Local.com Marks 10th Year; Superpages Deal Expanded

Local.com, the public company that started life as Interchange Corp., observed its 10th anniversary last week, complete with a red balloon-festooned party at its headquarters in Irvine, California, and an upgrade of its three-year-old, local ad distribution agreement with Idearc’s Superpages.com.

There are, of course, a lot of pieces to Local.com, which has evolved right along with the local ecosystem. It includes the local directory/city guide sites, the outside sales force selling “Local Promote,” the networks, a mobile site, an SMS site, a U.K. site, and its growing “Local Connect” private-label directory service (formerly PremierGuide).

The expanded agreement with Superpages illustrates how some of the pieces can be leveraged. Under the deal, Superpages.com’s performance-based and subscription advertisers now receive preferred placement on Local.com’s 700+ regional sites. The expanded agreement also includes distribution of enhanced content from Superpages.com advertisers, including ratings and reviews and links to enhanced local business profile pages and videos.

I’ve often pondered CEO Heath Clarke’s vision. It goes like this: “Local is really big. If you scale it right, you don’t need to be No. 1 or 2 to make a go of it — you just need to get a few percentage points, and then leverage it.”