April 20, 2005

UK's 192.com Directory Site Relaunches

According to the SEW blog. No doubt by going free they aim to compete with Yell.com, Google and Yahoo etc as the place to find people and businesses in the UK.

Posted by duncan at 01:03 PM | Comments (0)

Google UK Maps with Yell.com listings

Google.co.uk now has UK maps powered by Google themselves. Links to viaMitchelin maps still appear at the top of search results with a recognised UK location - Google's map product is in beta.

The interface is easy to use with smooth scrolling...and if you search for a local business via the local search tab (e.g. "restaurants Leatherhead") matching businesses are listed. Some data comes from Yell.com (which prints the UK Yellow Pages).

So a listing on Yell.com is more important than ever...

Posted by duncan at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2005

Interchange to Acquire Local Search Company & Announces European Expansion Plans

Interchange, who provide local search and PPC technology to websites, are acquiring Swedish wireless and local search comany Inspire Infrastructure 2i AB. (Press release here. Inspire will be renamed Interchange Europe.

Interchange will integrate Inspire’s search technologies with the company's existing local-search and advertising solutions to offer a search and advertising platform supported by Internet and wireless local-search technologies in both the US and Europe.

Heath Clarke, Interchange CEO: “Inspire has an accomplished team of people and is a natural strategic fit for us. "This transaction builds on the strengths of both companies. It expands our reach in the global market by allowing us to provide our advanced local-search services in all major Western markets as well as to multi-national customers.”

So what does this mean?

IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages), search companies outside the big 3, destination sites and mobile phone networks that don't want to add to the bank balances of Yahoo-Overture, Google or FindWhat-Espotting now have a technology partner to work with who has the technology:

- for PPC (Interchange owns PPC ePilot),
- for putting printed Yellow Pages online,
- for wireless mobile phone / PDA local search
- for deploying search interfaces to draw this all together for consumers.

Inspire apparently uses clustered local-search technology to offer a hybrid mix of business listings including "local content, online vertical content, classifieds, reviews, and businesses web information and content."

The press release states they will offer:

Local and national search solutions
Private label pay-per-click advertising platforms (i.e. white labelling, like FindWhat do for Lycos Insite)
Mobile (i.e. wireless) search using SMS, MMS, JPhone, Symbian, SIMToolkit, WAP, and wireless PDA
Local-search indexing technology for classifieds, white and yellow pages, and other local data sources
Directory assistance call center search technologies
High-volume search distribution network technologies

Inspire has already delivered search solutions in five languages across six European markets including the UK, Ireland, Spain, Holland, Portugal, and Finland. Inspire is headquartered in Stockholm with subsidiaries in London and Madrid.

To me this is (in theory) the ideal local search result solution; structured IYP listings, targeted and relevant PPC advertisements, 3rd party reviews (e.g. of restaurants) and related content / information.

Of course the devil is in the details of delivering this across multiple platforms and multiple languages (including several in some countries) and winning distribution partners to build enough search inventory to sell to advertisers.

Let's hope this spurs innovation and competion in the local search (and local search advertising) market.

Posted by duncan at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

February 07, 2005

Overture preparing for European Local Match launch?

Overture have appointed a new head of local search for Europe, after former head Rob Jonas moved across to Yahoo UK.

Hoepfully this means Overture's Local Match is coming to Europe soon - I was told it was launching in the UK in last quarter of 2004. It didn't - maybe because headhunting was going on?

Posted by duncan at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)