Local, Social and Vertical Find a New Meeting Place: Local Matters Launches LocalGuides.Com Beta
Local Matters, Inc., a technology company developing search solutions that cultivate connections between merchants and consumers, today announced the beta launch of LocalGuides.com, a new local search website in the Local Matters network of Internet properties. LocalGuides.com aggregates local directory and vertical content, and provide consumers with enhanced tools to discover, organize, annotate and share their personal local guides.
Designed to help consumers organize and improve local shopping and activity planning, LocalGuides.com enables site users to create a broad array of personal guides — from simple lists of favorite jazz clubs to complex shopping activities like kitchen renovations. The site offers a new place on the Internet for consumers to organize their local life! Users can create and share their guides with friends and family, or all other users. LocalGuides.com is a new Internet destination where the collective intelligence of a neighborhood can be explored — each user can easily copy and build on other users’ guides.
Local Matters also incorporates a unique “Starter Guide” concept, with pre-created guides that users can copy and personalize. Complex shopping activities such as “bathroom remodeling” or “new driver” are just a couple of examples where Starter Guides give consumers simple productive guide templates with contextual search tools, and suggested reference sites.
“Consumers want more involvement with local information. While some progress has been made in a few entertainment categories, the search industry has failed to give consumers useful tools for personalized local information and opinions,” said Perry Evans, Local Matters CEO. “LocalGuides.com fills this void by creating a relevant and engaging shared-consumer experience, while also helping local merchants find new ways to connect with their local audience. This is a big part of what has been missing in Local Search.”
U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray predicts revenues for the local search industry will more than double by 2007. The latest comScore results report that more than 60 percent of U.S. Internet users (nearly 110 million people) performed a local search online in 2006 — nearly double that of 2005. The report also found that half of all users take their local search to the next level by visiting a local merchant they found via local search engines.
“LocalGuides represents a very smart mix of local, social and vertical elements,” said Greg Sterling, principal, Sterling Market Intelligence. “But beyond being provocative and interesting, it offers real value to users by providing more depth and context for their local queries.”
About Local Matters
Local Matters, Inc., with more than 20 Yellow Pages customers in nine countries and 22 U.S. and international 411 service providers in 13 countries, provides software and media services that enable Yellow Pages publishers and 411 service providers to expand their traditional service offerings and capitalize on emerging opportunities in the local search market. Local Matters’ products and services are designed to broaden its clients’ revenue and distribution opportunities by enabling them to deliver improved consumer local search services and extend their advertising reach. Visit the company at www.localmatters.com.