Local Search & Enterprise

2005-01 UPDATE - Market Snapshots of the WEB

January 2005. Reflecting its shift to local presence, Monster has begun targeting local employers and job seekers, with ad buys on the websites of local radio and TV stations. The ads link to co-branded microsites with local content. The company's goal is for three-quarters of its revenues to come from small to medium local firms within four years.
-source: Monster

December 2004. WhitePages.com has redesigned to reduce the number of ads and increase the functions for users to manage their contacts through the site - for example by the ability to sync their Outlook address book with their online account at the site. The company thus aims for a stickier site (i.e. users stay longer), and a deepening user loyalty (users return more often).
-source: WhitePages.com

2004-11 UPDATE - Market Snapshots of the WEB

October 2004. Local advertising will grow to $4.9 billion by 2009, from $1.9 billion in 2003. The share of all online advertising achieved by local ads should remain stable around 30 percent. National advertisers reaching to local demographics will continue for some time to dominate local ads (rather than local companies).
-source: Jupiter Research

October 2004. Yellow pages publisher Dex Media has teamed with Web host Interland and media broker SGS to extend its print advertisers' reach into online, local ads.
-source: Dex Media

October 2004. BellSouth with sell Google's AdWords through its sales force to its yellow page advertisers.
-source: BellSouth Corp.

October 2004. Yahoo released its local search from beta, launching amid a large multi-chammel campaign comprising billboard ads showing Yahoo local maps, street teams and interactive bus shelters in ten key cities, numerous promotions, and other print and radio buys.
-source: Yahoo!

COMMENT 2004-11. Crucially, the company has added user reviews to its local service. The industry holds that reviews and recommendations, especially by people you know of and trust, are the key to local markets.

2004-09 UPDATE - Market Snapshots of the WEB

September 2004. Search provider FAST launched its offering of local-search technology designed to exploit yellow pages, classifieds, and business directories.
-source: Fast Search & Transfer

COMMENT 2004-11. All major search providers have local search programs, and Yellow Pages publishers hold the existing markets already, so the joint ventures are natural. Internet companies are aware of the huge volume of purely local enterprises that can't really play the Web, and are gathering technologies and business models to make it easy for this to change.

Margins and advertising opportunities are affordable during the next couple of years for any website owner with local usage, or for any local business without a website - or with a website that hasn't been able to capture local trade. A carpenter in Georgetown, Texas can now present ads to people searching for a carpenter in Georgetown, Texas, and those searchers can potentially find a business recommended by friends of theirs, all in the same search model.

August 2004. California local-search provider PremierGuide is incorporating "social networking" into its model. This allows users to filter searches based on recommendations and reviews from other users, and by many other distinct values that identify similar groups of users. Word of mouth, "viral" marketing thus becomes exponentially stronger with the added factor of local geography and demographics.
-source: PremierGuide

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