What’s the miracle cure for the local search woes?
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008by Vinicius Vacanti
Local search results have been disappointing users for years. The main reliable source of data about local businesses remains the antiquated yellow pages’ 300-or-so categories. If you want to search by a more specific category, the results are spotty at best. So, what’s the solution?
Well, there are two proposals: 1) local user reviews / content and 2) more accurate business data. Clearly, both will be necessary but many new local search companies seem to putting their chips behind proposal #1. We at Yipit are focusing on proposal #2. Who’s right? That will hopefully be debated at a panel Yipit proposed for SXSW’s interactive festival. I say hopefully because the panels are determined, in part, by a vote. So, if you care to support Yipit and the local search industry, please submit your vote for our panel: The Local Search Solution - Context or Accuracy? I’m not going to say that this is more important that voting for the national election, but I’m also not going to say that.
As for the panel speakers, we are pleased to announce the following highly-respected members of the local search community have agreed to participate on the panel we suggested:
- Sebastian Provencher, Praized, author of the Praized Blog
- Perry Evans, CEO of Local Matters, co-founder of MapQuest
- Peter Krasilovsky, The Kelsey Group, author of Local Onliner
In addition to our panel, I would encourage everyone to also vote for another excellent panel proposal from Chris Tolles of Topix.com:
