Paul Levine, GM of Yahoo Local, is leaving (his decision) after almost five years and being replaced by Jennifer Dulski, who is now going to be Group Vice President & General Manager, Marketplace. Her title reflects a strategy shift and will combine Local with Shopping, Travel, Autos and Real Estate and represents a more integrated local-vertical approach. Dulski has a long history at Yahoo! in various roles. Prior to her current role, Dulski was the VP/GM of the Autos business.

According to Yahoo, Dulski “was a key member of the tiger team that re-launched Yahoo! Search and she led the consumer and influencer marketing strategy behind that successful re-launch, growing Yahoo! Search market share by nearly 2 points.”

During his tenure Levine built Yahoo into the leading local site online. For quite some time, Yahoo was in most respects out in front of its competitors, which are all now investing heavily in local and the market is obviously getting much tighter. The new more “integrated” thinking behind Dulski’s title/role reflects a broader conceptual understanding of local that is more in alignment with actual consumer behavior and better leverages Yahoo!’s content, partnerships and other assets.

There’s some additional information on my blog.

Related Topics: Yahoo: Employees | Yahoo: Maps & Local

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling