby setting.

I took far less photographs than I had anticipated, mostly because I was focused on soaking up new knowledge from some of my favorite people in search, but partly also because of the large sized rooms, and my comfort sitting in the back. I did manage to take around a dozen photos, but you likely wouldn’t be able to recognize the people in them, since I found my lens pointing more to the architecture. Here are six photographs I particularly liked.

SearchFest 2010 Keynote Speaker: Stefan Weitz, Director of Bing

This was one of the first photos I took. Stefan Weitz, Director of Bing, delivered the morning keynote inside a huge ballroom located on the fourth floor. From the outside the hotel didn’t even appear that it could house a room this large. Throughout the day I found myself daydreaming about the spectacular events that must have taken place in this room during the past century. Its history now includes SearchFest 2010.

John Andrews of Upper Left Placement

The above photo was taken during a presentation by Seattle SEO John Andrews of Upper Left Placement. If you didn’t get a chance to hear his talk, see if you can get a copy of his PowerPoint presentation, and maybe invite him out for some fine wine and a meal the next time you see him. John’s presentation alone was worth the trip I made to Portland from Los Angeles.

In the photograph, you may notice there are animals adorning the upper parts of the walls, near the ceiling. They appeared to be some sort of lion or jaguar and I love how their tails were encircled.

Marty Weintraub of aimClear Search Marketing

I like this pic I took of Marty Weintraub (aimclear on twitter) because it 1) shows Marty in his “always working” posture, and 2) shows the second floor hallway in the Gov. Hotel. It’s an image of modern day man, working with the latest tools and technology, surrounded by architecture of a century ago.

Jordan Kasteler of Search and Social (aka Man with MacBook)

It was difficult for me to capture the sheer size of the room, I would have brought along a wide-angle lens had I realized there’d been such an opportunity. The above photo, contrasting Jordan Kasteler of Search and Social to a ginormous pillar, provides a look at how high the ceilings really were. Jordan was speaking on the Tools & Competitive Intelligence track.

Man of Fidelity – Neil Patel

You likely can’t see it in this 500 pixel wide photograph (larger version can be viewed here), but the walls inside the ballroom were engraved with inscriptions, featuring key words like Charity and Fidelity. As Neil Patel (neilpatel on twitter) was approaching the stage to speak, I took this photo, showing how small we are in comparison to the principles we work to uphold.

2nd Floor Hallway – Governor Hotel – Portland Oregon

Lastly, a photograph of the 2nd floor hallway inside the Gov. Hotel. Most of us were busy moving about to the different session rooms throughout the day, and we may not have had a chance to pause and soak in the beauty of this fine hotel. This is probably my favorite picture from this set, makes me want to go back and shoot more photos with a wide-angle lens. Perhaps I’ll get my chance with SearchFest 2011.

What a great time in South Florida for Super Bowl XLIV. I didn’t bring along my Canon Rebel DSLR because I didn’t think it would get past security (but of course, I saw loads of people with professional cameras and no photographer credentials inside the stadium) so all I had was my iPhone and a Nikon CoolPix S560 camera. Taking photos with my phone turned out to be an easier task anyways. At some point during the Superbowl that would’ve certainly been beer spilled on my more expensive camera rig.

AFC NFC World Championship Game

I picked up my tickets at will call early Sunday afternoon, which left plenty of time to head on over to the stadium early. Tickets read… National Football League Super Bowl XLIV – AFC-NFC World Championship Game Sunday, February 7, 2010, 6 PM Dolphin Stadium, South Florida.

Dolphin Stadium – South Florida

Once we got past the massive security lines and screenings this is what things looked like on the inside. The huge Superbowl 44 Roman numerals can be seen from miles away. Like I’m seeing at lots of stadiums across the US, there was a Wal-Mart nearby, it was crazy packed, but there was no stadium parking permitted in the lot. Parking for Super Bowl XLIV was at a premium, starting at $75 and easily up to $300 for a premium parking space.

Raiders NFL display

Once you were inside the official tailgate area there was a multitude of things to do. There was lots of beer, BBQ’s, cars on display, vendors giving away Superbowl 44 schwag, and a player display for every team in the NFL. I really like that every team was represented, and the displays were really popular amongst fans. If you weren’t a die hard Indianapolis Colts or New Orleans Saints fan, you could get your photo taken with team colors of your choice.

Oakland Raiders – Silver and Black

I really liked that they had these NFL team displays set up. At this point I wished I had brought along my DSLR camera, but I settled for handing someone my iPhone and snapping pictures on several occasions. Fortunately, the Southern Florida sun was cooperating and giving us pretty good light throughout the daytime festivities.

End Zone Super Bowl XLIV

The view from our seats was spectacular. There were huge TV screens on either side of the stadium, and we had a clear view of all the action taking place on the field. I recently paid a premium to sit front row on the 40 yard line for a Ravens Raiders game, and while you are close enough to meet players, the seating turned out to be a horrible view of the field. I’d much rather sit up higher so I can get a clear view of action taking place.

Super Bowl XLV will be taking place in Dallas on February 6, 2011, at the recently built Cowboys stadium.

Disclaimer: There are links in this post that are potentially not safe for work (nsfw). I want to give credit where credit is due and I believe providing links to source material (and those who made this post possible) is the best way to do so. I’m also linking to twitter profiles (some of which may be considered nsfw) in cases where persons permitted me to take their photos.

Thanks to the Internet, what happens in Vegas, doesn’t necessarily stay in Vegas (especially when I’m traveling with two cameras and my iPhone). What fun would my trip down the red carpet for the star-studded adult video awards show be if I couldn’t share any stories or photos? How is it that I got invited to the 2010 AVN Awards and to walk the red carpet? I’ll address that in more detail in another post. For now, I will just say thank you to my friend Kimbirly Orr at Viral Media West.

Many of those who know me are aware I love taking photos. I post stuff consistently to my Flickr photo stream and I often use photos in posts I do about conferences and other topics. I took hundreds of photos while at the AVN Awards (I never actually got to see the show live as I backstage taking even more photos) and I got permission to post a few sets here. Please note that while I took these photos, they are exclusively licensed to AVN, and they (along with the talent featured) should receive link credit if used.

Enough already, here’s a select set of my photos from the 2010 AVN Awards Red Carpet Walk at the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. If by any chance I identified someone incorrectly, please post a comment and I’ll get the information updated, my apologies in advance if I’ve done so.

Jessica Drake & Jesse Jane

Jessica Drake and Jesse Jane hosting on the 2010 AVN Awards red carpet event. Photos were taken inside, before celebrities and adult superstars walked along the red carpet towards the theater inside the Palms. There were thousands of fans outside, and as you could expect, the place was a madhouse.

Dylan Ryder w Tommy Gunn

You may think I am odd (it’s my anatomically correct mindset) but I love this photo of adult film star Dylan Ryder because her clavicles line up perfectly. You may not have noticed at first but I’m happy to point it out.

Sasha Grey Being Interviewed at 2010 AVN Awards

There were lots of interviews taking place along the red carpet. The above photo is of Sasha Grey being interviewed just before reaching the AVN Awards Twitter Pit (there was a whole group of social media peeps broadcasting tweets and pics of red carpet happenings live during the event).

Savanna Samson on AVN Awards Red Carpet

There’s something about Savanna that really grabbed my attention, thankfully Savanna Samson paused long enough so I could take her photo, while she was walking the red carpet.

Dana DeArmond Visits the Twitter Pit

No stranger to twitter, Dana DeArmond (who had iPhone in hand) stopped and visited the Twitter Pit during her walk along the 2010 AVN Awards red carpet. She has perfect teeth.

2010 AVN Awards Host Kayden Kross

One of the hosts for the 2010 AVN Awards was Kayden Kross. Not only is she a stunning beauty, in the brief moments I spoke to her, she showed a glowing attitude and a great sense of humor.

Angelina Armani Red Carpet 2010 AVN Awards

I’m so thankful people paused so I could take photos. It may not seem like it in the pictures, but the place was chaos with people, fans and photographers everywhere, trying to grab pictures or just say hello to adult celebrities. Angelina Armani not only stopped for photos, she paused so we could take photos with some of the people working the twitter pit (I will share those pictures in another post).

If I keep adding photos this page is going to take forever to load. I still have pics to share from backstage, and I’ll include a link right here when that post is complete. Once again, many thanks to the awesome folks at AVN and Kimbirly Orr of Viral Media West for making my entire AVN weekend in Las Vegas sensational!

WebmasterWorld’s Search & Internet Marketing Conference (PubCon Vegas) was held November 10-13 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada. PubCon Vegas 2009 featured many incredibly talented individuals speaking on their areas of expertise, with topics geared for webmasters, affiliates, search engine marketers, SEOs, program managers and more. With as many as 6 sessions taking place at a time, PubCon Las Vegas offered something for everyone. I’ve already marked my calendar for PubCon South 2010 Dallas on April 13-15, 2010.

Being that there’s so many sessions taking place at the same time it’s tough for one person to get around to all the rooms and still be able to listen in on presentations. I found myself going to rooms to take photos of speakers, and then sitting down for the presentation, so I didn’t make it to as many rooms as I would’ve liked to. Fortunately, there are already hundreds of 2009 PubCon photos posted on Flickr. For those interested, my entire 2009 PubCon Vegas photo set is on Flickr as well.

Rhea Drysdale of Outspoken Media

Rhea Drysdale is the Chief Operating Officer at Outspoken Media, an Internet marketing company made up of respected industry leaders. Rhea did an excellent presentation on reputation management and it’s obvious she’s real passionate about what she does.

Marty Weintraub and Scott Hendison

Marty Weintraub of Aim Clear has crazy energy. Every time I see Marty he’s always smiling. He was on more sessions than I can recall. The 3 day schedule kept him busy for sure. Scott Hendison is a Portland, Oregon based Internet consultant. When I spoke on the local search panel and recommended businesses hire experts to handle their SEO campaigns, I was referring to people like Scott.

Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide

Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, one of the best sites I know of where small businesses can get information on search engine optimization and search engine marketing techniques. I sat in on Jennifer’s panel for the Reputation Monitoring and Management session, something every business owner and brand evangelist should have more knowledge of.

From left to right… Greg Finn – Chris Winfield – Marcus Tandler

The above photo is a great example of “it’s who you know not what you know”, I’ve been real fortunate to become friends with so many talented individuals in the SEO and social media space. Greg is the Director of Internet marketing for 10e20 and he puts on some butt kicking presentations. Chris Winfield is the 10e20 President and Co-Founder. He’s one of the most respected individuals in the industry. He lives an attitude of goodwill and when he says he’s got your back, your golden. Marcus Tandler is another online marketing superhero. Marcus is the CEO of a German-based SEO company. You can find him hanging out with the best of the best at the SEO Oktoberfest in Munich Germany.

Krista Neher on PubCon Panel

You know when you attend a conference and somebody says one thing that you can take away, making the entire event worth the investment? While I got lots of great information at PubCon it was one thing Krista Neher said during the reputation management panel that resulted in a shifting of my headspace. I love coming home with a change in perspective.

Brian Combs on the Universal Search Panel

The Universal Search panel was my most “wow” attended session of the week. I was not prepared for the high level of presentations and was sort of expecting a same old same old discussion of stuff I already knew. It was pleasing to see how wrong I was. Brian Combs, owner of Local SEO firm, ionadas local, wowed the crowd with information on local search as it relates to universal. It’s a lot more than photographs and video.

Kate Morris of Marketing Demons

Kate Morris is a holistic search engine marketing consultant, she was on several panels I attended, and I really love the session on Landing Page Optimization. Kate has that positive energy attitude that I’ve seen in so many of my Internet friends, a quality that motivates me to attend more conferences, in hopes of discovering similar people.

Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick and Search Engine Roundtable

No Search Engine Conference is complete without the live blogging expertise of Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick Web design and Development, and the Search Engine Roundtable. Barry has his fingers on the pulse of the search community and he shows an incredible dedication to serving the industry of search, in part with his live blogging efforts, as well as with his numerous search engine topic related posts.

Michael Streko of KnowEm Username Check

Michael Streko is a cofounder of KnowEm, a service that allows people to search more than 340 popular social media networks, allowing them to secure their brand across the social web. While at PubCon, I sat in on Michael’s presentation on Competitive Intelligence, and I took away lots of juicy information.

Matt Siltala speaking at PubCon 2009

I caught the above photo of Matt Siltala during the Competitive Intelligence: Know Thy Competitor Well session. Matt is a search engine optimization consultant who specializes in Natural Search, Social Media Marketing, Link Building Strategies, Link Baiting and Reputation Management. He is also a huge Arizona Cardinals fan. You can never have enough friends that love watching NFL football.

Michael Gray speaking at 2009 PubCon in Las Vegas

Michael Gray, known to many in the world of SEO as Graywolf, who frequently posts on his Wolf Howl blog, is one of the people I most admire in the industry of search. What I like so much about Michael is that he’s a real guy that stands up for his principles and beliefs, regardless of what the current consensus is among others in online search and social media spaces. Respect.

Tony Adam and his BillShrink branded laptop

Tony Adam is the director of search engine optimization at BillShrink, a service that can save you money on gas, cell phones, cell phone plans and credit cards. Tony appeared to be speaking at the same times as I was so I didn’t get a chance to attend any of his sessions. I’ve known Tony for a few years now and he’s at the top of my list for Most Awesome Dudes. Has an amazing work ethic that carries over into his relationships with friends and industry professionals. He is another one of those “got your back” kind of people.

I have pretty much posted all of my daytime Vegas session photos to a PubCon photo set if you want to view them all, thanks to everyone that retweeted this post. @chiropractic