Disclaimer – I work for Verizon SuperPages.com, so I compete with Yahoo! Local. These notes are my comments and not that of my employer.
Small Business Commando put together a teleconference today with Paul Levine of Yahoo! Local and Matt Booth of The Kelsey Group. The tagline for the conference was “Insider Secrets to Blow the Doors Off Your Competition using Local Online Marketing.” While the conference didn’t live up to the tagline, it was none-the-less very informative.
Matt started off saying that print yellow pages isn’t likely to go away anytime soon and that many of the major players are active in the local space online, in particular Verizon. He said that local search is growing at a faster rate than traditional IYP (Internet Yellow Pages) searches.
Paul says that they found most local searches to be commercial in nature. Yahoo’s local strategy follows along these lines:
- User Participation (as evidenced by their use of user reviews and the connection with Yahoo! 360)
- Integration with Mapping (believe that mapping can be an interface to local search)
- Encouraging Merchants to Participate (as evidenced by ability for merchants to add/update online listings for free)
Of special interest, though it’s already pretty obvious, is Paul’s statement that Yahoo plans to include social networking and user participation across all Yahoo products.
Mobile is a big part of the future of local, though the technology is not there yet. In particular, Paul said that mobile devices need more bandwidth, more memory, and carriers to provide more information about users’ locations. In the next few months Yahoo will allow merchants to participate in the mobile environment.
Paul went into detail on Yahoo’s local products – local listings (free), enhanced listings, and featured listings. The upcoming sponsored search platform will include the ability to geotarget.
Yahoo works with Dex, YellowPages.com, Leads.com, and Lawyers.com to take their local products to market in addition to direct sales from Yahoo’s web site.
Interesting stuff.
Here’s a summary from The Kelsey Group.
