This one uses an odd example of a social media site for doctors, but the point illustrates that even the niche-iest of topics can garner success when it comes to the Social Web. Not every community will become gigantic, nor should they expected to be. But the totality of them will move the industry.
Ya, ok, the news is a few days old, but this blogger has gotten a bit behind in his news. Even so, this change is significant enough to warrant the attention even now. Yahoo decided to put the Local product line into the Search product department. It remains to be seen what that means to the future of Y! Local but it should be interesting. As previously noted, local searches make up a large percentage of total online searches, so the fit may be right. Noted in the previous post, however, is the GM's belief that community and content still are king. Does Search know that?
"The Citysearches and Internet Yellow Pages I see as being very advertiser driven... optimizing for the advertiser experience. Ourselves and Google are looking very much at this from the search angle."
According to a self-promoting blog entry, the volume of all searches that are "local" in purpose is about 30% of the total search market. According to NearbyNow, the growth of search sites that can direct users who are looking for a particular product will finally put IYP into its own league beyond plain old paper-based YP. Will the audience learn to type in "Diesel shoes in Peoria, IL" into the search bar or will they still go hunting by store names? Or more aptly perhaps, how long will the re-training take?
This San Jose Mercury News article describes a new feature of Google's mapping technology. With the new feature, common users are allowed to directly adjust the "true" location of a business address. The address of a business might be the side street, but the front entrance is on the big boulevard. If so, make the adjustment and voila!
