Many people I speak to still ask the familiar question, “Is this going to be the breakout year for local?” while expressing frustration or disappointment that “local hasn’t yet lived up to expectations.” But local is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s also more complex than the general search market, which features an ecosystem built […]
According to TechCrunch, classifieds site Edgeio is shutting down after having run out of money. The site was targeting a global audience but was fundamentally local. Edgeio competitor Oodle recently redesigned and appears to be doing well. And the classifieds category continues to gain traffic.
Last week, Judy’s Book joined the list of companies that have tried but stumbled or wiped out in local. The market’s complexity and business model challenges make it tough for most startups to succeed. Yet, paradoxically, consumers have clearly embraced the “local Internet” and are using it with increasing frequency to find local information online. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
TechCrunch first reported (confirmed on CEO Andy Sack’s blog) that local search site Judy’s Book is shutting down and/or looking for a buyer. After struggling to monetize its traffic, the site shifted its business model to emphasize coupons and local deals. The firm had raised over $10 million in two investment rounds. This follows the […]
Ask has partnered with IAC sister company EPI, publisher of “The Entertainment Book,” which offers coupons and discounts to local businesses. Entertainment, which has had several false starts with online distribution, is planning to pump 75 percent of its coupons into AskCity. They may also eventually make their way to Ask.com’s SmartAnswers and finally into […]
Nearly a decade ago, I believed in the power and promise of locally focused Web sites and applications. Back then, I was COO of About.com and in hindsight can say that I was a bit ahead of market adoption, to say the least! We ended up pretty successfully focusing on interest-based sites that became all […]
Several years ago I was having lunch in a restaurant in New York with a couple of Yahoo executives, discussing the challenge of motivating people to rate local businesses. Yahoo was way ahead of the online curve back then, although now ratings and reviews of local businesses are seemingly everywhere online. Indeed, that conversation seems […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Backfence emerged about the same time, a couple of years ago, as InsiderPages, Judy’s Book and Yelp. Now it appears to be closing its doors. The seemingly imminent closure of Backfence raises questions about the economics and viability of so-called “hyper-local” sites. InsiderPages, for its part, was recently sold to IAC/Citysearch and Judy’s Book has […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
Judy’s Book, which has gone through a very interesting and very public change in its business model – from local directory with reviews to shopping site – has now launched a search engine for deals and coupons: CouponLooker.com. It seeks to be an aggregator of deals online to enable people to find them more quickly […]
In the online world, we’ve seen the emergence of social networking sites that allow for the discovery and sharing of websites, of bookmarks, of common interests, and the meeting of friends and friends of friends. In the business world offline, small businesses have the opportunity to be socially active in a number of ways, from […]
The awkward phrase “hyper-local” is now embedded in the discussion about local search. It’s a phrase, for example, that online newspapers are using to describe their community strategies, and it’s a phrase that I may unwittingly have coined in 2005 (if I did, I apologize) to describe a category of sites that were seeking to […]
Even as several local search competitors have been forced to rethink or exit the space, others still see it as a big opportunity. And in fact it is, just one that’s very hard to capture. The latest contestant to enter the race is San Diego, California-based MojoPages, which I wrote about briefly here but which […]