YellowPages Smart and Local.com's release

[Chicago]

Just to catch up, in the last couple of weeks, we saw the launch of the new SmartPages.com, which will soon become the RealPages and YellowPages.com consolidated home - defaulting to the Yellow domain. The engineers have been hard at work. Just merging categories and advertisers was ambitious. Well, here we have it. Keeping my strong feels aside for a second, what do you think? http://www.SmartPages.com - if will recall Smart and Real bought YellowPages.com for a 100MM last year.

ePilot/Interchange also launched Local.com, after acquiring the domain for 700K. They are a public company and an important behind the scences player in click business for SME aggregators. So what do you think about it? http://www.Local.com

[Paul]

As far as Local.com, initially I really like it. Clean interface, relevant business results by city, zip code, airport codes, etc... In their press release, it mentions that the launch is the first step and there are many improvements to come like advanced mapping, more ratings and reviews...

Press Release (http://www.interchangeusa.com/pressroom/presspage.asp?pressid=89)

I did do a couple restaurant searches for my city. One was for Italian and the other was for Romantic. The results for the Italian restaurant were very relevant sorted by distance. The Romantic results were also sorted by distance, although the number 1 listing was 5 miles from downtown. Did a quick search for a local Rug Doctor too, results looked relevant and it would only take me seconds to find a local business phone number for availibility. That's impressive.

It's interesting to find out how a business can be listed. "Some" results from Acxiom and yellow pages info, looks like a lot from their advertising distribution partners, etc...

Think they'll eventually launch TV/radio ads and things like that? They seem to have the money for it.

I'm definitely interested to see what they do!

Paul

[wiltonbiz]

Just checked out the listing for my own business on Local.com. The address is correct, but the phone # is 3 months out of date. Where are they getting their data from? Plus, unlike G or Y, they don't seem to offer a way for a business to update their info. (Unless that "feedback" link is the way to go).

[wiltonbiz]

I just checked for my own business listing in SmartPages.com and I am not even in the database. Which is pretty poor, considering I am paying for a print YP display ad in my hometown, in the SBC/SmartPages print book! They can't even manage to migrate their own print YP listings to the online database. You seriously have to wonder how these guys think they are ever going to pull consumers away from G or Y. They don't get it, IMO. In their mad rush to get something online, they throw out a cruddy product. And then they wonder why people badmouth the quality of local IYPs.

[earlpearl]

One major issue that will need to play itself out over time is getting users for these different marketing methods. Similarly, google, yahoo, and MSN are vying for the same market with their versions of local search...and there are others.

Currently we see hardly any traffic from any of the local sources including g, y, msn, and yp and we are in all of them. Traffic from regular search with a geo description brings far and away most traffic. Secondly we get traffic off of PPC (shows on natural search).

Usage from these marketing tools will take time. Hell, I don't even see much traffic from MSN (slightly less than 10% of SE traffic) and we have great rankings (several #1's including the #1 phrase for my industry).

Time will tell.

Dave

[wiltonbiz]

Currently we see hardly any traffic from any of the local sources including g, y, msn, and yp and we are in all of them. Traffic from regular search with a geo description brings far and away most traffic. Secondly we get traffic off of PPC (shows on natural search).

Absolutely. Our traffic pattern reflects yours precisely. So what does this say about how the average users conducts a local search? It's my guess that at least 80% of them go to either G or Y, and type in something like "Blue Widgets, Chicago." It's that simple. If my 80% figure is anywhere near correct, then roughly 80% of an SEO's work, for local SEO, is still organic (or PPC) in nature, because this is where the audience is.

At this point in time, none of the other methods of local search are that interesting, because they are delivering no traffic. It's like on TV, the difference between a primetime audience and the audience at 2 AM.

[earlpearl]

Thanks Wiltonbiz: That is exactly the kind of information we need to be able to discuss local search. If I heard from others that they were getting a lot of yp searches or searches from local Y, G, or MSN it would require a different kind of effort.

I'll PM you. I'm looking for other bright ideas.

Dave

[Webvisitor]

Interchange's Local.com has gone live (beta) in the U.K.
http://uk.inspire2i.com/
(the url was live for the last week up until this morning)

They also announced last night that they hired a firm to assist them in selling off ePilot.