AOL Adds Classifieds; Partners With Oodle

AOL Local has teamed with Oodle to launch AOL Classifieds in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, AOL is launching a U.K. classified site at the end of the week. Oodle aggregates listings from more than 250 partner sites (including MySpace, Facebook and Wal-Mart).The timing might be especially useful for used person-to-person goods, as people try to raise additional money to stave off the bad economy. Oodle certainly likes the deal.

With 54 million unique visitors for AOL Local, Oodle CEO Craig Donato told us that “AOL should be a good-sized partner. They will help us drive a lot of scale into our network, which helps AOL as well as all the other partners. In addition to driving traffic, they will help us drive a lot of user posts, which is great content.”

While the announcement covers AOL’s Local and Specialty Verticals, it will link to — but not cover — AOL’s separate Marketplace categories. Marketplace includes AOL Travel, AOL Real Estate and AOL Autos. That means the “vehicle” section of AOL Classifieds, for instance, only has listings for trucks, motorcycles and boats. It doesn’t have cars.

It also means AOL Autos is sticking with Vast, a pay-for-performance classified search engine, for both AOL Autos and AOL Automoviles Latino. Marketplace Strategy Leader Doug Eddy told us that when AOL Autos was launching two years ago, it chose Vast because it provides a great deal of flexibility. For instance, the site was able to launch with both new and used autos.