Yelp, SEO Analysis & Web traffic

Bug Bytes is a weekly roundup of the Web’s best links, blog posts, and news articles related to web design, application development, and online marketing. Continue the conversation and share your thoughts on these stories in the comments below – we’d love to hear your own insights!

Yelp Targets Foursquare, Facebook With Check-In Offers

Yelp continues to update their platform by adding new, competing features —“check-in offers.” This is similar to what Foursquare and Facebook offer, in which users check in to local business and broadcast to their network of friends. This “check-in” feature essentially gets consumers to advertise the businesses they patronize and rewards them accordingly. Foursquare has had success establishing check-in deals for “mayors,” securing partnerships with Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and many other businesses. Facebook, since introducing its “Places” platform, has successfully brought local social networking to the mainstream, and is in the process of working out deals, as well.

Microdata, Analytics & More

Facebook E-Mail

Early last week, it was revealed that Facebook acquired the domain name “fb.com,” evidently tied to the company’s new email system being rolled out over the coming months. The “New Messages” system will incorporate the existing messages application, as well as an email service. It is speculated that the facebook.com domain will be limited to Facebook’s staff members, and fb.com will be used to all other consumers.

Facebook Ads & Google Classes

Video Branding Power

Online video advertising continues to grow at a rapid pace in the US. Internet research company eMarketer forecasts a gross spend of over $1.5 billion by the end of Q4 2010. However, publishers and video ad networks are concerned with video advertising’s efficacy. Additionally, according to a survey by BrightPoll, advertisers see standardization of formats across ad networks as the greatest barrier to online video growth.

Blekko, Facebook Metrics & More

Blekko – The Slash tag Search Engine

Blekko is a web search engine that aims to provide better search results than those offered by traditional search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Launched publicly November 1, Blekko uses “slash tags,” similar to hash tags in Twitter, as a method of providing semantic context to deliver better results for common searches.

Bing-Facebook Partnership

Microsoft and Facebook announced a new feature for Bing‘s search results. The two companies are collaborating to integrate information from your Facebook friends into your Bing results pages. Because Microsoft owns a stake in Facebook (MS invested $240 million in Facebook back in 2007), this represents a competitive advantage for the Microsoft-branded search engine that can’t be replicated by Google, the champion of search engine market share.