All businesses who advertise on Dex One’s DexKnows site will be able to show up in Yahoo Local search results. The expanded partnership doubles the geographic area covered by the original partnership, which started in 2007. 

The original agreement covered the 14-state region where Dex One is the official print directory publisher for Qwest.

"Yahoo! is committed to helping local businesses unlock the potential of digital advertising," says Regan Senkarik, VP of Channel Sales at Yahoo. "Expanding our agreement with Dex One will provide their clients with greater exposure in local communities and more consumers with detailed information on local businesses." 

"This strengthens a great strategic relationship with Yahoo! and broadens the reach of our local advertiser network," said Sean Greene, SVP of interactive at Dex One. "Through the network our clients’ online business information appears not only on DexKnows but also in prime locations on many of the Web’s most popular search sites, including Yahoo! Local."

On a somewhat related note, Yahoo today announced that its Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers can now begin their transition to Microsoft adCenter – a product of the Search Alliance between those two companies.

If you supply a business’s name and city (or even a business type and zip code), the Yahoo Shortcut is supposed to return one or more mapped-out results.  Basic (but helpful) info including telephone numbers and hours of operation is often supplied.  Then, things get a little more interesting with dropdown menus offering directions and Yahoo Local reviews.

Sometimes photos, Web reviews, and overviews (not shown above) will even be tossed into the mix.

A post on the Yahoo Search Blog explains, "The local enhanced Shortcut brings the most relevant information from across the Web so you can find what you need in one place.  It is also a part of our continuing effort to better understand query intent – what users mean in their queries – and to match it with the right content."

The upgrade seemed both accurate and helpful throughout a little bout of testing.

What the Data Shows

While most people still use a variety of different methods to find a local business, the study found what people seem to prefer as their first choice for doing so:

1.  Search Engines (31%)

2.  Print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%)

3. Internet Yellow Pages Sites (19%)

4.  Local Search Sites (11%)

Last year’s numbers had Print Yellow Pages at 33% and search engines at 30%. When it comes to online habits of consumers, the study shows that more people turn to the Internet Yellow Pages sites than the Local search sites like Google Maps and Yahoo Local, but I suspect the reason for this is that they don’t have to go to the actual local search sites to get the same results. If you search Google for a local business, you are likely to get the Google Maps results right at the top. The same goes for Yahoo (both illustrated below with a search for "pizza, lexington, ky").

Google:

Yahoo:

What Businesses Need to Do

What businesses need to do to ensure their customers are finding them easily, is still to make sure they are listed in these local search results. For Google Maps, follow the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Google Local Business Center. If you don’t have a Google Account, sign up for one.

2. Return to Google Maps by clicking on the icon in the upper corner of the Local Business Center.

3. Search for your listing.

4. Click on the "More Info" link next your listing. This will expand the information window.

5. Click "Add or edit your business" under the address and phone number.

For Yahoo Local:

1. Search for Your Listing and click on it

2. Update your business contact information, hours of operation, business category, etc.

3. You can also invest in a "Local Enhanced Listing" according to Yahoo, which lets you include your company logo and tagline, up to 10 photos, a detailed description, inclusion in up to five business categories, and two customizable link to coupons or special offers.

Going Beyond That

Google and Yahoo are just two options of course. You can pursue listings with Microsoft, Mapquest, and others. It is also a good idea to make sure you have a site and it is up and running properly, because while the study shows that consumers often find the business listing online, and then turn to their phone to make the call, there is a pretty good chance they will still want to check out your site and see what you are all about. Unfortunately, a good number of businesses are just not getting this, as Danny Sullivan found out the hard way when he moved to a new town and couldn’t find working sites for the businesses he needed. Besides, the web can open up your business well beyond your local area.

"As consumer local search grows with online and offline resources, national advertisers must develop strategic plans for integrating the various mediums into their national programs," said Gregg Stewart, senior vice president of interactive, TMP Directional Marketing. "Our 2008 study again confirms that consumers do a majority of research online, but continue to make purchases offline with a phone call or in-store visit. Additionally, marketers need to pay close attention to mobile search and sites that offer consumer user reviews, as they are growing in popularity."

As the holiday season continues to draw near, the sooner businesses get on top of these things, the better. There has been data released indicating that consumers will increasingly spend more of their shopping time online, and if they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you. Do you really want to miss out on potential sales when you’re probably doing everything you can to save money in the first place?

No need to visit Yahoo’s Search Gallery to find Apps for Yelp, LinkedIn, or Yahoo Local for your search experience. Those SearchMonkey Apps switched on last night for a full-time presence, when relevant, in Yahoo Search.

The Yahoo Search blog cracked open the shell around the process of picking which Apps to add as a regular piece of the universal search results:

Before making an application “default on” we require a few things – access to the site’s structured data through semantic markup or a data feed, a well-designed and broadly useful application and positive user metrics.  To understand how a SearchMonkey app affects user metrics, we generally expose a small percentage of our users to a default-on experience and measure if and how it changes their usage.  We started with Yelp, LinkedIn and Yahoo! Local because they were among our first partners to share structured data.  Our tests uncovered that users found these apps useful – in fact, in some cases, we saw a lift in click-through rate of as high as 15 percent.

Click-throughs serve as a sign of approval of the results people see. Without that response, an App has a snowball’s chance in a blast furnace of making the cut. Of course there was little chance Local or Yelp, owned by Yahoo, wouldn’t share that data.

But anything that makes a pretty good search more relevant should mean happier users and improved perception of advertising appearing in the results pages. In what’s shaping up to be a brutal day for Yahoo’s executive management at today’s annual shareholder meeting, this will be a little bright spot under the Sunnyvale sunshine.

Expect more content added to Yahoo Search from the Apps Gallery in the future. We hope they don’t get too carried away with that, because crowding out all the organic search results may not go over well with the audience.

Search engines have been fascinated with maps, likely as an offshoot of their keener interest in local search and the potential for advertising profits. This benefits the typical Internet user, as competing search engines compete for attention.

Yahoo’s latest move presents users of its mapping service with the ability to drag and drop a route between two points. This lets the person choose to avoid a busy section of a trip, or make the trip a more scenic one.

More details emerged on the Yahoo Local & Maps blog:

Once you get your directions to your destination, if you don’t quite like what you see, you can pick up your route and drop it somewhere else, and we’ll drive you through the area you select in the most efficient manner.

If that’s still not quite right, you can tug on the route again until it’s perfect. Of course you can undo your thought-points whenever you like, or go back to your original route. We’ll even tell you the difference in mileage and estimated time between your personalized route and our fastest route.

Yahoo also made some tweaks to business searching on a map, by providing more information like reviews and photos within the business popups.

Yahoo Local Swamped With Mapspam?

Credit for the main exposé goes to Mike Blumenthal (though he, in turn, gives nods to several other sources), and Blumenthal notes that some florists “will fabricate an address that is close to the city center (gaining ranking cred), provide a very relevant fabricated business title with City + Florist in the title (gaining more ranking cred) and adding a number of reviews (gaining still more ranking cred) to jump to the top of the local rankings . . .”

This makes honest competitors much less likely to get business from Yahoo Local, which would be frustrating enough.  Some misguided spam-fighting measures appear to have made the situation worse, though, and prevented at least one company from updating its listing.

“After editing the hours, and adding categories for wedding invitations (we now have the largest selection in town), and wedding accessories, an updated listing was created and sent for review,” reports The Bloomery Florist Boutique.  “A few days later, we received a response from Yahoo! Local stating that we did not have a local presence . . .”  The Bloomery then supplies a few pictures of its van and its shop that seem appear to conclusively prove its presence in Butler, Pennsylvania.

And while, to be honest, most of us might not get too worked up over flowers, it’s hard to say how widespread these problems might be in Yahoo Local.  It’s also very hard, it seems, to say what Yahoo is doing about them.  Don’t throw away those phonebooks just yet.

Type in a query term for the location you are looking for in the search field. Pick a location by entering a city, state or zip code. You can also enter a specific street address, which will search for locations nearest to that address.

AOL Local will locate and map a list of matches for the search term that was entered. AOL has incorporated CityGuide, MapQuest and AOL Search into one interface. The features are comparable to Yahoo Local and Google Maps.

When you find the location you are looking for on the map you can click on it and receive information along with driving directions. You can also use your mouse to click and drag the map moving it to other locations.

AOL says they have fixed the following issues:

Navigation away from the Beta tab-TheAOL Local Search beta is now yet fully integrated with the general AOL Search page. In earlier versions, if you clicked onto another of the AOL Search tabs (e.g., clicked onto the Web tab, the Local BETA tab would no longer appear. This is no longer the case.

*IMPROVED* Relevancy of results to a search term- We have resolved some of the issues resulting in some terms generating odd results. For example searching for "Target" may result in Target store locations in your area being found; it also might result in the FBI Building being found because the FBI building has a "target" range in its basement. While this has improved, please continue to file bug reports on searches you perform that do not generate the results you expect.

Address search problems-Several of the cases that generated strange search results (e.g., city names with spaces or hyphens, use or non-use of commas in addresses, etc.) have been addressed. While this has improved, please continue to file bug reports on searches you perform that do not generate the results you expect.

Printing-Search results and maps should now print correctly using printer friendly pages.

Dash says it is the first GPS manufacturer to offer a local search function on its product. Nearly a year ago, Google teamed up with Volkswagen to show off a Fahrvergoogle Earth 3D map overlay for “dead-reckoning and laser-radar imaging” and “car-to-infrastructure communication.”

Now that’s how you write a press release. But, as far as we know, you couldn’t type in “croissants” and bring up a list of nearby bakeries, cafes and stores along with directions. But with Dash’s product, you can.

With the Dash Express, Yahoo! Local search results are arranged into “address cards,” which can be selected, routing the driver to where he or she can find the goods.

Yahoo! Local ratings and reviews are also presented with results where available. This is great news for the perpetually lost, the touring, and the proud I-know-where-I’m-going crowd. But services like this are also good news for local brick-and-mortar shops that often go overlooked.

The Dash Express will released in California this spring and will be demonstrated at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. And then let the newest cause of the crash-em-up-derby begin.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I was typing in a search for Starbucks. Oh! There’s one right there. And another. And another! Boy, do I feel stupid.”

More on how to write a press release to come.

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Consumers Submit To Yahoo Local

Social media paid off big for Yahoo in 2006 as its Answers product caught on in a big way with Yahoo users.

The company wants to ride that lightning again in a potentially more lucrative way.

Business listings on Yahoo Local picked up an injection of social media features with the latest update announced for it.

Consumer Submit allows anyone to add and edit business listings appearing in the index.

As a test, I tried adding the extra four digits for a business’ zip code to an entry without logging in to Yahoo.

The submission form uses a CAPTCHA to help limit automated entries, and noted after hitting the submit button that the edit would be reviewed before becoming part of the entry.

The edit will be noted as a suggestion in the notes for the business in question.

Yahoo said that for quality control purposes, such suggestions will not be permanent listing alterations, but ones that can be reviewed, and agreed or disagreed upon, by others in the notes.

This new feature adds on to the many others already present on Yahoo Local. Options for saving or distributing information about a listing abound.

Yahoo includes a map of the business location, and options for searching for more details about it, including a link to Yahoo Answers.

We see the potential of such information being useful, if used properly, for Yahoo in its efforts to capitalize on the growing local search market.

Consumer Submit edits present an icebreaker for a Yahoo ad sales pitch; the salesperson can open a conversation with something like, “Our users said you’ve changed your hours, is that correct?”

From there the conversation can shift into a more focused pitch, perhaps by asking for a time to talk more about online advertising with Yahoo. The pitch can come by email, if the address is known, or by phone.

Costs of an email or a VoIP call would be negligible, save for that of the human element.

If they could parley these Consumer Submits into new Yahoo Search Marketing customers, Yahoo should realize a nice return on its latest feature beyond its basic utility.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Yahoo Search Marketing will also offer featured bottom-of-page listings for a discounted price. The Yahoo Search Blog posted news of Yahoo’s Featured Local Listings to announce the new service.

“As more small businesses became familiar with Yahoo! Local, they have asked for an easy way to place local ads that will drive foot-traffic to their stores, and phone calls to their services,” Aytek elik of the Yahoo! Local Team wrote in the blog entry. “And of course, those businesses also want to stand out from the crowd.”

From the post: With an easy sign-up, the small business selects their category, and chooses the local regions where they want to advertise.

A Local Featured Listing is a quick way to start reaching the online audience right in your neighborhood. The listing highlights the business telephone number and provides links to the website, a map and directions – which is exactly what consumers want.

Businesses without a website can get a free 5-page site from Yahoo when signing up for a Featured Local Listing. That site can be customized with the business logo and other information; Yahoo noted the free website feature is currently in beta, which is a bit surprising since they have been hosting websites for years and seem to have it mastered by now.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.