Citysearch just launched a set of APIs that makes all of its local listings content and advertising available to other Web sites and mobile apps. Dubbed CityGrid, the APIs include more than 15
million local business listings, 3 million user reviews, and access to 500,000 local advertisers looking to reach people near their places of business. Citysearch presently already distributes its
local listings content to about 100 sites and mobile apps with a collective reach of 100 million people -- about a quarter of which is Citysearch.com.
"I thought what if I took all the
tools that we put together to build Citysearch and put it on a platter, an API and web services layer," Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti tells TechCrunch -- referring to all the descriptions of local
businesses, reviews, photos, videos, hours of operation, offers, menus, metered phone numbers, and merchant messages. According to TechCrunch: "Tons of Web sites and mobile apps would love to have
access to this database of content to build out their own sites and apps, and now they can via CityGrid."