Google hasn’t beaten Local.com in local-search battle

January 3rd, 2008, 5:00 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Colin Stewart

INNOVATION COMPETITION

Local.com logo Investment analyst Phillip Lyon of the Intelligent Speculator site this week bad-mouthed small Internet-search companies, including Local.com of Irvine.

“If you have ever used their websites you know why. They simply don’t deliver relevant search results,” he says of Looksmart, Copernic, Miva and Local.com.

I haven’t tested any of those except Local.com, but it’s clear to me that Lyon is mixing apples and oranges. Unlike the other services that he cites, Local.com specializes in geographically focused Internet searches.

Google logo Based on my experience, I know Local.com is far from perfect, but it does as well or better than Google in its niche.

That was a conclusion reached by the Internet consulting firm TeleMapics of Laguna Hills in its 2006 white paper on local-search services.

That’s also what I found when I tried two mobile-friendly versions of local search by hunting for “sausages” near the newsroom. Google directed me to a bank and to distant cities, while Local.com told me about nearby restaurants and sausage companies. (That example comes from a column I wrote in late June.)

I got similar results when I tried new United Kingdom search services from Google and Local.

True, Local.com tried to send me on a 338-mile “banger hunt” last fall. (Despite my challenge to all of cyberspace, no one has yet found a bigger Internet-search blooper than that one.)

But Local.com has remedied that problem. The last time I checked, Google was still suggesting that I get my bangers at a church dinner back in 2003.

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