Yahoo, Ask Jeeves out to lure locals | CNET News.com
Yahoo, Ask Jeeves out to lure locals | CNET News.com: "Yahoo and Ask Jeeves on Tuesday will release new local-search products intended to appeal to audiences hunting for regional information and further tap the estimated $100 billion U.S. local advertising market.Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo will unveil Yahoo Local, a beta site that cinches data from yellow pages, regional maps and editorial reviews of local businesses into one searchable resource for visitors. Sidelining its former reliance on CitySearch for similar services, Yahoo is now building its own comprehensive local guides to answer rising demand for neighborhood information on the Web. Moreover, Yahoo aims to outdo its archrival and search-market leader Google, which launched Google Local in March, with its own dominance in regional resources for Web surfers...
As much as 25 percent of Web surfers' queries are already geared toward locally relevant listings, according to market researcher Kelsey Group. Roughly 10 percent of Ask Jeeves' Web searchers apply a location such as "New York" or "San Francisco" to their search terms, according to Lanzone. Yahoo's Levine sees about 5 percent of search queries with locales attached.
Still, local search advertising revenue is only a fraction of the overall market. Sales are expected to reach $502 million in 2004, up from $408 million last year, according to market researcher Jupiter Research. By 2008, sales are expected to hit $824 million.
A majority of marketers use paid search to advertise nationally, according to Jupiter, while only 5 percent of online marketers use commercial search listings to reach consumers regionally.
Ask Jeeves on Monday also added a new feature to its results for queries on cities, called a city guide unit, which displays local information such as weather on metropolitan areas. The company also introduced a service that lets people call up local maps and driving directions. Ask Jeeves' upcoming service will complement its "Smart Search" feature by letting people retrieve a box of information on locally relevant search queries, such as "Manhattan Thai restaurants" that would include address information for a business and user reviews or ratings.
Yahoo Local, which is in beta form as of Tuesday, could one day replace Yahoo's Get Local, an umbrella site for Yahoo's maps, Yellow Pages and city guide sites, which attracts about 20 million visitors a month and is the top rated local service online, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. But Levine said Yahoo wants to see how people respond to the service first. Yahoo's CitySearch relationship is still intact, but the company is not using its local data to power Yahoo Local.
Yahoo Local makes it easy for people to search for a regional business by typing in a city or address and the kind of business. For a restaurant, for example, it lists the address, contact information, reservation policy, dress code, an editorial review and rating list, and as well as mapping tools. People can refine their search by looking for parking in the neighborhood surrounding the restaurant on the map"
posted by Jen @ 6:29 AM
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