Ask.Com Takes Local Search to Higher Level

By Jefferson Graham

LOS ANGELES — Scrappy No.4 search engine Ask.com takes on Yahoo and Google today in the hotly contested area of local search listings, with its new AskCity.com.

AskCity’s biggest selling point: popular search categories tied into one place, so that searchers for local restaurant and movie listings, directions and business listings can get them without having to leave the local search area. “No one has brought all the tools together in one cohesive way that lets you achieve your tasks — until now,” says Ask CEO Jim Lanzone.

Ask, owned by IAC/InterActive Corp, has tapped into the resources of corporate cousins Ticketmaster, Evite and Citysearch, adding their wealth of data to AskCity.

Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, says Google dominates local search in advertising revenue, but he gives a nod to Yahoo for having the site with the most features. AskCity joins Yahoo at the top of the tier, he says.

“There’s no one single feature that catapults Ask to the top, but instead the totality of the features,” he says. “It takes local search to another level because it packages data and features together in a very user-friendly way.”

Google Maps attracted 23.9 million visitors in October, compared with 15.6 million at Yahoo Local, according to measurement firm ComScore Media Metrix. No.3 search engine MSN uses local information provided by IAC’s Citysearch service.

Sterling says local search is a “huge opportunity” for marketers and notes that $100 billion is spent yearly trying to reach local consumers in print, radio and other ad media.

Most local information now is found on the main pages of the search engines, rather than their local subsidiaries, he says. “The challenge is to get users to come to the local sites as well,” Sterling says.

Local listings on the Web are often described as cyber Yellow Pages, but Paul Levine, who runs Yahoo Local, says local search is much broader.

“It’s the Yellow Pages meets the local radio and newspaper and AAA,” he says.

Visitors to Yahoo’s Local page can find information about restaurants, traffic conditions and more. In a nod to the growing trend of “user-generated” content, they can also check out comments and reviews of local businesses from local patrons.

“In the past two years we’ve surpassed 2 million ratings and reviews by our users,” says Levine.

Google takes a different approach. It believes the No.1 intent among those who use local search is to find directions. From there, Google adds in restaurant and business listings.

“What we do that others don’t is constantly crawl the Web and associate what people are saying in our results,” says John Hanke, who runs Google Maps. “If someone has blogged about a restaurant, we’ll pick it up and point to it.”

Lanzone says AskCity goes further by offering more refinement. For example, Ask offers the ability to search for businesses in a specific neighborhood, not just a city.

And, in addition to driving directions, it offers walking information for those who like to stroll. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.