Tech Coast Review
The startup and tech news weblog for Southern California
Showing posts with label local search. Show all posts
Showing posts with label local search. Show all posts

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Local.com fancy public company with patent and no real content

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Irvine based Local.com is an interesting public company.  It is a local content and search aggregator, that launched back in 2005.  They've been making headlines in the last few months with a major patent approved for local search, as well as partnerships to aggregate business review content from the two biggest user generated content sites: Citysearch and Yelp.


Between the domain name and the fact that their poring millions into advertising to buy users to their site, they have great traffic, with at least 5 million monthly users.  Now here lies the rub, local.com is essentially just a geographically focused search engine, and in some ways competes against the likes of almighty Google.  For example if you are looking for a mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, they will give you indexed results of mexican restaurants in LA.   Google similarly does this in their business map section.  In both cases they are search focused, meaning that the actual content doesn't originate from Google or Local, it merely is indexed from other sites like CitySearch or Yelp.  What makes this interesting, is that Google can run local search as an extension of regular search and can afford to build a similar product, without having to 'buy' customers.  Local.com can't do that, and has to resort to paying a hefty chunk in advertising to get people to its site.  But being that its a search engine, people are leaving the site as soon as they find what they are looking for.  Those people are then spending their time on a place like citysearch where the real content is.    Ultimately, this makes Local.com's business model questionable, they are paying for people who are not really engaging their site. 

While I'd be the first to agree about the huge advertising potential in local revenue, local.com is bleeding far to much money, to really make geographic advertising work.  Further, as a company that doesn't offer its own unique content, its pinned up to fight against Google.  Now I know theirs chinks in Googles armour, but you have to have a far more revolutionary product if you are going to go up against them in the search space.  While locals resuts are maybe a bit better then Googles, its certainly not enough to convert users. At least not this user anyways.

 
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Thursday, January 3, 2008

YellowBot has good potential amongst the sea of local search

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Yet another entry into local search popped up last year (wow its 2008 now) without a lot of press coverage.  Santa Monica Burbank based YellowBot bills itself as "yellow pages meets del.icio.us".  And while the local search space is incredibly crowded (hence why we gave a relatively harsh review of mojopages), YellowBot has a fairly attractive implementation that makes me think they have a good chance.  


One of the things I really like about YellowBot is that they are self funded.  They've gone nearly a year building their product without taking on major investment capital and thats no easy task.  Besides that their implementation is really attractive, as its simple, sleek, and clean.  Also because their reviews are very 'tag centric' they are well positioned for good SEO.  According to Compete Metrics, they are closing in on a half a million visitors a month (and according to their own numbers they are doing over a million users a month), which means they are definitely gaining traction.  Of course, only a small portion seem to be contributing as they don't have many of their own reviews.  Most are aggregated from citysearch and other sources.   So, that begs the question, can Yellowbot get to the point where they can compete with Yelp and Citysearch/Insiderpages?   I'm not sure, because as we've said before, getting critical mass with user generated content is hard, but from the growth trends YellowBot is showing so far, they seem well on their way.

Website: http://www.yellowbot.com

Screenshot:

 
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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

FastCall411 local search

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Within the crowded space of local search, Fastcall411, a Los Angeles based company, is trying to differentiate itself by focusing on connecting customers to businesses via phone as fast as possible.   The concept is that if you are searching a category such as plumbers, FastCall411 will simultaneously call multiple plumbers in your area, and connect you with the one that answers the phone quickly.


On one hand, the concept almost feels gimmicky and I'm not sure actual consumers really will latch onto the service (I for one, am more interested in reading other peoples reviews of the merchant, which merchant answers the phone the fastest isn't really a relevant factor).  Also despite their public beta release, you really can only demo their system, its not really all that usable yet (It's only available in Los Angeles and they don't have much in their system besides a few select merchants).  Fastcall411, needs to get lots and lots of merchants in their system, sooner than later, if they want to have any impact.

On the otherhand, FastCall411 is working on a relatively hard problem of trying to identify local businesses that are no longer available.  I have it on very good word that the big Local Search guys such as Google are having a hard time validating their huge local business databases, to certify whether or not a local listing is correct (basically is the business still there and if so, is the phone number they have on file accurate).  While I think it is unlikely FastCall411 will succeed in the consumer space, if their technology really does deliver, they have a decent shot at doing well by shifting their focus to selling or licensing the software for something like GOOG411.

Screenshot:

 
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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Mojo Pages - Yet Another Local Review Site

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The web 2.0 company that proclaims itself as MySpace meets the yellow pages. Mojo Pages is based out of North County San Diego and have had more hype than Crystal Clear Pepsi. So lets get down to it and take a look at MojoPages.
The Good:
Lets face it user generated reviews are in and for good reason, user generated reviews offer the most reliable information to users (yeah I know it is redundant but it also makes sense)...Moreover MojoPages are adding some benefits that companies might consider as a serious benefit, for example adding a wide range of categories to review on (Value, Service, and Quality), and video reviews.

Its also hard to forget that they have millions in funding and some pretty big name people involved in the company - such as an early level employee from Zillow.

The Cons:
They are the late comer here, Insiderpages and Yelp already have a big command on the user review industry. Given that, it seems highly unlikely that many locally owned stores will want to pay for premium placement on MojoPages, with relatively low unique traffic.  Of course the biggest gripe is that it is hard for me to see what the added value of this site is, compared to any other user based review site. The most unique feature is the ability to upload video reviews, but how many people are really going to do that (not many), and even if they did how useful would the video be?

There is a huge barrier that MojoPages needs to surpass and the first is to convince their potential users that their added value features make it a better or more useful place for their reviews.  As of now I am not convinced!

 
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