Piece at Search Engine Watch published earlier this week on the value of paid local search. Author Greg Sterling writes: “And like Yellow Pages, paid search is in fact a “directional medium,” which delivers qualified leads (consumers who are “ready to buy”) to businesses that are ready to sell.
(snip)
“What search engines such as Google and portals such as Yahoo! and AOL are doing to address these local search deficiencies is integrating more structured content (ala Yellow Pages) into Web search results.”
(snip)
” …in many ways, Citysearch is already the model of search and directory convergence. While not perfect, Citysearch presents a hybrid approach that combines pay-per-click advertising for local businesses, with a keyword search-driven interface over a structured local database. That provides the ease of use of search with the reliable structured data offered by Yellow Pages.”
This article does a good job of explaining why paid local search is definitely one of the emerging opportunities for 2004.
(Via John Battelle)