(by 2 people)
Local Search - it's where we live.
Hopefully this will be a great place to learn about Local Search Marketing and the local Search Marketplace.
Ran across this post by Tom Evslin and thought it summed up my thoughts on why local is so important to marketers, business owners, and users.
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/01/local_the_first.html
Tipping points happen all at once and they're only visible with hindsight. We're at a tipping point now: three-quarters of US Internet users or half of all US households have broadband connections. Not all of these connections are equal but most can download and watch videos, surf complex websites, and search the Web itself at a comfortable pace. The importance of these statistics is that there is now a critical mass of people who can and will take advantage of and interact with rich LOCAL content.
The opportunity, if you're an entrepreneurial sort, is that there isn't much rich local content to interact with for the very good reason that, until now, the local communities were below critical mass of enabled households. It used to be that the big bucks were in developing and enabling services with large audiences drawn from a worldwide or at least national prospect pool. Now the opportunity is to bring the benefits of the interactive Web to every local community. It's huge!
Need Something Local?
List of my favorite local search engines
Local Search is a growing field without a clear cut winner the list below will point you in the right direction to find what you need where ever you are.
- Localeze Business Listing Update Tool
- Use this tool to impact your organic directory listing on most of the Tier 1 and Tier II Local Search Engine's and Internet Yellow Page Directories.
Add a business listing, update or delete your business listing in the Amacai data file. - Yahoo Local
- Today - Yahoo offers the best service.
- MSN - Local Seach / Mapping
- Some great functionality and getting better by the day.
- Insider Pages
- The Best site for reviews on local businesses they have some strong user generated content.
- Merchant Circle
- Growing fast, lots of good information.
- Yokel
- Interesting new shopping site - not to shop online but to actually go to a store and feel confident the store will have what you need.
- Yellowpages.com
- Currently more of an IYP directory site that provides basic information on businesses. Very good for recovery searches.
- Superpages
- This IYP (internet yellow page directory) is doing a great job of getting thier advertisers traffic, you will find their listing populating lots of local search results.
- Kudzu
- Part of Cox interactive currently only in Atlanta, great community feel to this site.
- Citysearch
- The old stand by for restaurant and entertainment information.
- Yelp
- Growing community search site on the West Coast. Not the best listing level information but lots of reviews
- Local.com
- Part of interchange and they seem to piece together some nice traffic. Not much information beyond a phone number. Best URL in the game.
- Google local / maps
- Google may know search but they just don't have the content to succeed in local search. Mapping function took the world by storm but I think others in the space have passed them by.
- infospace.com
- At one time looked like a leader in the space.
- Tyloon
- The only yellow pages and local search engine allowing you to search in English, Spanish, Chinese or a mixture of all three and probe a base of 15-million U.S. businesses...
- YellowAssistance.com
- New Directory with enough features to be a home page.
- GenieKnows
- Great Search site that uses some fantastic technology to give you a unique perspective.
- BDLocal - South Florida focused
- Nice little Hyper-Local site focusing on Florida
- MojoPages - new take on internet yellow pages
- Site is still in Alpha/Beta but creating a nice buzz - check out thier blog.
- Google Local Search Glossary.
- Thank you, Bill Slawski -
A collection of terms and definitions from a number of Google's patent filings on Local Search (not everything discussed in a patent application has been incorporated into Google's Local search - but the interesting thing about many of these patent filings is exploring whether or not they may have been). - Local Search Directory
- Slick new socail network local search platform.
I really like the tagging aspect. - Dex Knows
- Great local directory - I especially like the compare business feature.
Two Types of Local Search Queries
Part 1 - The Local Recovery Search
From a local search database perspective, there are two types of local search queries, which a search application needs to be able to answer. We can define these by borrowing from John Battelle's http://battellemedia.com book The Search. Mr Battelle describes two types of searches in this excerpt from his book "This perfect search also has perfect recall. It knows what you've seen and can distinguish between a journey of discovery, where you want to find something new, and recovery when you want to find something you've seen before."
Being that local search is inherently where we are, or where we are going to be. There are many times when a person using a local search application is trying to "recover" a bit of information or a place which they know exists.
This looking for a specific thing, trying to recover something poses problems for a web crawled index. The problem occurs, because, as we know in today's world, nearly 50% of all businesses do not have a web presence. Without a website or html based profile the various spiders, bots and slurps of the world can not recognize the existence of these local businesses. Thusly, if left to their own devices the search portals would fail at a recovery search and a recovery search is a fundamental local search query.
Recognizing the previously mentioned quandary, search applications have turned to licensing databases (such as the Localeze Local Search database). These databases contain the "base" information on all U.S. business locations, whether they have a web presence or not. Affectively, allowing a search application to answer recovery searches. The business attributes that make up "base" data, center around: business name, business address, phone number and rudimentary classification.
Driving home the importance of effectively answering recovery searches, is a recent survey by iprospect which noted: "If a search is deemed unsuccessful by the user. 27.2% of users immediately switched to another site/search engine" . Having an accurate local search database is essential. As a recovery search is the easiest of all searches for a person to find dissatisfaction. Because they "know" the place, thing, item exists.
Being that local search is inherently where we are, or where we are going to be. There are many times when a person using a local search application is trying to "recover" a bit of information or a place which they know exists.
This looking for a specific thing, trying to recover something poses problems for a web crawled index. The problem occurs, because, as we know in today's world, nearly 50% of all businesses do not have a web presence. Without a website or html based profile the various spiders, bots and slurps of the world can not recognize the existence of these local businesses. Thusly, if left to their own devices the search portals would fail at a recovery search and a recovery search is a fundamental local search query.
Recognizing the previously mentioned quandary, search applications have turned to licensing databases (such as the Localeze Local Search database). These databases contain the "base" information on all U.S. business locations, whether they have a web presence or not. Affectively, allowing a search application to answer recovery searches. The business attributes that make up "base" data, center around: business name, business address, phone number and rudimentary classification.
Driving home the importance of effectively answering recovery searches, is a recent survey by iprospect which noted: "If a search is deemed unsuccessful by the user. 27.2% of users immediately switched to another site/search engine" . Having an accurate local search database is essential. As a recovery search is the easiest of all searches for a person to find dissatisfaction. Because they "know" the place, thing, item exists.
Two Types of Local Search Queries
Part II - The Local Discovery Search
The second type of search, a discovery search, is much more difficult. Yet it is just as vital for a successful local search application. In the local search sense, a "discovery search" is when; a person has a need and knows where geographically they want a product or service. But the user doesn't know which business to turn to in order to get that particular need met.
Following is an example illustrating a local type discovery search: A Person wants to find a one-hour dry cleaning service in zip code 60606. This person knows what (one hour dry cleaning) they want, they know where (zip code 60606) they want it. However, they don't know WHO provides that particular service in that zip code. (all dry cleaners do not provide one-hour service)
The person using the local search application is trying to discover the answer to their question.
Answering discovery type local search queries, poses problems for any search application without a complete Local Search Database. This problem again stems from the fact that most businesses still do not have a web presence.
Those businesses and there unique qualities are invisible to a web crawled index. To successfully answer a discovery type local search, an application needs more then just the; name, address, and phone number.
A local search application needs to understand the fabric of a business, identify the particular thing which makes a business unique. A person making a local search query wants context allowing them to understand what each business does to distinguish themselves from other businesses in their same category and same geographic space.
The information needed to understand what is unique about a business range from the simple: hours open and payment types accepted, to the more complex attributes like a businesses specialties and their products carried.
As a local search application, having an understanding that there are two types of local search queries to answer, will help you evaluate the quality and depth of your index or database.
Following is an example illustrating a local type discovery search: A Person wants to find a one-hour dry cleaning service in zip code 60606. This person knows what (one hour dry cleaning) they want, they know where (zip code 60606) they want it. However, they don't know WHO provides that particular service in that zip code. (all dry cleaners do not provide one-hour service)
The person using the local search application is trying to discover the answer to their question.
Answering discovery type local search queries, poses problems for any search application without a complete Local Search Database. This problem again stems from the fact that most businesses still do not have a web presence.
Those businesses and there unique qualities are invisible to a web crawled index. To successfully answer a discovery type local search, an application needs more then just the; name, address, and phone number.
A local search application needs to understand the fabric of a business, identify the particular thing which makes a business unique. A person making a local search query wants context allowing them to understand what each business does to distinguish themselves from other businesses in their same category and same geographic space.
The information needed to understand what is unique about a business range from the simple: hours open and payment types accepted, to the more complex attributes like a businesses specialties and their products carried.
As a local search application, having an understanding that there are two types of local search queries to answer, will help you evaluate the quality and depth of your index or database.
Search and Marketing Links
Lots of Blogs this List can stimulate thoughts
Find out what some of the thought leaders in the industry are thinking on topics ranging from Search Engines, Local Search, Internet Yellow Pages, Marketing
- Inside Google
- The go to guy for Google info
- More Google
- Nice new blog from a Google insider
- Local Search perspective
- Former Kelesy and most quoted man in Local Search
- Yahoo Thoughts
- Yahoo insider
- MSN Thoughts
- Thoughts from on Video blogs and more.
- Get the newest Tech news here
- Not focused on local serch but a great place for new news.
- YP Talk
- Yellow Page industry information
- Klesey Group blog
- Kelsey Group hosts the ILM
- Battelle Blog
- Author of Great Book on Search.
- David's Blog
- Click z Search Insider overall smart dude
- Hitwise blog
- Gotta love the numbers
- Local Search information portal
- Nice starting point for information on local search
- Local Search Guide
- Good information on Local Search
- the guy who started web 2.0
- I like the article on this page Data is the intel inside. It's what we are doing!
- search engine journal
- Get your search engine information here.
- search engine watch
- They usually have the breaking news on the Search Engine industry
- Yahoo Blog
- Yahoo PR
- Data Provider
- Localeze repositions the Amacai data for use in the local search space.
- Update your Merchant Content
- You can update your business data here
- Local Onliner
- Peter is a thought leader and influential voice in the local search marketing space
- New sites new products
- Not focused on local search however if a new site or service launches this is the place to find it.
- LocalSearchDatabase - thoughts on Local
- Just my thoughts on local
Tim O'Reilly's thoughts on data.
Data is the Next Intel Inside
Father of term web 2.0 talks about the value of data in the local search equation which is the vision of what Localeze is trying to do in the local search space
Every significant internet application to date has been backed by a specialized database: Google's web crawl, Yahoo!'s directory (and web crawl), Amazon's database of products, eBay's database of products and sellers, MapQuest's map databases, Napster's distributed song database. As Hal Varian remarked in a personal conversation last year, "SQL is the new HTML." Database management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies, so much so that we have sometimes referred to these applications as "infoware" rather than merely software.
This fact leads to a key question: Who owns the data?
In the internet era, one can already see a number of cases where control over the database has led to market control and outsized financial returns. The monopoly on domain name registry initially granted by government fiat to Network Solutions (later purchased by Verisign) was one of the first great moneymakers of the internet. While we've argued that business advantage via controlling software APIs is much more difficult in the age of the internet, control of key data sources is not, especially if those data sources are expensive to create or amenable to increasing returns via network effects.
Look at the copyright notices at the base of every map served by MapQuest, maps.yahoo.com, maps.msn.com, or maps.google.com, and you'll see the line "Maps copyright NavTeq, TeleAtlas," or with the new satellite imagery services, "Images copyright Digital Globe." These companies made substantial investments in their databases NavTeq has gone so far as to imitate Intel's familiar Intel Inside logo: Cars with navigation systems bear the imprint, "NavTeq Onboard." Data is indeed the Intel Inside of these applications, a sole source component in systems whose software infrastructure is largely open source or otherwise commodified.
The now hotly contested web mapping arena demonstrates how a failure to understand the importance of owning an application's core data will eventually undercut its competitive position. MapQuest pioneered the web mapping category in 1995, yet when Yahoo!, and then Microsoft, and most recently Google, decided to enter the market, they were easily able to offer a competing application simply by licensing the same data.
(slightly edited here is the rest of the post)
http://www.oreillynet.com/pu
Every significant internet application to date has been backed by a specialized database: Google's web crawl, Yahoo!'s directory (and web crawl), Amazon's database of products, eBay's database of products and sellers, MapQuest's map databases, Napster's distributed song database. As Hal Varian remarked in a personal conversation last year, "SQL is the new HTML." Database management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies, so much so that we have sometimes referred to these applications as "infoware" rather than merely software.
This fact leads to a key question: Who owns the data?
In the internet era, one can already see a number of cases where control over the database has led to market control and outsized financial returns. The monopoly on domain name registry initially granted by government fiat to Network Solutions (later purchased by Verisign) was one of the first great moneymakers of the internet. While we've argued that business advantage via controlling software APIs is much more difficult in the age of the internet, control of key data sources is not, especially if those data sources are expensive to create or amenable to increasing returns via network effects.
Look at the copyright notices at the base of every map served by MapQuest, maps.yahoo.com, maps.msn.com, or maps.google.com, and you'll see the line "Maps copyright NavTeq, TeleAtlas," or with the new satellite imagery services, "Images copyright Digital Globe." These companies made substantial investments in their databases NavTeq has gone so far as to imitate Intel's familiar Intel Inside logo: Cars with navigation systems bear the imprint, "NavTeq Onboard." Data is indeed the Intel Inside of these applications, a sole source component in systems whose software infrastructure is largely open source or otherwise commodified.
The now hotly contested web mapping arena demonstrates how a failure to understand the importance of owning an application's core data will eventually undercut its competitive position. MapQuest pioneered the web mapping category in 1995, yet when Yahoo!, and then Microsoft, and most recently Google, decided to enter the market, they were easily able to offer a competing application simply by licensing the same data.
(slightly edited here is the rest of the post)
http://www.oreillynet.com/pu
Books Are Good
These are Good Books
Some books I've recently read.
The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
Amazon Price: (as of 10/07/2008)
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Amazon Price: $10.19 (as of 10/07/2008)
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Amazon Price: $17.13 (as of 10/07/2008)
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials)
Amazon Price: $12.21 (as of 10/07/2008)
The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource, Revised Edition
Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 10/07/2008)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Amazon Price: $9.57 (as of 10/07/2008)
The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (Unabridged)
Amazon Price: $26.23 (as of 10/07/2008)
The Wisdom of Crowds
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 10/07/2008)
A Briefer History of Time
Amazon Price: $17.82 (as of 10/07/2008)
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