A Look At Yahoos Local Search Beta

On August 3rd, Yahoo launched their Local Search Beta product. Yahoo Local is designed to serve as and perhaps replace the Yellow Pages, both Internet and book-based. The local search integrates Yahoo's search technology, as well as Yahoo's mapping function to help locate information on your local area query.

Yahoo Local, Ken Norton stated that he believed Yahoo's product is better than any other local search product out there (surprisingly:), although he does offer a couple of reasons why. He feels the content on Yahoo Local is far superior to the other local searches, because of their index and ability to deliver relevant results. In his opinion, this makes Yahoo's local listings more attractive to users. I asked Grace to discuss the techniques Yahoo Local uses to populate their index. One of the first things she clarified is that while Yahoo Local does make use of Yahoo Search's index, they also have their own. In order to increase its population, they start by including the Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) database. This contains all of the necessary offline information on local business that may not have a web presence. They also are partnered with a company that actually scans the text of book-bound directories into an electronic format that contains hours of operation, URLs, types of brands available, and other pertinent local business information. According to Grace, this is an example of the structured data that Yahoo Local uses. To increase result relevance, Yahoo Local uses category-based indexing. They work with a number of experts in order to provide users with category specific listings, as well as cross-category results. Yahoo Local also uses their keyword information in an effort to improve relevance. This information is gathered from the same aggregators used to determine categorical listings. Also, with hopes of further increasing user satisfaction in local search, Yahoo Local will include Local Match. One would have to imagine that one was designed with the other in mind. latest search news.