Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

Local search is all the rage lately. From what I've seen most local search is simply an online version of the yellow pages, with some "local ads" above the listings. I think local search has the potential to be big, but they've got to start providing some real value if they want people to care enough to keep coming back. I guess they've got to start somewhere, though, and Yahoo seems to be making a charge at the local search market as they unleashed Yahoo! Local out of beta today. What does that mean? Not much. But it does go a long way in illustrating two different philosophies on Beta testing. Yahoo is all about getting out of Beta so they can claim they are the first ones there and get as much press coverage as possible. Google, on the other hand, believes in keeping their products in beta for a very long time, so if anyone complains about quality of results or relevancy, they can simply say, "Oh, it's still in beta testing." (Case in point: Google News).

Beta or not, I actually like Google's local search better than Yahoo's.