Outside.in Expands Its Hyperlocal Search Capabilities

Oct 30, 2009 at 2:26pm ET by Matt McGee

While real-time search gets all the attention these days, there’s also increased interest in hyperlocal search. Where real-time search answers What’s happening right now?, hyperlocal search answers the question, What’s happening right here? It’s like local search on steroids, you could say.

Outside.in has, for several years, been somewhat like a clearinghouse of hyperlocal information and services — collecting and publishing local news feeds, and providing tools for local bloggers, for example.

With its recent relaunch, Outside.in has placed itself squarely in the realm of hyperlocal search engine. Aside from a new design, Outside.in made three fairly significant upgrades that impact hyperlocal search and discovery:

you can search by city, ZIP, neighborhood, address, and place from a single search box
you can do a keyword search within any of those same geographic options
you can get RSS feeds for any search you conduct and any page on the site

The ability to search by place and keyword (see first two bullet items above) makes for a convenient option that’s similar to the “search nearby” option that Google Maps and others provide. But unlike maps, with Outside.in you can search for local news and information.

outside-in-1

The limiting factor in all this is, of course, the amount of hyperlocal content available. There’s not much in my smallish hometown, so Outside.in tends to surface content from our local paper and TV stations, as well as the local blogs that my wife and I run. But in larger cities with more active hyperlocal publishing, this new emphasis on hyperlocal search might offer a compelling answer to the question, What’s happening right here?

Matt McGee is the Search Engine Land Assignment Editor, and offers search marketing consulting and training to businesses of all sizes. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and HyperlocalBlogger.com.

See more articles by Matt McGee >

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Lakeland Internet Marketing, November 1st, 2009 at 12:40 pm ET:

Hyperlocal is where it’s at today! My business serves the Polk County area and I live in Lakeland. My internet marketing consultant business only serves clietns in the local area, so that’s wehre I focus. As for me personally, as well as professionally, I’m more interested in my immediate area. While we go to Orlando or Tampa sometimes, news and info on those areas is easy to find. It’s much mroe difficult to find out what’s going on here.
So HORRAY for hyperlocal search.
I’m getting registered for Outside.in today and getting my blog on there as well as bookmarking it for my local search.
Thanks for the post on a great development.

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