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Which makes more sense for local: get deep and uniquely useful content in a small geography, then replicate that process for hundreds of towns, or launch the whole US with shallow content all at once? (Choose one, because you can’t launch with deep local content everywhere at the same time.) InsiderPages went wide and shallow and it didn’t work out. Backfence tried to go deep but in several towns at the same time and it, too, couldn’t get enough traction. Smalltown is going very deep in a very small geography, with plans to replicate that success quickly when we have all the technology and marketing knobs dialed in.

Smalltown is doing very well. Our informal blog documents our progress ( http://blog.smalltown.com ). In the area we serve, we get tens of thousands of monthly visitors, almost 3 percent of the population are registered users, and our sales numbers are accelerating.

It’s certainly too early to say Smalltown has “cracked the code” on local advertising, but here is one way to judge our progress:

1. Go to www.smalltown.com/sanmateo and do a search for “hot dogs”. You get lots of great results that include a local pizza place that has hot dogs on its menu. There are videos, coupons and reviews. This is deep local content and we launched less than a year ago.

2. Now go to www.yellowpages.com and do a search for “hot dogs” in San Mateo, CA. After navigating to the category “hamburgers and hot dogs” you get 3 results. Two of them are sandwich shops outside San Mateo. One of them is a hamburger diner with one badly written review. This is an example of broad but shallow content.

3. Now go to www.citysearch.com and do the same search. Under the sponsored link for Pizza Hut, the top result is for a bakery outside of San Mateo. Under that is a listing for a golf course outside San Mateo. The third result is for a sushi restaurant, but at least it is in San Mateo. This is another example of broad but shallow.

4. Finally, go to www.yelp.com. I think Yelp is great and I don’t really consider them a Smalltown competitor, but I was surprised by the results. Their search results for “hot dogs” in San Mateo are: (1) a sponsored link for dog daycare (2) a link to a dog park (3) a link to an event called the Maker Faire that I assume had hot dogs and (4) a listing for Ben Franks, which is a hot dog restaurant, but it’s not in San Mateo.

IMHO: The best place for hot dogs in San Mateo, CA is Jack’s Grill next to the movie theater across the street from the Smalltown office. (Try the apple chicken sausage.) But you wouldn’t know that from any of the “broad and shallow” sites.