UK Local Search: Yell Ad Campaign, welovelocal

Jun 6, 2007 at 10:55am ET by Greg Sterling

UK directory and local search provider Yell (publisher of the print yellow pages) has launched a new ad campaign across various media, touting Yell.com, the publisher’s online local search portal. The campaign also apparently involves GPS-enabled buses that adjust ad messaging according to bus location (in London). The bus stops themselves feature touch-screen displays that allow people to conduct local searches on Yell.com and show local businesses within walking distance of the stop.

Yell also has a new competitor in welovelocal.com, a recently launched UK (London) local search destination that takes its cue, partly, from U.S.-based sites that emphasize community, like Yelp. Here’s an example search result for Indian restaurants in London.

Also positioning itself as a marketing and CRM platform of sorts, welovelocal notifies business owners when reviews about their business are posted and allows them to comment on reviews. It also says that listings are optimized to appear in search results.

Postscript: I’ve been informed that the GPS buses and touch screens were used in the previous Yell campaign (still provocative) and this one will use digital advertising in the London Underground.

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and writes a personal blog Screenwerk, examining the broader world of media and advertising. He also posts at a Local Mobile Search, which is focused on the mobile Internet.

See more articles by Greg Sterling >

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3 COMMENTS ON UK Local Search: Yell Ad Campaign, welovelocal

RobN, June 7th, 2007 at 8:02 am ET:

welovelocal.com looks like an interesting idea, although it does seem to mimicking the already established touchlocal.com, which has been around for a couple of years, and has already overtaken Thomson as the number two player in traffic terms to Yell.com. Having had a good rootle around the welovelocal.com, it would also appear to be populated pretty much entirely by their own staff, which suggests that this more of beta site than a live one.

Dan, June 7th, 2007 at 12:54 pm ET:

There is clearly similarities between us and touch local, however our feature set is far broader than theirs particularly with respect to our social functions.

Rather than being able to simply review, our users are able to connect with friends, maintain a profile, and see the reviews that their friends have written. Furthermore we have adopted a number of high technologies such as OpenID and microformats, and have already integrated our service into the Facebook platform.

As for our reviews, well, we only launched 4 days ago, and our staff seem to have caught a reviewing bug.

Mr C, June 8th, 2007 at 9:56 am ET:

Interesting article, but I would like to point out to RobN that touchlocal.com is not even close to ThomsonLocal.com on traffic, let alone overtaken it.

I would agree that welovelocal.com does appear to be a beta site though

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