We understand that not everyone is interested in the technical details, so we’ve posted those on the MapQuest Developer Blog. If you are an iOS developer, all you need to do is sign up for an app key on the MapQuest Developer Network, download the toolkit, and incorporate it into your iOS project. It’s that easy!

If you are not a developer, or wondering why this release is important to you, rest assured that this announcement is good news for you, too! Think about the iPhone and iPad apps that you regularly use. How many of those apps include maps or some type of geographic component? Because the MapQuest iOS Maps API is out of beta and now ready for developers to use, you can expect to see an increasing number of apps that incorporate the power of the MapQuest platform. It’s a win-win, both for developers and consumers.

If you have questions about this release, feel free to check out the MapQuest iOS Maps API Forum or tweet us at @MapQuestTech!

Check out our Developer Network today to sign up for a Community Edition license, get access to technical information, blog posts, forums and more.

We also offer our MapQuest Enterprise Edition for businesses that are looking for technical support, a service level agreement, geocoding only licenses and a whole bunch of other benefits. Call us (888-627-7837) or fill out our online form and one of our mapping gurus will reach out to discuss what might work best for you and your business. If you’re not sure whether Community or Enterprise is the best option for you, you can check out our Ts&Cs or just reach out to us and we can help you work thru that too.

p.s. Seriously, if you don’t love free, tweet hashtag #MapQuestTech – we’ll send the first 50 of you a free t-shirt to convince you.

Great for individuals or small businesses that don’t have the resources or technical skills to build a website, InstantPage makes it easy to launch an eye-catching website in less than five minutes. The addition of MapQuest helps Go Daddy website owners drive more traffic to their brick-and-mortar storefronts.

There’s no coding or HTML knowledge required to use the MapQuest feature on a Go Daddy website. From the Go Daddy site builder tool, simply choose the widget, type in your address and an actual map – not just a link – instantly displays. Visitors who want a larger map or directions to your store just click from the widget to a pre-populated MapQuest result form. What’s really cool is businesses with multiple locations can choose to display a separate map for each location or build one map that includes them all.

GoDaddy.com, which currently manages over 50 million domain names, gives InstantPage* away free with every new domain or you can choose to upgrade to WebSite Tonight for a small monthly fee. Both options allow you to easily integrate MapQuest maps.

*XXX domain names do not include free InstantPage.

What are MapQuest Premium Listings?
MapQuest offers two types of premium business listings – MapQuest Only and Multi-site. Both options ensure that your business listing not only reflects accurate information, but also helps your business stand out from your competition with a custom marketing message.

Custom Marketing Message in a MapQuest Premium Business Listing

Benefits of MapQuest Only Premium Listings
For only 27 cents per day, MapQuest Only Premium Listings helps your business stand out from the competition with a bright green tag and up to 50 characters of custom marketing text on MapQuest.com. In addition to the benefits of a free listing, the premium listing can help your business gain more clicks, phone calls, requests for directions, or clicks to your website. MapQuest has more than 40MM users per month and they will see your featured services, discount info or any other marketing messages when they’re searching for that category.

Benefits of Multi-site Premium Listings
If you upgrade to the Multi-site Premium Listing Package, your marketing message and listing information will not only be reflected on MapQuest, but also on 8 or more major sites including: Yelp, Yahoo!, SuperPages, CitySearch, White Pages, Yellowbook, YellowBot and LOCAL.  For about $1 per day, you can control your business listing across all of these sites from one location and ensure that your business information, such as your address, phone number, website and more, are accurate.  Rest assured that your listing is up-to-date and standing out when potential customers are searching are searching for your business.

How to Optimize Your Marketing Message
Here are some tips you can use for your premium listing Special Offer message.  You change the Special Offer message at any time and it will update on the site within four hours. You can also track the total impressions and clicks to your business listing to see how effective it is.

• Use your daily specials, like daily discount, happy hour, and latest products. These can attract more customers who are looking for good deals.
• Add your Featured Products and Services to help you get closer to your target market.
• Use your Awards as tag messages, as customers would always like to choose the business recognized as the best.
• Try your slogan or other messages to separate your business from the competition.

Success Story: Falls Motel
Falls Motel, a motel in International Falls, MN, took advantage of the multi-site premium listing allowing them to not only display accurate information across all the sites, but also highlight their Special Offer marketing message: Clean comfortable rooms at an affordable rate. You can see their listing now on MapQuest.com, Yahoo! and the other popular sites included in the package.

Sign up for a MapQuest Premium Listing today to stand out from your competitors!

Business Photos and Video
Stand out from the crowd by posting photos and a video of your business!  Once you’ve logged into the Local Business Center, go to the Enhance My Listing page and add a “Storefront Photo” so that customers can easily recognize your business from the road. If you have photos of your store’s interior or other relevant photos, add these to “Additional Photos”.  Make sure all photos are high quality images and enter a brief caption describing the photos, ideally using relevant keywords in order to optimize your search engine ranking.  A YouTube video can also be added. Just copy and paste the link to your video into the text box next to the “YouTube Video” section on the same page.

Business Hours and Payment Methods
Help customers easily find your business hours by adding them to the Enhance My Listing page under “Business Hours”. Be specific so that customers know which days of the week and hours of the day you are open. You can also let customers know the types of credit cards accepted, whether you take cash or checks, and if financing and invoicing are available options, under the “Payment Methods” section of the same page.

Location and Parking Tips
Help customers find your business easily by giving them details on where to park.  These could be tips such as “Take the elevator to the 3rd floor, and go to the last door on the right” or, “Look for a blue building with a white door.” Parking can also be a source of difficulty for customers, so it may help them if you provide tips as to the best place to park, how to get there, and how much it will cost. This is also a great place to mention if your business validates parking or offers valet parking. You can make all these edits on the Enhance My Listing page.

Success Story: Play Music & Art
Play Music & Art, a small business in Canton, GA, took full advantage of their listing with a great storefront photo, video and parking info.  Take a peak at their business listing to see what’s possible in your own.

MapQuest users love business listings with photos, videos and parking tips – hopefully you’ll take a few minutes and update your listing with this great info!

Map Locator
When filling out the listing, you will be asked, “Does the business location look correct to you?” Next to the question appears a map showing a marker where MapQuest pinpointed the business address.  Take time and make sure the location is accurate; if the location is incorrect, now is a quick and easy chance to fix it.

Use the business listing tool to move the map markers for your business location. The blue icon reflects the location of your actual building and the red icon is what MapQuest uses to calculate directions.

To get started, just click on the map. From here, you can drag the marker around until the correct location has been found. The marker can be placed anywhere, even if the location is a mile off the main road, the marker can go there. This is helpful for customers who may not know there is a long driveway or access road to the location.

Ensure Accurate Directions
Click the next button to edit the access point to your location. MapQuest uses this icon to calculate directions.  This is helpful if the road to the building is in an unexpected location or if businesses prefer to direct people to a parking lot. The red marker with the car can be moved, but unlike the Map Marker it has to be placed on an road.

MapQuest’s Map Marker Locator tool is ready for businesses to use and map out their location. Companies can update, move, and zoom until comfortable with the marker location and know that every aspect of their listing is correct. Improve and update your listing today at listings.mapquest.com.

How does map marketing work for local businesses?
More and more people use online or mobile maps to find local businesses. They search for restaurants, boutiques, hotels, and more in their local area, a travel destination or on the road. Putting your business information on the map improves the likelihood of being found online, especially if you are a small business owner with too limited of a budget to launch a large scale marketing campaign.

SEO Tips for your Business Listing
The “Categories” feature on MapQuest’s Local Business Center allows you to add up multiple business categories to your listing – that is, “keywords” for MapQuest business search.  Here are some quick tips:

1. Choose business categories
When creating your MapQuest business listing, you will be prompted to choose appropriate business categories. Start this process by typing a generic word about your business category and then choose one from existing categories. For example, if Diamond & Design chose “Jewelry Repair”, their business listing will appear when users are searching for “Jewelry Repair” near that area.

2. Add a niche category
Adding a more specific category can help you reach more potential customers. For example, if you’re an Italian restaurant owner, after adding the generic category – restaurant, you could choose “restaurant – Italian” as your second category.  Or, if your business is part of a franchise, make sure to select the category for that franchise.

3. Add secondary business category
Adding multiple types of categories can broaden your audience. For example, if you own a coffee shop and are also a wholesaler of coffee beans, you could add “coffee shop” as your primary category and use “coffee wholesale” as a secondary category. We suggest you choose multiple categories as long as they are all relevant to your business.

Success Story: Diamond & Design
As you can see in the screenshot below, Diamond & Design, an independent jewelry store in California, took full advantage of their business listing by creating five categories.  The five categories they chose – Jewelry Repairing, Jewelry Designers, Wedding-Jewelry, Jewelers-Retail and Diamonds – significantly increase their chances of being found when potential customers look for jewelry stores near Chino, CA on MapQuest.

Stay tuned for our next post about how to make sure your business is being found on MapQuest!

Getting Started
To get started on the Local Business Center, you must first claim your business. Make sure that MapQuest has the correct information for your business location, or choose to add a new listing if it doesn’t already exist. Once you have claimed your business, it is time to enter in your basic company information. This is your opportunity to obtain free marketing and show consumers why they should choose you.  Check out our short video tutorial for more tips on how to get started.

Business Listing Name
When entering the company title for your business listing you want to make sure it reflects what your business does. It should be the exact name of your company or organization – no “nicknames” or added tag lines are needed. When people are looking up business listings on the map, this is what will be bolded when they put their cursor over your business location.

Business Listing Details
The main key here is to have all of the company information correct and clear. Be sure to double-check the phone number, website, reservation website, hours, and credit card listings for accuracy. None of this information should be a part of the title; instead, it will be in the ‘more info’ section that a visitor will see when they want to view more details about your business. The time to be creative is in the business listing description.

Business Listing Description
This is the place to market your business and where you want to be creative and concise. The business description should have your competitive advantage, and explain what you do, who you are, and why customers should seek out your business. You want to limit the amount you write while also providing enough detail to showcase your business. This is where you need to take the time to add those SEO keywords about your business to add to your search engine ranking.

Success Story: Gasthas Eichler
Gasthas Eichler, a boutique hotel in Colorado, has all the key qualities of a successful business listing on MapQuest.com. It has a clear, accurate title and the listing has all of the important company information for customers including correct address, phone number, reservations site and website. It has a great description of the business with its competitive advantage and information about specific offerings and amenities.  This listing provides enough information to spark a consumer’s interest when booking a hotel.

In our next blog post of this series, we will give you more tips on creating your business listing.  To take advantage of this free marketing now, just go to listings.mapquest.com and enhance your business listing today!

Often times, business listings on the web are out of date or missing important information like the hours of operation or website. This makes it hard for customers to find that business online.

MapQuest Local Business Center gives business owners the tools to update their free listing and add a lot more helpful content. It also provides additional marketing opportunities to help bring in more customers and improve search engine rankings.

Ready to get started?  The first step is to create an account in the business center and claim your business. You’ll be asked to verify basic information including name, address and phone number.

Next, you can add additional information, including a business description, website, photos, business video, hours of operation, payment methods, parking tips and more.  You can even move the map marker to show the exact location of your entrance, which is very helpful for stores in strip malls, shopping malls and other multi-shop locations.

Once your information is entered, you’ll need to do a simple verification by phone or credit card (again, claim-your-listing is free, we’ll just authorize the card to make sure you really are who you say you are).

Once it’s verified, your updated listing is live within minutes on MapQuest.

You can enhance your business visibility by buying a Premium Listing, which includes a promotion that appears in-line with your business listing in MapQuest search results and on the MapQuest details page.  Premium Listings on MapQuest only are available for $99 a year.

You can also upgrade to the MapQuest Multi-site Premium Listings package bundle, which will distribute your updated information and promotion for $399 a year to a broad partner network: Yelp!, Yahoo!, SuperPages, CitySearch, White Pages, Yellowbook, YellowBot and LOCAL .

Head to the MapQuest Local Business Center to claim your listing!