December 5, 2006

Local Search is Getting Hotter: R U Ready

I've been gently warning you for months that local search is and is going to be more and more of a VERY hot market. Google, MSN, Yahoo and ASK are the big players in helping consumers and businesses find each other in their neighborhood.

I would HIGHLY suggest you visit these web sites and consider how you can ensure your business is found via the local search areas of these search engines.

Yellow Pages are still popular (according to an interview I had with a Yellow Pages publisher to be on this site soon) but online search is of course simply exploding.

Finding information is still very much needed but what people also want is to find products and services near them.

News Factor writes "Local is one of the top five categories in search, yet it's the one with the lowest user satisfaction," said Jim Lanzone, Ask.com's CEO. "We're raising the bar for local search."

The engine lets users search by ZIP code, neighborhood or street, and to narrow searches further after initial results are returned. Users can also create itineraries that use mapping software to plan a route or a day.

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