AskCity Launches
As we wrote about briefly last week, AskCity has launched today. I will get a chance to play around with the new features today and will provide more detail in this week's Local Media Journal. In the meantime, Loren Baker…
MapQuest Reasserts Itself; Category Search Climbs
Historically speaking, MapQuest lost a beat by not pushing out its API. Instead of featuring MapQuest, most Web sites instead highlight Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft maps. Even without the buzz factor, however, MapQuest has retained its strong brand identify among…
YellowPages.com Rumored to Buy Free DA Provider
YellowPages.com, the joint venture between AT&T Yellow Pages and BellSouth Intelliventures, appears poised to shake up the world of directory assistance by picking up inFreeDA, the provider of 1-800-411-METRO. InFreeDA Founder and CEO Michael Loftus, who spoke at Kelsey's ILM…
AutoTrader Taking Offensive Against eBay Motors
AutoTrader is expanding beyond "new" and "used" car ads into "auto services" and "used parts." The move promises to put a lot of pressure on other online auto sites, especially eBay Motors, which is preparing a relaunch that will move…
Traveling Today; More Next Week on ILM and Everything Else
I feel like I'm undergoing a blogging rite of passage in posting from an airport gate. We're mostly traveling today, but will be back Monday with more posts on some of the key takeaways from ILM. Thanks to all who…
Kelsey ILM ’06: Zillow on Real Estates Renaissance
Online real estate has gone through its "classical" period, from 1995 to 2000, and its "dark ages," from 2001 to 2005, but is now in the midst of its "renaissance" due to "data enlightenment" and "consumer driven industrial change," per…
Kelsey ILM ’06: Google SME Head Dan Rubinstein
Google's head of SME product development, Dan Rubinstein, speaking at The Kelsey Group's ILM event in Philadelphia, said the company is going to meet SMEs halfway to get them to actively market themselves on the Internet. Google is developing several…
Local Search to Be the Glue for IAC
IAC/InterActiveCorp Chairman and CEO Barry Diller announced yesterday at a Reuters Media Summit that Ask.com will launch a new local search destination Dec. 4, called AskCity. The key here is that the new local search play will be the glue…
WebVisible Study Looks at Driving Offline Conversions
Interactive advertising platform provider WebVisible has produced a report with the help of Nielsen/NetRatings that dives into Internet usage patterns for local merchant search. The report, titled "I searched, I clicked, I contacted I Transacted: Measuring a Website's Ability…
Battle for Recruitment: Monster Adds Key Papers
Monster has fallen off its leadership perch, hit hard by CareerBuilder's heavy media spend and its extremely effective bundling of print/online ads. But by most counts, it is still fairly equal with CareerBuilder. It is certainly well ahead of Yahoo!…
Curley on The WaPos Super Local Web 2.0 Site
Exactly what Rob Curley has been working on since joining The Washington Post Co. in September has been a matter of curiosity for people who've watched his thoughtful, transformative influence on interactive newspaper sites. A podcast interview with Marketwatch's Frank…
Bob Smith, Founder of AOLs Digital City, on Local
Bob Smith was the founder of AOL's Digital City, the first nationwide city guide service. Given that ILM is this week in Philadelphia and roughly 10 years have passed since the local Internet city sites started, I thought it would…
CareerSite Execs Blame PowerOnes Owners
Several execs involved in CareerSite wrote into my personal site to weigh in on CareerSite's demise, its apparent neglect by the newspaper owners of PowerOne Media, and what it all might mean as Yahoo! tries to work with most of…
Vertical Watch: Lawn and Garden Yellow Pages
Vertical sites carved out from broader Yellow Pages categories are one of those things that make tons of sense although the only surefire winners at this point seem to be the lawyer sites. What most of these sites have…
Ask Who? In the U.K., AskTheLocal
AskTheLocal.com is a new "shopping search engine" recently launched in the U.K. Started by husband-and-wife team Philip and Paula Abrahamson, along with Philip's brother Peter, AskTheLocal is similar in concept to ShopLocal in the U.S. (and to a lesser degree,…
Happy Thanksgiving
To all of our U.S. readers, Happy Thanksgiving. Our offices will be open on Friday but blog posting will be light as we gear up for our ILM '06 conference next week. Hope to see you in Philadelphia.
Google on Click-to-Call
Today I had the chance to chat with Dan Rubinstein, head of SME product initiatives at Google. Among many other things in the rapidly shifting online local marketplace, we spoke about Google's integration of click-to-call links in all its local…
Yahoo!’s Newspaper Deal Means End of CareerSite
PowerOne Media, once a major vendor for small and medium-sized newspapers, has sold off its recruitment site, CareerSite, to three of its newspaper owners: MediaNews Group, Hearst and Lee Enterprises. The companies are expected to shut down CareerSite after an…
YPG Stays the Course on Income Trust
Several stories today highlighted the decision by Canada's Yellow Pages Group to increase its cash payout to unit holders in the Yellow Pages Income Trust. This is widely read as a signal the company is moving full speed ahead as…
Sometimes It’s All About Local and Print
Last week I had the opportunity to attend Yellow Pages Today!, hosted by Peter Buxton and Jesper Simonsen in Vienna. The event, titled "Staying Ahead in Search," was well conceived and executed. The hosts often made the point that directories…