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Local Search - Yahoo! Local and Google Local
By Jim Hedger

I love New York City. More than any other city on the planet, 
New York is exciting, expansive and always interesting. As 
Earth's unofficial capital city, New York is home to many of the 
world's largest entities, some even bigger than Donald Trump's 
ego. No other city has captured the world's imagination or 
harnessed its wealth to the degree of NYC. New York is also the 
home of over 8-million people. As one of the most multicultural 
cities, every cultural group in the world is represented within 
its 301 square mile area. New Yorkers aren't just city-folk, 
they define what is hip in urban living in the early part of 
this century. Unlike their counterparts in cities like LA, Rome 
or Tokyo, New Yorkers don't fall for fads, set trends, or get 
giddy over the next new thing, ever. They are one of the most 
jaded and cynical populations and in their East Coast way, take 
great pride in their worldliness. That's what makes them the 
perfect test market for Yahoo's local-search engine. 

During the month of November, NYC Transit users will get a first 
hand glimpse of a clever marketing tactic from Yahoo. Yahoo plans 
to install bus stop kiosks featuring Yahoo Local-Search in order 
to test user's responses in one of the densest urban environments 
in the US. The first kiosk will be installed at W. 42nd ST and 
Eighth Avenue. A search for a cybercafe on 8th Avenue in NYC 
produced a lengthy list of all cybercafes in the five boroughs 
including the first reference, a short two blocks from the 
epicenter of my search, W.42nd and 8th. Yahoo's local search 
also includes the Yahoo map feature, allowing the searcher to 
plan easy routes between destinations. Most search analysts feel 
the local-search market will become a cornerstone for both Yahoo 
and Google to build on as they move towards producing personalized 
search results for their users. Many also feel Yahoo has a slight 
lead on Google in the local search arena, though both firms are 
far ahead of their rivals in terms of usage, coverage and 
precision. 
 
"It's definitely a growth opportunity," said Greg Sterling, an 
analyst for the Kelsey Group (http://www.kelseygroup.com/). 
"There's clear consumer demand that Google, Yahoo and others 
are responding to." With the paid search sector expected to 
grow into an $8 Billion per year industry, Sterling predicts 
local-search will comprise about 1/5th of the market by 2008. 
Today, about 25% of all search activity is users looking for a 
specific business or service in their local area. Both Yahoo and 
Google are vying for dominance in the local-search market, but 
they face stiff competition from traditional advertising mediums 
such as the telephone directories, as well as from smaller search 
engines such as Ask.Com, A9 and others. As it stands today 
however, Yahoo and Google are far and away the market leaders in 
local-search. From this point, the only way for a smaller company 
to effectively enter the market is to present searchers with 
stronger and better branded technologies. An example would be 
the integration of an application like Keyhole 
(http://www.keyhole.com/) into local-search.  

Yahoo Local
Yahoo's local search is featured prominently on their standard 
front page with an easily found tab-link just above the keyword 
text-box. The local search page asks users to type the product, 
service or business they are looking for in one text-box and 
then type geographic information such as a street name or zip 
code into a second text-box. Search results are displayed in 
groupings of 10, based primarily on the distance from the 
approximate center of the geographic information entered. To the 
top right of the results is a feature reading "View Results on a 
Map" that generates a standard Yahoo map with all of the 
businesses listed in the search displayed in their street 
locations. Another feature lets the searcher specify the size 
of the search radius through a drop-down menu measuring in 1, 3, 
5, 10, 25, and 50 miles from the center of the search area.  

Listings are added to Yahoo's local search by clicking on the 
link marked, "Add/Edit a Business". This link opens a fairly 
straight forward form asking for basic information about a 
business, including the nature of the submitter's relationship 
to the business. Right now, it appears that submission to the 
local search database is free so businesses should take a few 
minutes to get a listing there, especially as it is likely Yahoo 
will eventually charge for inclusion. Filling in the form takes 
less than five minutes and can only be beneficial for business. 
 
Google Local
Google's version of local search is quite similar to Yahoo's but 
feels much less cluttered. While it is still considered a 
Beta-test version of a local-search tool, it works quite well. 
One of the winning features of this local search engine is the 
inclusion of a map beside the displayed results, unlike the map 
at Yahoo which opens on a different page. Google's local results 
do not offer as much information as Yahoo's but they do include 
exact street addresses, and a feature that allows users to get 
directions from their present location. While it sometimes takes 
a bit of fiddling with address coordinates and zip codes, the 
feature produces precise directions in text and map form. 
Google-local also displays results in lists of 10, though they 
use the letters A-J on each page of results. Placement is 
determined by distance from the center of the geographic search 
area.  

Businesses wanting to be listed in Google-local are asked to 
submit their information via email but before they do, they 
should check to see if they are already in the index. 
Google-local gets its listings from a number of sources 
including local Yellow Pages and telephone directories. An 
interesting feature of the culture at Google is their 
willingness to help businesses update any out-of-date 
information carried in print directories they get listings from. 
For example, if your business moved locations after the most 
recent telephone directory was published, the information in 
that directory would be incorrect, as would your listing at 
Google-local. Google invites businesses to email them any 
contact information changes (local-listings@google.com) and 
they will not only update your listing at Google-local, they 
will also pass the new information to the source that provided 
them contact info from your area.  

In the coming years, search engines are going to present 
searches with a more personalized and generally a more localized 
search experience. What we see at Yahoo and Google today is 
likely going to change and improve over the next few months. 
With both companies looking to expand their revenue sources, 
local-search is going to be an important issue for search engine 
marketers and businesses relying on customers referred by search 
engines. 

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Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing 
expert based in Victoria BC. Jim works with a limited group of 
clients and provides consultancy services to StepForth Search 
Engine Placement. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and 
welcomes the opportunity to share his experience through 
interviews, articles and speaking engagements. Hedger can be 
reached at jim.hedger@gmail.com
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