Yell Powers Google Local in UK

In a move that surely represents the beginning of a broader, European expansion of Google's local strategy, Google Local UK has launched with results from Yell.com.

The look and feel are the same as Google Local in the U.S., except that Keyhole mapping is not part of the offering at this time. Eddie Cheng, eBusiness director of Yell and who is attending Drilling Down on Local, seemed very pleased by the development in private remarks to me.

The deal is not unlike Canada's YPG-Google deal of last year in which the former provides all its local merchant data as a structured feed to Google Local in Canada.

Mobile Local will follow, no doubt, in the near future.

Yell.com, unlike many of its American IYP counterparts, has been dominant in its markets for local search (and in the U.K. owns the "Yellow Pages" brand). It will be interesting to see how this affects consumer usage (if at all) of Yell.com going forward.